While the rest of the country is experiencing snow, storms, and cold temperatures, California has been having warm, sunny weather. We don’t winterize our boats. We don’t ice fish. It’s been pretty good. Just like anything else, though, there are two sides to every story. The downside of all this sun is the fact that California is experiencing a drought. I read recently that it may be the worst drought in 500 years!
Whenever there is a catastrophic environmental event such as this drought, it’s going to have consequences. Low water flows in the state’s rivers and streams endangers salmon and steelhead reproduction. Read what state fisheries scientists are saying about the drought.
The sensitive populations of fish that spawn in Northern California’s creeks and rivers are starting to suffer from the brutal drought threatening the state’s water supplies.
In Sonoma and Santa Cruz counties, the National Marine Fisheries Service has heard reports of anglers catching endangered coho salmon trapped by low water flows. In the American River, water levels have dropped to a 20-year nadir, endangering the redds, or nests of eggs, laid by chinook salmon, a consumer staple that supports hundreds of Bay Area fishermen.
“We’re sitting on pins and needles looking at the long-term weather forecast,” said Jon Ambrose, a biologist with the fisheries service, “and it’s not looking good.”
Droughts are always bad news for salmonids, a group of fish that spend most of their lives in the ocean but reproduce in rivers and streams. In Northern California these fish include chinook and coho salmon as well as steelhead, an oceangoing relative of rainbow trout that is listed as federally threatened.
Photos: SF Bay (top), San Jose Mercury News (above)
