[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 5/1/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

May 1, 2008

 

3. Watersheds -

 

 

Tiny fly is why salmon thrive in Yolo Bypass, scientists say

Sacramento Bee

 

Opening Day about tradition and festivity

The Inyo Register

 

**************************************

 

Tiny fly is why salmon thrive in Yolo Bypass, scientists say

Sacramento Bee – 5/1/08

By Matt Weiser – staff writer

The Sacramento Valley is a well-used landscape. After 160 years of mining and urbanizing, plowing and diverting, you'd think the environment would have given up all its secrets.

 

But a trio of local scientists recently unlocked a mystery about why young salmon grow faster during floods in the Yolo Bypass, and in the process they identified a new species.

 

Ted Sommer, a senior environmental scientist at the state Department of Water Resources, discovered about eight years ago that juvenile chinook salmon grow faster and fatter when the bypass floods. This vast flood corridor between Sacramento and Davis seemed to be an important feeding area for salmon – when floods allow them to swim into it.

 

"They grew like gangbusters, often twice as fast as fish that stayed out in the river," he said.

 

But nobody knew what the salmon were feasting on or where the food came from.

 

To answer that question, Sommer put an intern on the trail. Gina Benigno, then a recent UC Berkeley biology graduate, spent the winter of 2004-2005 taking samples in the bypass: water from ponds, water flowing into the bypass from creeks and drains, and the soil itself.

 

The dirt went into big plastic bins in a lab at UC Davis. She flooded the dirt with water and covered the bins with screens. And then she waited.

Within a few days, insect larvae hatched in the water and the bins were buzzing with adult flies.

 

Sommer and Benigno couldn't identify them, so they sat down with Peter Cranston, an entomology professor at UC Davis.

 

It took Cranston only minutes of squinting through a microscope to provide an answer. And it was he who came away most surprised.

 

Cranston is one of the world's leading experts on chironomids, a family of gnatlike, non-biting aquatic flies also known as midges. He travels the world hunting for new chironomids, but never expected to find one in his own backyard.

 

He and Benigno co-authored a paper last year identifying the bugs from the Yolo Bypass as a new species.

 

"It reflects quite badly on me," Cranston confessed. "At the time this was brought to my attention, I'd been here six years and been out to the Yolo Bypass bird-watching and never observed it."

 

Plenty of Sacramento commuters have observed the midges, usually as carcasses on their bumpers and windshields. The adult is only about 5 millimeters long, but when it hatches, it comes in clouds over Interstate 80's Yolo Causeway.

 

Such species are notoriously difficult to identify, said Norman Penny, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences. The Yolo Bypass midge ranks as a rare find because North America and Europe have been pretty well scoured by experts looking for bugs.

 

Scientists have identified and named a little more than 1 million animal species worldwide, he said, and at least that many more remain to be discovered. But most come from remote corners of the globe or from unusual places, such as caves and tree canopies.

 

"Who knows how many thousands of people have seen this fly before, but none had the background and the knowledge to recognize it as being different and new," said Penny.

 

The discovery may hold part of the solution to a decline in fall-run chinook salmon that is expected to be unprecedented this year. Regulators have closed salmon fishing to protect what remains of the salmon run.

 

Researchers now planning the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are looking at ways to expand floodplain and tidal habitat to provide more feeding and resting areas for salmon and other fish. They're also considering adding flood bypasses to the San Joaquin River.

 

Approved in 1917, the Sacramento River bypass system is now seen as a visionary flood control project. When the river swells, the bulk of its flow spills into the bypass and is diverted safely around urban Sacramento. But its environmental benefits were unknown until recently.

 

"I think we know floodplains are really productive systems, and this was just a fun way of figuring out where a lot of that productivity came from," said Benigno, now a fulltime environmental scientist at Water Resources who is completing a master's degree in biology at Chico State. "It was really interesting that it just came out of the dried dirt."

 

Cranston named the new species Hydrobaenus saetheri, after Ole Saether, a retired entomologist colleague in Norway.

Cranston believes this midge lies dormant as a larva in the soil, perhaps inside a cocoon, during dry periods. When a flood comes, it emerges into the water and begins growing into an adult, when it is easy snacking for salmon.

 

Sommer and Benigno's research shows this midge makes up most of the flying fish food in the bypass during a flood. In a paper published earlier this year, they found the new critter accounts for 74 percent of the fly species in floodplain sediment, and 99 percent in the water.

 

Those that survive the feeding frenzy hatch into flying adults. These live only a few days but feed birds and bats in the bypass while they do. Those that fall dead on the water feed fish again, plus waterfowl and shorebirds.

 

The midge also feeds another native fish, the Sacramento splittail. Sommer documented that the splittail population explodes in years with at least three weeks of flooding in the bypass, and Hydrobaenus saetheri is why.

 

Such a clear relationship has not been established for salmon, but Sommer said it's likely.

 

"If there's not enough flow in the bypass to spill out onto the floodplain, the salmon don't do that well and their survival is poor," said Sommer.

 

Penny said the Yolo Bypass midge offers another lesson. New species are discovered with regularity around the globe, but what worries scientists is that many more go extinct before we grasp their importance.

 

That mist of dead flies on your windshield, as we now know, nurtures a salmon run that is barely holding on in the Sacramento River.

 

"It's a web of interacting species, and the more species you pull out of that web, the more sensitive the rest of it is to any fluctuations," he said. "What are the salmon going to feed on if this fly goes extinct? It should make a person nervous."#

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/903902.html

 

 

Opening Day about tradition and festivity

The Inyo Register – 4/29/08

 

By Dave Balcom


As the Eastern Sierra greeted the avid anglers from near and far Saturday with clear skies and calm waters, the annual fishing Opener took on an appearance unique to fishing openers around the nation.

Perhaps it’s the SoCal influence, maybe it’s the stocking program or the rich and fertile waters, but Saturday’s Opener was like a cross between a day at the beach and a tailgate party.

 

Oh, and there were fish caught, too.

 

One of the first things a person who has never lived far from outdoor pursuits notices about the Eastern Sierra is the unique place this country holds in the family traditions of those who visit here.

Everyone has a story about their lifelong love affair with the valley and the mountains that make up Inyo and Mono county life. They talk about coming up with their grandfather, always stopping at Schat’s or Jack’s or some other habitual place.

According to Paul Bedell of the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department, it’s those traditions that create the flurry of activity at Crowley Lake and all the rest of the fishing waters that dot the region.

“You won’t find many first-timers,” Bedell said as he navigated the county’s water patrol boat through and around the hundreds of boats that flocked to the bay off McGee Creek Saturday morning.

“People come back here, year after year. They learned to fish here, and they bring their kids back to learn too,” said Sgt. Keith Hardcastle from his perch in the back of the Inyo boat.

The sheriff’s jet boat went as far up the lake as possible, tracking the Owens River bed nearly into the river itself. The shores were dotted with lawn chairs and the lines from the hundreds of rods staked out along the beach glittered like so many spider webs in the rising sun.

During the ride the two officers paused to compare notes with Gary Williams in the Mono County boat, and the three recalled some of the things that have added spice to Opening Day patrol on Crowley.

“Oh, the occasional truck that has backed a boat right out into the lake, right up to the crew cab doors,” Hardcastle said with a smile. “But that’s about it …”
“We’re really not in patrol mode,” Bedell said. “We’re just here to make sure people are behaving themselves, and for the most part they all do.”

Back on the beach, the fishing had tapered off. There was a buzz about a fish that had been wearing a special tag from Berkley. “It was worth $500,” an angler said. “But he’s not sharing with me, even though I drove up here …” The lucky angler just laughed and cast again.

Tony Corsaro, a first-time angler from West Covina, took his 5-lb., 10.5-oz. prize straight to the scales. “Oh, I just caught him,” Corsaro said. “Just now. Wow.”
While Corsaro was on his first opener at Crowley, his two sons-in-law, Eric and Paul Sharp, both have been coming to the Eastern Sierra since they were toddlers. “We brought him,” Eric said of Tony.

Jim Mitchell of June Lake was helping the people at the fish camp direct traffic. “I won’t fish until the bait fishermen have had their days,” Mitchell said.
He’s been volunteering at the camp on Opening Day for years. “You know, this is a great fishery for fly fishermen,” he said. “When the activity around opening day slows down, it’s really quite tranquil, too.”

Mitchell agreed that people flocking to opener belied the stereotype of Southern California road rage or even the “combat fishing” that marks so many opening days around the country.

As boaters waited patiently for their chance to launch, they talked and joked. Nobody seemed bent on a mission except those who were making a bee line to the comfort station.

“It’s always like this,” Mitchell said of the laid back body language of the Opener. “I think it’s because everyone knows it’s going to be busy, but they also know they’re going to catch fish.”

Or perhaps it’s because the tradition is about the journey.

At least it was for the 70 or so anglers on hand Saturday in tribute to Tony Gonzales of El Monte. Gonzales died in February, his son Dave  explained, and Saturday was a day shy of Gonzales’ birthday.

“We’re having a tournament in his honor,” Dave said, showing off the new traveling trophy up for grabs for the angler with the most weight at day’s end.
“They’ll get their name engraved … this trophy’s good for 10 years.

“Tony opened his hand to all of these people,” Dave said waving up and down the beach. “He brought each and every one of us here. I’ve been coming since I was 5.”

While the radios played, and a game of catch with a football started up, most the anglers sat in the sun and contemplated the next bite. The smell of roasting meat was on the gentle breeze.

“We even have a home-brew beer in his honor,” Dave said. The label reads, “To Tony, this bud’s for you, buddy.”
Another Opening Day tradition is born …#

http://www.inyoregister.com/content/view/96976/27/