when life gives ya lemons....

Um, well....

I recently went out on the San Lorenzo River with a county staff person to evaluate potential release sites for Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project's "Trout in the Classroom" fish. Each year, teachers who have taken a special course are given thirty wild steelhead eggs to raise in a classroom aquarium, so the students can see how the fry emerge from the gravels and grow for the first few weeks of their lives. When they are big enough, they are returned to the stream where they were spawned... in this case, the San Lorenzo River.

The goal is to make sure the little steelhead are released into an area where they can have access to forage and escape cover. While we were out wandering around, we got a few nice surprises. Like this Pacific lamprey, holding in a bend at Henry Cowell State Park.



I know she's hard to see, but she's there. From how beaten up she is I'd say she is probably spawned out, and I don't know if she'll die here or try to get back out to sea. While we were there, she stayed fastened to her rock and didn't move.

A bit further upstream, we said to each other "gosh I hope all the steelhead in the river went back out to sea with the May 1 storm and that no new ones came in...", walk around the bend, and voila!



We were at Highlands Park, near a ledgy bedrock outcrop, so this big guy was really easy to see. He had obviously been in the stream for a while since he was nice and reddened up, but looked to be in great shape, if a little thin. As we watched, he drifted to and fro against the far bank, back into the middle of the channel, then finally glided over the edge of the falls and back downstream. He had quite a ways to go.

After we exclaimed over that treat, we walked a bit further upstream only to hear a loud "PLOP." Of course, that means "frog." and upon further investigation, we located the culprit, hidden beneath a willow tree in a backwater.



at first, because he was so hard to see with only his head sticking out of the water, I got all excited that it was a redlegged frog. But, after getting home and looking at my pictures more closely, alas, it was a bullfrog. Bah.

And here's the part about life giving you lemons. I saw two at-risk native species, and one invasive, all in one day, all in an urban stream, without even trying. So what do I want to focus on, the fact that the invasives are really gaining ground and the natives are becoming fewer and farther between? Well, it's a choice. I choose to look at what I can do to help the natives rebound.

As far as getting to see creatures in their natural settings, I know many of you probably have never seen a lamprey. or a steelhead, or even a bullfrog. Even if you think you spend at lot of time outdoors. Luck? Maybe. But you can go find these things too. Just get out of your car, shut off your cellphone, tell your kids that it is "quiet time" and they need to zip it. If you usually run along a trail next to a stream, try walking. If you slow down, you will take in a lot more of your surroundings that you never noticed before. You just never know what you might find.

If you're in Alum Rock Park, at the head of the springs trail, and you just happened to look up, you might have seen these:



A female great horned owl and one of her fledglings, sitting in a tree, in broad daylight. Get out there and look! And for what it's worth, I am quite partial to meyer-lemon-mint lemonade.

It's been a while! I almost forgot how to do this.

*Hangs head in shame*

Since it's been so long and I need a practice session, how 'bout I just post a few really cute pictures of the kitties and call it good? No heaviness, no ramblings, just cute pictures.

Like this one.



or this one.



or even this one, which is currently my screen saver.



This is Groo, my brother's Maine Coon. Groo weighs 22 pounds. My brother wants him to weigh less. However, Groo doesn't WANT to weigh less than 22 pounds. Go on, I dare ya.



This is Fuji, my brother's ragdoll/Himalayan/Maine Coon/fluffball. He has more cattitude than any varmint I've met in the recent past. With the possible exception of Greaseball.



While I collect my thoughts, I leave you thus. Enjoy.

Miscellany...

When I showed up for Friday's fieldwork gig, I was handed a copy of Metro Santa Cruz by someone who works for the county. This article on disappearing salmon is mostly accurate and actually not too bad for a freebie rag. It mentions several people I work with on an almost daily basis, together with noted Central Coast researchers, Sean Hayes and Bruce MacFarlane of NOAA. When the crisis with the coho first hit and no one really knew wtf was going on, I heard Bruce give a presentation at a meeting wherein he first shared what he and the others had found with regard to tracking ocean conditions. These guys are on the cutting edge of what's going on with the fish around here, and I feel really lucky to be able to pick up my phone and call them when I have questions, or even offer my help.

The other thing mentioned in the article is an off-channel pond on a little creek called San Vicente. The creek is immediately south of the town of Davenport which is little more than a wide place in the road with a spectacular view... but anyway. The article quotes NOAA ecologist Kit Crump as saying that when they approached the site in 2001 it was as a "take" case, meaning coho and steelhead were presumed to have been harmed and/or killed by being swept into the pond. Until they seined it took scales to age the fish, and determined that all the huge, fat, healthy fish in there were young of the year and about 30% bigger than fish who rear normally in the stream! Unheard of! Preposterous! They checked again the following year... same deal. Pond full of fat, happy juvenile salmonids, going against what every biologist had been taught to think about where steelhead and salmon prefer to rear. It made this little pond (an old agricultural diversion pond) into quite the controversy in our world, for so many reasons.

According to this year's preliminary surveys by NOAA, coho returns were indeed as awful as everyone had feared. On the two streams presumed to be the strongest coho streams, they had oh, maybe 30 juveniles seen on one stream, 50 on the other. On tiny little San Vicente Creek? A hundred and eighty six. Wow!! The importance of that tiny little pond suddenly skyrocketed in everyone's importance.

On September 15, a project to do depth maintenance (euphemism for "dredge") and install a sluice/sediment gate for the pond so inflows can be regulated was begun. In addition to coho, we also have red-legged frogs there and potentially San Francisco garter snakes. So, to sum up, we're affecting a jurisdictional wetland that is full of listed species. A nightmare of permitting loopholes, restrictions and pitfalls that took months to navigate. It has not been fun, but our team has kept its eyes on the prize all this time, and our project is now 3/4 done in time for this year's rainy season. The coho in the stream this year will have a high flow refuge in the pond that will keep them from being swept downstream and out to sea (killed) and a place to hang & eat themselves into food comas come springtime.

It's been a really busy, exhausting few weeks. We started sampling on September 19 and really haven't stopped. For me this means long days that start before dawn and end after dark, hard work, hoofing it in sometimes many miles to sampling sites in remote locations, bad food for lunch and the fear that I can never carry enough water to slake my constant thirst.

I still owe a good friend an apology for pulling a disappearing act on a trail run we were supposed to do last weekend that got pre-empted by nonstop sampling. Maybe it will make her feel better if I tell her that by Sunday evening three things had happened: 1) I had gotten in an accident with my state-issued vehicle, 2) been jokingly accused of steppin out by the SO because I am simply never home anymore 3) being not-so-jokingly accused of treating the house like a hotel, i.e. leaving my gear and clothes everywhere, abdicating all my normal household chores (which for my compulsive neatnik and also uber-busy love is a cardinal sin...heh). All I can do is grit my teeth and ride it out because this is how it's going to be for the entire month of October... between sampling season and red-legged frog monitoring for my little project mentioned above my life is pretty much spoken for.

So, M, if you are reading this, please know that I have not forgotten, I am still coming up with new ways to beg for forgiveness and you will have your pound (or two) of flesh! :0D

Wonder is all around us, we have only to look.

From Penitencia Creek, an urban stream flowing through Alum Rock Park in the east foothills of San Jose.



Steelhead yearling and steelhead young of year. They are badly infested with a copepod parasite called "blackspot" - it seems to be related to water temperature and flow conditions. It can weaken or, at levels like this, kill them. Pray to the rain gods for an early onset to winter, please.



Life is like a box of chocolates... you just never know what you're going to get. Like this nearly two-foot-long adult female steelhead. She is an ocean fish, came in with last winter's rains. From the Pacific Ocean she entered via the Golden Gate, smelled her way down to the bottom of the Bay near Milpitas, where Coyote Creek empties into the swampy marshlands in between salt ponds, then fought her way up lower Coyote and into Penitencia Creek, all the way up over several significant drop structures... and maybe, if she was lucky, there was a male already here waiting. Or not... perhaps that was why she stayed, waiting for a male to fertilize the thousands of eggs she'd carried inside her all that distance. She waited too long... and when the rains abruptly stopped in early March and flows dropped, she was trapped in upper Penitencia Creek. She made her way to the deepest, coldest pool she could find, so she could slow her metabolism and wait.... and wait.... and wait. She ate nearly every other fish unlucky enough to be in the pool with her, trying to make it through the summer, all the while losing weight, losing energy, as temperatures warmed and her food supply dwindled. She was so close, so very close... she had only recently died, didn't have a mark on her. RIP girl... so damn sorry we didn't find you in time to help you.

Only about 10 yards upstream in a thicket of tree roots and aquatic plants, the shocker went on, and this flew out into the middle of the stream:

"Ack, WTF? It's a red-legged frog! The last one was reported here in the mid-sixties!" Looks like we've got them again, because this is a subadult female. So typical in this business... get all bummed out and sad by something like that magnificent steelhead we were too late to save, only to be buoyed up by this one. If frogs are expanding their range, that means something is going right. Let's keep it up...

By the way, if you are in the south Bay and want to watch steelhead jumping and maybe even spawning in Alum Rock Park, wait until February or so and head over there after a good hard dump of rain when the creeks are up. Go into the park and drive all the way up to the visitor center. Park and hang out near the bridge that spans the creek. Maybe you'll get lucky. But remember, steelhead are threatened, which means they are protected by state and federal law and it is illegal to handle them or interfere with their activities in any way, unless you have a special permit. So do not approach them or try to catch them. Just sit back and enjoy the show. If you see one in distress and you live in California, call CalTIP at 1 888 DFG-CALTIP (888 334-2258), 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thanks for helping protect our resources.

Deadline for comments on proposed ESA changes extended to OCTOBER 15

In an earlier blog, I asked anyone who reads this to please lodge your comments with the US Fish & Wildlife Service about changes that are being proposed to the Endangered Species Act.

Here's the relevant paragraph from the earlier post. If you want to read the whole thing, it's just a few posts down if you're in the mood to scroll.

"Here is a link to the US Fish & Wildlife Service's website with the exact language changes being proposed downloadable in PDF or text format. It's an incredibly dry, nearly incomprehensible legalese read, so here's a link to the Washington Post article on the topic that explains things pretty well."

Please have a look here, on the NRDC's website, to file an online comment letter and let them know you oppose these changes and why. The NRDC will print out each online letter they receive and hand-deliver them to the USFWS.

Thanks again. I've been sampling all day today but I promise some fun pics in the morning, so please take a moment if you haven't already. Sorry to keep harping on this but it's simply too important to take a casual stance.

The decline and fall of the pacific salmon

If you haven't been living under a rock for the past year or so, you have to know that this year's salmon return in California was nothing short of disastrous. Here in central California, there are two native species of salmon: coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytcha). Coho inhabit the coastal streams and chinook favor the central valley streams. For both species, the number of fish coming in to spawn (called "returns") varied from zero to less than one-third of what was expected.

This is a male coho salmon. Note the bright red coloration and the large, hooked jaw. These characteristics are only present on the male.


This is a male chinook (or "king") salmon. This is what you usually get when you order salmon in a restaurant. This is also a spawning male, with a hooked jaw and the red coloration.

The differences are in size (chinook can get up into the hundreds of pounds) and coloration. Coho are also called "silver salmon" because of their silvery undertones. The chinook is darker, almost green, beneath his bright spawning colors. He's also got comma-shaped dorsal speckles on his back and fin. There are other differences, but we can stop there.

All I know is what I see.... or don't see. And this past winter (2007-2008), I didn't see any coho in my streams. None. That hadn't happened to me ever, not in the past ten years.

Coho have a rather rigid, three-year life cycle (under normal conditions without hatchery influence, then things change a bit). This means that when a coho comes back to its natal stream to spawn, it is invariably three years old, and it will be breeding only with other coho that are also three years old. They form what are known as "year classes", which means that what happened to coho in 2005 is going to directly impact what happens to coho three years later, in 2008. In central California, the 2002-2005-2008 year class was the strongest year class. It had good solid numbers and was in the best shape of the three. We were expecting to see coho all over the place last winter, the way we had in 2005, 2002 and every three years prior. We were stunned when none showed up at all. What the hell happened?

Most scientists agree that the crash was inevitable. A very lively discussion takes place on this blog: http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2008/07/11/realityaboutsalmon/

Everything from habitat loss to global climate change to human overpopulation is tagged as a culprit. And these are some of the top minds in fisheries management debating this (with a few token reactionaries thrown in to alleviate the tedium of fact exchange). Sadly, I doubt you will find our Republican VP nominee taking part in these discussions since they involve neither lipstick, nor guns, nor fuck-me pumps.

In my neck of the woods, it was all about poor ocean conditions. All of the little salmon, newly spawned in 2004 and hatched out in 2005, swam happily downstream in the spring expecting to gorge themselves on all of that delicious krill that exists because of the cold, nutrient-rich, upwellings that occur off the California coast and that drive the entire ecosystem immediately offshore. Only thing was, in 2005... the upwelling never came. The result: starvation and reproductive failure in almost every near-shore dependent species of fish, bird and mammal. And that includes juvenile salmon parr. Steelhead use the ocean much differently than coho do (steelhead are immediately far-ranging, coho stick close to shore until their 2nd year of life), so they were relatively unaffected by this phenomenon and their numbers have remained relatively strong.

But for how long?

Predictions are that the pendulum of the Pacific Decadal Oscillationhas swung back around again and that conditions should drastically improve off our shores for the coming year.

Time will tell. When the coho come back, I'll be here waiting for them.

Please comment on proposed changes to Endangered Species Act - Deadline OCT 15

The Bush Administration's Dept. of the Interior has decided to act on their belief that agencies like the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service are duplicitous, superfluous and about as necessary as a silly toesie on a rodent. (Trust me on that last part, I'll explain later.)

Please have a look at what the Bushies want to do and tell them NO. Go here, to the NRDC's website, to file an online comment letter, which they will print and deliver to the Fish & Wildlife Service. Even though this proposal supposedly does not require Congressional approval (WTF???), write your congressperson anyway, and tell them you vehemently oppose this disgusting, subversive attempt to gut the ESA and give developers, oil companies, you-name-it the ability to skirt or ignore environmental laws in order to build, drill, pillage, plunder... oops, did I say that? The deadline to get your voice heard is SEPTEMBER 15 so please don't put it off.

Dirk Kempthorne is an Idaho senator who served alongside the now-infamous Larry Craig before he was appointed Secretary of the Interior on June 7, 2006, to replace Gale Norton after she resigned. He is an industry darling and has always favored business interests over environmental ones. So it's really no surprise that he's dreamed this up.

Basically, the changes boil down to this:

only when a federal agency feels their intended actions could potentially harm a listed species must they consult an outside environmental regulatory agency, such as the Fish and Wildlife Service. Otherwise, they can write themselves a free pass (called a "No Effects Determination") and move forward with their project.

Here is a link to the US Fish & Wildlife Service's website with the exact language changes being proposed downloadable in PDF or text format. It's an incredibly dry, nearly incomprehensible legalese read, so here's a link to the Washington Post article on the topic that explains things pretty well.

A read of the proposed language clearly shows another bias - Kempthorne's DOI doesn't want the ESA used to regulate climate change. We should have seen this one coming -- the listing of the polar bear raised the spectre of climate change to the forefront. Greenhouse-gas emitting industry screamed NO FAIR! And this is the inventive way their fears are being assuaged.

Keep in mind that federal agencies often delegate authority to state agencies. Case in point: Caltrans. Whenever federal dollars are helping pay for a project, it's considered a federal project. The federal version of Caltrans is the FHWA. So basically, Caltrans assumes the role of a federal agency on many projects, usually the big, important ones. Can you imagine the insanity that would ensue if Caltrans (an engineering organization focused entirely on project delivery) were given the power to analyze its own activities and to decide when, how and where its projects would impact listed species? Yet if the changes proposed by Kempthorne somehow snake their way through, that would become a very real scenario.

A strong Endangered Species Act is a basic, vital tool if we are to accomplish anything like conservation of a species and its habitat. Without it, we are hamstrung. Believe it.

And the suckier part: I know people who work as biologists for Caltrans. Up until now, they have been able to use the environmental regulatory agencies like a club in order to force the engineers and project managers in charge to do the right thing by the species: allocate money in the budget for things like mitigation, for properly done surveys, for documentation, for road design changes that benefit sensitive species or their habitat, or for permitting. If the proposed changes go through, they will be in a world of hurt because the engineers will simply walk all over them in order to push projects through the planning process and get them on the ground. Try telling a design engineer in a meeting with all the functional groups including project management, construction, right of way, design, etc. etc. that he needs to allow for a bigger culvert in his road design because it aids wildlife passage and reduces roadkill... at a cost of 3X the cost of a smaller culvert. Why should he? Um, because it's the right thing to do? Oh yeah, that will fly.... not. The biologist will likely either get shut down and go away quietly (if he doesn't protest), or be portrayed as a money-wasting tree sitting crackpot environmentalist (if he does try to push it).

Please understand my stance on this is not about job security for myself. I'll pretty much always have a job, because people will always want salmonids around. Something like 75% of all money spent to restore listed species is spent on fish - namely, salmon and steelhead. That's the way it's been for quite a while, and I don't see it changing any time soon. But that is a whole 'nuther blog post, which I'll save for another time. This is about the Bush Administration's non-stop efforts since they took power in 2001 to circumvent the ESA any way they can. This isn't the first thing they've tried. But it is hopefully the last.

Another really sad part is that if Kempthorne's proposed new rules pass, the Dept. of Interior will simply be sued by one or several environmental organizations. Legal activity sucks up an amazing amount of time, money and resources from agency personnel, who obviously are not provided with any additional funding, nor are they allowed to hire help, to deal with the additional workload caused by responding to lawsuits. Their actual work to protect species, therefore suffers immeasurably. Please make your voice heard on this vitally important issue; if we can stop it now, we can have an important impact on how project proponents are required to adhere to the provisions of the ESA. Thanks.... from all the creatures who can't thank you themselves.