Last fall, when torrential rains caused rivers to fill and streams to churn with salmon spawning in their native creeks, conservationists got excited, headlines announced the news with joy, and people in the know rushed out to watch. The rain and the return of wild salmon in creeks was a revitalizing moment after years of drought and dread of fires. It almost seemed as though Mother Nature was smiling again. But now, the rains are long gone, and another dry summer approaches. River levels are going down and streams are drying up in places. What does the future look like for the salmon?
The North Bay is one of the loveliest places in the country—there’s land, hills, wildlife, vineyards, historic ranches, and a quality of life we openly celebrate. But most people (unless they’re naturalists or happen to fish) begin and end their relationship with fish at the Whole Foods counter or on dinner plate and think no more about it. This past fall, everyone was reminded that the health of the wild salmon coincides with the health of the rivers, and the health of both impact our sense of happiness. Many now have at least a vague sense that if salmon are to survive in our rivers and creeks, their chances may have something to do with the impact of human behaviors on the environment.
The mystery of migration
“Salmon are these magical fish,” says Todd Steiner, executive director, Turtle Island Restoration Network. “They can appear, suddenly, in a little tiny creek, basically in your back yard, where all of a sudden, you have a two-foot giant fish swimming there!”
In last fall’s atmospheric river series, the fish were leaping over little waterfalls in San Geronimo Creek, and spawning away, and the news went viral. “We got into the [San Francisco] Chronicle, the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the guardian in the UK,” says Steiner. “The local CBS station came out and covered it.” Why the excitement? Salmon are a totem species. Revered by native peoples for hundreds of years before Europeans moved into their lands. They’re famous. And part of their wonder is the mystery of their great migration.
Most of us are familiar with images of salmon in Alaska, leaping upstream to spawn, being caught in the paws of bears. But the salmon, born in a freshwater stream, is returning to that freshwater stream from its life in the open ocean––a saltwater body. How does a freshwater fish survive in a saltwater ocean? Or the reverse?
Anyone who’s ever had a fish tank of salt or freshwater fish knows that messing with their pH levels, even slightly, can kill the fish. But salmon––and steelhead and lampreys as well––have their system down after thousands of years in the game. They undergo a total metamorphosis––on the way out and then, in reverse, when coming back in. “If you buy a fish in the supermarket, you see these silver fish because in the ocean, salmon are silver,” says Steiner. But when they come up here, in the creek, to spawn, they go from silver to red.” Then too, the males grow big, hooked beaks, which they use to fight the other males, while they lounge around waiting for the female to finish digging her nest so he can swim over and fertilize them.
The life cycle of salmon
The salmon life cycle begins in freshwater streams as a translucent egg in a mass of eggs stashed in “nests” called “redds.” These are dug deep in the river gravel by the female salmon and are where she lays her eggs. After the male swims over and fertilizes the eggs, the female digs another hole just upstream with her tail, which covers the eggs in the first hole.
If the delicate eggs survive, they will hatch and become alevins (a larval fish with a yolk sac), looking like tadpoles. Survival means there must be water in the stream, and correct temperatures, and no predators or toxins or tramping feet to disrupt them. The big yolks serve as their food source until they manage to work their way up from the creek bed to the surface where they will then swim around, find food, and grow for several months. The length of time and exact point in the season will vary, according to species.
Once the juveniles reach about the length of a cigar, they begin moving from the freshwater streams toward the Tomales or San Pablo bays where the metamorphosis magic starts. As they move from fresh water into brackish water, their entire physiognomy changes and adapts to the nature of the ocean waters where they will mature. They will spend a couple of years out in the ocean and then, as full adults, each species, on its own time schedule, will start moving back towards the brackish waters and then the freshwater streams where they started out.
“So that in and of itself is another miracle about these salmon,” says Steiner, adding that the scientists keeping track of the fish don’t even know where they go in the ocean, but somehow, they find their natal site. They find the entrance to their river; and they swim up this river. In the North Bay, he adds, that means swimming 20 or 30 miles to find the spot where they hatched and began their life cycle.
The state of salmon now
The normal challenges to their migration––weather, predators, the difficulty of the journey, is made more complex today. This is the result of man-made changes in the land such as placement of barriers, dams or culverts that block or divert the stream flow, or major diversions of river waters to serve agriculture or distant cities. In Bay Area coastal streams, urban development has destroyed the stream habitat they need to survive. Added to all that, with the historic drought and extreme heat and storms and fires driven by climate change, the salmon population, which have been thriving in our streams for millennia, is now, in the words of Steiner, “hanging on by a thread.”
“Most people don’t understand that there’s an environmental cost to our existence here on the landscape,” says David Manning, environmental resources manager for Sonoma Water. “We pump water. We store water. We change the patterns of runoff in the watershed. We change the vegetation. That’s everything from urban development to agriculture, to forestry practices. Everything we do to these watersheds ends up having an influence on these fish. That’s the most critical issue for Coho salmon and for steelhead as they rear in all these tributary streams throughout the watersheds.” It’s why it’s important that we understand the impact we have on the places where we live, and which we share with other species and it’s not just our personal footprint. “It’s really every facet of our lives,” says Manning. “From the roads, the communities we’ve built, in and amongst the places where these fish, for millennia, have conducted their business.”
This year’s coho salmon count, as of mid-February is up. “For coho salmon, we’re talking about hundreds of fish in the watershed and this year they’re on track for it to be the highest total in a decade,” says Manning. This is also the case in Lagunitas Creek this year, which he considers the best place to see coho salmon spawining. He considers it a very high run this year. As for Chinook, “We’ve done a very good job counting Chinook salmon in the Russian River watershed over the past 20 years because we count them using a video-monitoring system in a fish ladder at Mirabel Dam during the fall, usually before large storms muddy the river’s water,” he says. “The very large storms we experienced this past October required us to dismantle the video system early—just as the fish were returning to the river, so we don’t have an accurate Chinook salmon count this past year. You can see pictures of that video monitoring system on our website,” he adds. “We have technicians that count every fish that comes through that fish ladder.”
While coho salmon numbers are high this year, says Manning, so far the return of adult steelhead has been very low. “The steelhead spawning season lasts until April, so there is hope that spring rain may bring in more fish,” he says. “In a good year, more than 10,000, steelhead return to this watershed.”
“There is a very large-scale effort in the Russian River, including a very innovative conservation hatchery [Warm Springs Hatchery in Geyserville], to release fish and monitor their performance in the Russian River.” This effort involves the National Marine Fishery Service, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sonoma Water and the University of California, Sea Grant Program. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation gave millions of dollars, a lot of it matched by Sonoma Water to study habitat issues that coho salmon depend on and undertake restoration projects to protect them.”
Habitat restoration pays off
“We’re in the throes of a $75 million restoration of Dry Creek,” says Manning. At three and a half miles, they’re about halfway through that project, which is being done in concert with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“We have 15 to 20 people in the field every day, collecting data that all needs to be organized and people need to interpret it and make some sense of it, so it can be used for decision making. “There’s an unbelievable amount of depth and information to cover when it comes to the monitoring of these fish, the way that they use watersheds, where they’re present and absent, determining the habitat conditions that are conducive for their survival for a large variety of reasons.”
All this work represents many agencies and individuals dedicated to improving habitat conditions and survival of our fish. “It’s an uphill battle for these threatened and endangered species and requires a lot of thought and a lot of careful work to try to find the improvements to habitat and river flows and stream flows that benefit these fish the most. And there’s a lot of attention paid to that.”
What can ordinary people do to help? “The most obvious thing is water conservation,” says Manning. “That’s probably the No. 1 connection to the environments of these fish. That includes things like using water more efficiently around your house, allowing water to infiltrate into the ground, as opposed to creating more runoff. The more we can recharge the groundwater and provide more stream flows, the better that is for fish.”
The habitat and creatures are constrained. “They’re squeezed to a point where they’ve lost a lot of the resiliency they used to have,” he says. “And that resiliency is really important for their ability to weather droughts, floods and climate change. And so, we’ve seen, it’s tough for them to find the environments they need to survive. Resilient fish populations need healthy rivers and streams.”
The complexity of a river
“A key thing that we forget is that rivers are complex,” says Martin Perales, Ph.D., an environmental scientist with the Napa County Resource Conservation District. A river needs space. A river needs a flood plain so it can spread out under heavy rains. A river needs a healthy riparian buffer, with vegetation and trees, that to filter rainwater and hold it in their root systems and feed it back into the streams. A river needs shade to a cool the waters from the summer sun and keep the living things within it happy. A river, like all living systems, needs water.
“In pre-settlement times, most of the valley floor would flood. The river had all the space it needed, and it’s in those shallow areas that flood where the magic happens.” He thinks of those shallow areas as, giant solar panels for the river, producing food and the ideal growing conditions for fish. “Until we get more of that type of habitat back, we’re just putting Band-Aids on all the problems for fish.” That requires a delicate balancing act. “It’s a huge problem,” says Perales. “Napa is different from other areas. It’s much more of a coastal system. There’s no snowpack in the Napa Valley. So, if it doesn’t rain, then the river is just running on reserves.” He notes that there are discussions going on over a groundwater sustainability plan created by the Napa County Groundwater Sustainability Agency, adopted in January. (For more information, visit countyofnapa.org.) This is a 20-year plan intending to secure sustainable groundwater basins through monitoring and management of groundwater use.
For Perales, the plan is a good step, and he recognizes the attempt at looking at the whole water usage picture. “We’ve treated groundwater and surface water as separate entities,” he says, “but it’s the same thing. It’s all connected as one system––surface water and groundwater.” Nevertheless, he says that he has hopes the plan will help. “I want it to work,” he says. “I want us to be better with how we use water. People are seeing it firsthand, these epic fires and record-breaking droughts back-to-back. We have got to get serious about it.” So, Perales supports the Groundwater Sustainability Plan. “From an environmental perspective, it could be an important piece of legislature that helps the water quantity issue we have in the valley.”
Steelhead are survivors
Studying the fish reveals another fascinating fact, this time about the steelhead in the Napa watershed. “A lot of us focus on the Chinook because they’re easier to see,” says Perales, adding that they’re big, which is why they’re named king salmon.
“Everyone loves them,” he says. “But from a conservation restoration perspective, these fish will likely have a genetic makeup that is not pure Napa Valley, but mixed with that of hatchery fish from other areas. But with steelhead, the bloodline, the genetics in our steelhead, are for the most part intact and have been running these creeks for thousands of years. And that’s pretty cool,” he says. “There’s this deep sense of time that you feel when you see one of these fish and you say 1,000 generations ago, the parents of this individual spawned here. This is a continued bloodline.” That means that these fish are genetically adapted, over many generations, to the conditions of the Napa Valley.
“Our steelhead are survivors, but they need help,” he says. “And I think ways of helping them out are to: remove barriers to their migration; talk more about groundwater and that groundwater surface water connection; and try to keep water in the Creek longer. So, water conservation is going to be helpful.”
Aaron Fairbrook, program manager at Sonoma Resource Conservation District, is working on improving fish habitat and fish populations as well as water conservation, erosion control, fuel load management, as well as “LandSmart planning,” which involves looking at properties and providing a roadmap for landowners on what to do with their property and resources, using best management practices. He says it takes many groups, organizations and agencies to restore a world for salmon now, and he includes landowners in that equation, too.
“I rely on people who are specialized in different areas of expertise,” says Fairbrook. “We’ve worked with different agencies that include biologists, hydrologists and geologists. We had a partnership called the Coho Partnership for several years. And we had one group that would go out and look at salmon populations and count fish. Another one would do wet and dry mapping, which involves noting what parts of the creek go dry, [and] what stays wet.”
According to Fairbrook, all the information helps with grant writing and to strategize where the best placement for large woody debris and other habitat enhancement techniques can be located to help salmonids the most. “We rely on what research has been done and try to determine the best locations for these projects. And sometimes the hard part is getting landowners interested. The best solution for me is just to find that win-win situation that can help both fish and landowners,” says Fairbrook who writes grants to help landowners find ways to be part of the solution. He also encourages those with properties bordering on the river, to get in touch and talk about ideas.
The future of salmon fishing
Like just about every other aspect in our agriculturally rich North Bay region in the beautiful state of California––it’s all about water. Organizations and ecologists can work hard to support our beautiful salmon by understanding them and improving the streams in which they begin and end their lives. They can monitor fish, add supplementary juveniles to the mix, improve selected banks and remove barriers to the streams’ natural flow. They can get grants and raise money. But despite the great October rains, a historic drought remains in place––and ecologists can’t make water.
Without new rain to replenish the now drying streams, the spawn of the salmon who swam in on the October rainstorms will dry up in their gravel redds and die. A dry stream bed, where baby fish should be swimming, is a sad sight. So, what can we do to help? Hope and pray for rain, sure. But as of this writing, after a bone-dry January and maybe 15 drops of rain in February, a drought-breaking “miracle March” is a hope, but just that. We really do know what we can do. Unlike most of our shortages, bread, money, whatever, where we can just figure out how to get more. With water? For everyone? We can figure out how to conserve what we have.
Take advice from John McManus of the Golden State Salmon Association: “In case you haven’t noticed it you’re in an incredible part of the world in Northern California. The natural resources here are special, but threatened by development and climate change. And there are things that all of us can do about that if we want to be active and try and have the resources to keep them healthy. (Like, save water!)”
The Business of Salmon in California
“Salmon is a $1.4 billion enterprise in California,” says John McManus, president of the Golden State Salmon Association. “And half of that again in Oregon,” he adds, with another $700 million in economic activity. “So you go out and fish out of Oregon, almost anywhere until you get right up near the Columbia River, and catch a salmon. There’s a 60% chance that salmon originated in California, believe it or not.”
But $1.4 billion? “Think of everything that goes with catching a salmon,” says McManus. “You first need a boat.” Oh, yes, as the cartoons say, “a hole in the water into which you pour money.” McManus reminds us that the Marine industry thrives not only in selling or supplying the boats, but everything that goes with keeping them afloat. This includes repairs, electronics such as including radar, sonar, GPS and elaborate radio systems. Serious business. “I mean, this is a heavy-duty ocean right off our coast,” he says, “and you want to be ready when you go out into it.” Then, of course, you must get to your boat. “So, there are the trucks and the trailers, for those who trailer their boat around,” he says, “or, for those who but rent a slip, there are the marinas and harbor fees. Then, there are all the dock services.”
Ka-ching, ka-ching. And then, you’re going to want lunch, and maybe to stay over. So, you’ll be spending money on restaurants, hotels and motels. It all adds up.
“So, there’s a lot of money churning,” says McManus. And that’s without going into the tackle and bait and fuel and random details. Oh, and the licenses [for charter boat fees]. “Last year, to get a spot on one of those boats and go out for a day of salmon fishing started at about $200 bucks,” says McManus. “And then on top of that, you know, you’re expected to tip the deck hand.” Any way you look at it, whether you own it, charter it, whether it’s your business or pleasure, whether you’re out for a day or an extended period of time, you’re going to be spending money to catch a salmon. Is it worth it? Even if you might come back empty handed? Go ask any fisherman––and watch the smile on his face.
The only thing that would stop a fisherman is if the salmon disappear. McManus and the Association are working to see that does not happen. “We operate on a belief that we need to have fishermen advocating for conservation,” he says, “and we won’t have fishermen if we don’t have fish for them to catch.”
