Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 6, 2009
3. Watersheds –
As American River fans pour in, booze is poured out
Sacramento Bee
Sacramento River relatively quiet on Fourth of July
Chico Enterprise Record
More resources being sent to Trinity Alps fire
Eureka Times-Standard
Warning on trout hatcheries could force changes
S.F. Chronicle
As the delta goes, so go our salmon
S.F. Chronicle
Saving the Columbia and Snake river salmon
L.A. Times
Fishy situation at Rio del Mar
Santa Cruz Sentinel
California water plan could help Puget Sound orcas survive
The Bellingham Herald
Study says two-thirds of state beaches eroding
North County Times
Pelicans
Eureka Times-Standard
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As American River fans pour in, booze is poured out
Sacramento Bee-7/5/09
By Marjie Lundstrom
The infamous "Gilligan's Island" in the American River was encircled by orange fencing, and cold cans of beer were getting squashed by park rangers upstream.
But few seemed to complain Saturday about stepped-up law enforcement at Sacramento's biggest July Fourth party – the annual group float down the American River.
This marked the third year that alcohol has been banned from the river on the holiday weekend, not just its shores. In 2006, the river became the setting of an Independence Day orgy of drunken, mud-covered brawlers throwing punches on shore and piling onto a small island near Ancil Hoffman Park.
Open containers are now outlawed on both the river and on the county-run American River Parkway on the Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day weekends.
Officials believe it's working.
Sacramento County Park Ranger Supervisor Kathleen Utley said Saturday there had been no major problems so far along the river, other than one fight near Ancil Hoffman involving six rafters that was quickly resolved.
Not everyone, though, was tuned into the alcohol ban.
Near the Sunrise access, 27-year-old Mai Nguyen of San Jose and two of her friends were pouring out 17 cans of Coors Light that Park Ranger David Moskat had spotted in their cooler.
"I didn't pack the cooler," complained Nguyen, who stole a quick swig before being informed that the ban applied to the shore, too.
Minutes later, Ranger Moskat was sniffing the clear liquid in a young man's water bottle.
"It's definitely not water," he said.
That concoction was dumped into the weeds.
On this, officers who worked the river Saturday were clear: alcohol, heat and cold water can be a brutal combination.
Moskat and Park Ranger Supervisor John Havicon said that June was a particularly bad month for alcohol-related brawls along the river, some of them serious. A week ago, they said, a man was critically injured after being hit in the head by a flashlight during a fight.
The intense press for holiday safety was most apparent at booths set up along the shore, where life jackets were being dispersed to anyone hitting the river. The program by the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District was started after the 2004 drowning of a 12-year-old Rancho Cordova boy, who had removed his life jacket and was trying to swim across the river when he was lost in the currents.
"It's an awesome service," said 32-year-old David Chen, stopping at a booth on the south side of the river.
At the colorful booths, fire employees and volunteers fit adults and children into properly sized jackets. Many of the recipients were surprised they didn't have to pay or sign anything, and were only asked to return the jacket downstream or to a fire station later.
"We figure if they don't return it, they're safe. And they have a life jacket now," said Betty Taylor, a volunteer with the Community Emergency Response Tem, scrounging around the table for another jacket. "So it's a good investment either way."
As hundreds of adults and children poured into the American River on Saturday near Sunrise Boulevard, dragging rafts and tubes and self-styled creations, a retired couple from Sun City Roseville clearly understood that this Sacramento tradition was as much a spectator sport as anything else.
Norman and Lois Grabar, along with their two grown daughters and other family members, had staked out their spot by 8 a.m. with a white E-Z UP canopy. Here, near a busy raft rental shop, just about anyone or anything was guaranteed to float by.
"I get to watch. It's a total show," said 79-year-old Lois Grabar, whose daughter Bonnie was celebrating her 56th birthday.
"You can't believe this!" said her 83-year-old husband, Norman.
Seeing is believing.
The Grabars' other daughter, Christina, flicked her digital camera back to the day's favorite "float": a homemade wooden pirate ship loaded with 20 to 25 revelers.
http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/2000798.html
Sacramento River relatively quiet on Fourth of July
Chico Enterprise Record-7/5/09
By Stacey Kennelly
Depending on who you ask, it was a relatively quiet Fourth of July on the Sacramento River.
The Glenn County Sheriff's office recorded 2,000 floaters, said Sgt. Todd James. He said a fight occurred on Beer Can Beach and Butte County officials requested assistance, but he had no further information.
Numbers of tubers were down from last year, despite the fact that the holiday landed on a Saturday, he said.
Twenty "rescues" were made for individuals who got caught up in tree branches that protruded close to the river entrance, he said.
Tubes popped, several people became stranded and deputies responded. Susan Hearne, a California State Parks peace officer, spent the day patrolling cars at the Irvine Finch River Access, where tubers enter the water. Parks officials recorded 5,000 tubers, and Hearne described the day as "relatively quiet."
However, three DUI arrests were made near the river access, she said. As one man was stopped by a ranger and arrrested for driving under the influence, another male friend pulled up to check on him. That man was arrested for DUI as well.
A third friend pulled up following the two arrests, and he was detained for driving under the influence, too.
Hearne described the three men as "nice guys," who were simply drunk. The combination of alcohol and high temperatures is likely to impair judgement, she said.
Hearne reported no injuries on the river.
http://www.chicoer.com/advertise/ci_12759804?IADID=Search-www.chicoer.com-www.chicoer.com
More resources being sent to Trinity Alps fire
Eureka Times-Standard-7/5/09
Six Rivers National Forest announced Saturday that more aircrafts have been ordered to support crews on a forest fire in the Trinity Alps Wilderness, according to a press release.
The fire, located 36 miles northeast of Willow Creek, became more active and grew to a little over 30 acres in size Friday.
Fire crews needed more helicopter water drops to support line construction.
”We ordered two Type I helicopters that should arrive early this afternoon to help the crews on the ground,” Mike Beasley, Fire Management Officer, said in the release. “The fire is about 15 percent contained and we hope the added air support helps us make the progress we need to make today.”
The fire outlook for Saturday was warmer and drier conditions with slightly cooler temperatures expected for today.
Thirteen of the 14 fires being staffed by the Six Rivers National Forest are contained, with seven controlled.
For additional fire information, call (530) 629-2118.
FIRE FACTS:
Number of fires: 14
Size: Fires range from a 1/10 of an acre to 30 acres in size
Started: Wednesday
Containment status: Seven controlled, six contained
Resources threatened: No structures are threatened
Active fire location: 36 miles northeast of Willow Creek in Trinity Alps Wilderness
Resources:
- 2 hotshot crews
- 2 hand crews
- 1 Type 3 helicopter; 1 Type 2 helicopter, 2 Type I Helicopters arriving
Saturday
- 6 engines
- 3 water tenders
http://www.times-standard.com/ci_12756825?IADID=Search-www.times-standard.com-www.times-standard.com
Warning on trout hatcheries could force changes
S.F. Chronicle-7/5/09
By Peter Fimrite
Hatchery-raised steelhead trout pass on genetic defects that hamper survival of even their wild-born offspring, according to a study that biologists say could lead to a radical shift in the way salmon breeding programs operate on the West Coast.
The recent Oregon State University study found that even hatchery fish whose parents were wild develop and pass on genetic defects severe enough to hamper the reproductive ability of their offspring.
The implication, scientists said, is that hatchery programs for all salmonid species, including steelhead, chinook and coho, could actually be harming the natural balance and contributing to the demise of the once plentiful salmon runs in California, Oregon and Washington.
"Past studies have always suggested that hatchery-produced fish are of lesser quality, but this study shows it is more disturbing than we thought," said Tina Swanson, a fishery scientist and the executive director of the Bay Institute. "This is the clearest indication that hatchery-produced fish can actually harm wild stocks. It underscores my suspicion that hatcheries are not the solution."
The issue is critically important to biologists, fishermen and water managers in California, where the commercial salmon fishing season was shut down for a second straight year after another paltry return of spawning fall run chinook.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River fall run is historically the largest run of salmon on the West Coast and the vast majority of those fish are mass produced in hatcheries.
Scientists point to a host of environmental and habitat problems, including a warming ocean, for the decline. A biological review this month by the National Marine Fisheries Service placed much of the blame on diversions by the state and federal water systems.
Hatcheries, though, have always been seen as part of the solution. The Oregon study released in June shows that they may instead be part of the problem.
Michael Blouin, a professor of zoology at Oregon State and the lead author of the study, said the genetic fingerprints of three generations of wild and hatchery-raised fish from Oregon's Hood River, in the Columbia River system, were studied for how well they reproduced in the wild. The analysis involved genetic data on thousands of fish dating back to 1991.
On average, he said, the offspring of two hatchery-reared steelhead were only 37 percent as reproductively fit as fish whose parents were both wild. The fish with two hatchery parents were 87 percent as fit as the offspring of one wild parent and one hatchery parent.
Meticulous standards
These differences were detectable even after a full generation of natural selection in the wild, Blouin said.
"What's surprising is how poorly the first generation of fish do," Blouin said. "There's a rapid decline in the fitness of those fish when they go out and spawn in the wild."
The results are important because until now most biologists thought genetic problems developed over several generations and only in hatcheries that were lax in their efforts to ensure genetic variability.
But the Hood River hatchery is used for conservation purposes, meaning the fish are meticulously bred, are fed in a way that is as natural as possible and are regularly interbred with wild fish in an attempt to help with genetic diversity.
A previous Oregon State study published in the journal Science in 2007 showed that hatchery fish that migrate to the ocean and return to spawn leave far fewer offspring than their wild relatives. This latest study, Blouin said, strongly suggests that hatchery salmonids are also reducing the fitness of wild populations when they interbreed.
40 million salmon per year
The potential ramifications are frightening when one considers that 40 million hatchery-raised salmon are released into California river systems every year. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service releases 12 million chinook smolt and the California Department of Fish and Game releases 20 million smolt annually into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system. The rest are dumped into the Klamath River.
Of the four big hatcheries run by the state and two by the federal government, only the federally run Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery at the base of Shasta Dam and the state's Warm Springs Hatchery for coho in the Russian River Basin have the same quality standards as the Hood River hatchery.
In fact, the vast majority of the California chinook are farmed for the fishing industry as mitigation for construction of dams and other diversions by the state and federal water projects.
"The purpose is not to restore wild fall run chinook to the Sacramento," said Bob Clarke, the acting regional fisheries manager for the Fish and Wildlife Service. "It is to help support a commercial and recreational fishery."
The Oregon study, which shows that even cautious breeding of fish can be harmful, means that the mass production of salmon in California hatcheries could be much more damaging than previously thought, according to scientists.
"If steelhead are at all similar to chinook then this is very, very, very worrisome," said Swanson, adding that nobody even really knows if any wild fall run chinook still exist. "We're doing a bunch of things that we already know are wrong and this study has identified another flawed practice."
The study acknowledges that steelhead trout may react to captive breeding differently than chinook, but it nevertheless warns fishery managers not to rely on hatcheries for the recovery of salmonids.
A growing movement
"There is a lot circumstantial evidence that what we have shown is also happening to other species," Blouin said. "What it means is that if you are trying to help a wild population recover then putting hatchery fish in there is probably not a good idea."
The study gives credence to a growing movement to change the way hatcheries operate. One proposal is to mandate removal of the adipose fins on all hatchery fish for identification purposes. Another is to make hatchery conditions more riverlike and feed young fish underwater instead of using the unnatural method of throwing pellets on the top of the water.
"Even hatchery reform is not a solution, which is why no matter what you do in the short term, the goal must be self-sustaining populations of wild fish," said Steve Mashuda, an environmental attorney for Earth Justice.
The positive thing about the study, Blouin said, is that it shows how quickly fish adapt. If steelhead can change their genetics and behavior to out compete others in the unnatural environment of a hatchery, he said, they can certainly do it in the wild.
"If you fix the habitat and leave it alone," he said, "natural selection will very quickly create a locally adapted population."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/07/05/MNCU188EDD.DTL
Vanishing habitat
As the delta goes, so go our salmon
S.F. Chronicle-7/5/09
By Zeke Grader
California is without its salmon for a second year. Prospects for the reopening of the season next year are encouraging, but the future of this iconic fish beyond that is uncertain.
Pacific salmon - born in free-flowing streams, reared in rivers before going to sea and then returning to their natal streams to spawn and die - face innumerable threats. These include predators - larger fish, birds, marine mammals and man - and the whims of nature.
Civilization has presented its own challenges to these fish. Large dams now block or impede their passage on most major salmon rivers. Mining and logging operations have devastated salmon habitat. Diversions have dried up streams or caused water temperatures to rise to lethal levels.
About 90 percent of California's salmon, however, face another problem: the decline of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta/San Francisco Bay estuary, the migratory path where the fish need to grow and gain strength before heading to sea.
Much of the estuary's shallow-water habitat, where salmon fed and hid from predators, has been lost. Municipal and agricultural discharges have polluted the waters, and invasive species have adversely affected the estuary's ecology.
But the single largest problem for salmon migrating through this estuary between Sierra streams and the Pacific is the amount of freshwater that is withdrawn - upstream and within the delta. In some years, more than 50 percent of the freshwater headed for the estuary is diverted.
Baby fish become caught in the massive state and federal pumps, and even more become lost within the delta and are easy targets for predators when their migratory route is no longer west to the sea. Trucking to the bay is now afforded hatchery salmon but not for the progeny of natural spawners migrating through a nursery transformed to a gauntlet.
The estuary is dying. California has long viewed the delta as a massive reservoir it could endlessly plumb for agriculture and development. Water "wasting" to the sea is seen as a massive leak. In reality, the delta is an ecosystem - it is our Everglades, our Chesapeake Bay. An estuary's lifeblood is its freshwater inflow mixing with saline tidal flows to create a rich, brackish water that nourishes salmon, crabs, sole, oysters and shrimp.
As the estuary dies, so do California salmon. Another icon is lost. Salmon, however, are different from grizzlies or bald eagles.
These wild fish are what sustained California's native peoples for 10,000 years. They fed the miners headed for the gold fields. They are fine dining, the purpose of a day's ocean excursion, what we grill on the Fourth of July. They are food, jobs, recreation and part of who are on the Pacific Coast.
So we have a choice: Are we going to destroy our salmon or restore them? Restoring California's salmon fishery begins with the delta. We can reallocate flows to the estuary, as the science recommends, or continue business as usual - diverting more from the delta or grabbing flow upstream through a peripheral canal. The better choice, it seems, is to develop sources of water outside the delta, saving the estuary and creating a truly reliable water supply. In the end, sustaining salmon might sustain California.
LEGISLATION Protect water, protect fish
California isn't only out of money; it's out of water. Next week, the Legislature will take up a package of bills to find a way to create a more reliable water supply in the state. Here's a summary.
SB12
Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto: The bill establishes the Delta Ecosystem and Water Council to advance two equal goals: restoring the delta ecosystem and creating a more reliable water supply in California. The bill is scheduled for a hearing by a joint session of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife and Senate Natural Resources and Water committees on Tuesday.
AB39
Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael: This bill requires development of a new plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that implements the Delta Vision Strategic Plan issued by the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force. The plan calls for improving the existing water channel through the delta to move the water south and creating a second channel to carry the water around the delta to the pumps that export the water south. The document refers to the channel as a conveyance facility. In years past, this idea was referred to as the peripheral canal.
AB49
Assemblymen Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael: Requires a 20 percent reduction per capita in urban water use by 2020. This bill is scheduled to be heard Monday in the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee.
SB457 and SB 458
Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis: This bill requires the Delta Protection Commission to review all general plans of cities and counties within the delta protection area. This bill authorizes the commission to cover the cost of the review by imposing a per acre-foot fee on any water diversion within the delta watershed, and a fee on any water conveyed through or around the delta.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/05/INBM18I79J.DTL
Saving the Columbia and Snake river salmon
L.A. Times-7/6/09
By Paul VanDevelder
Opinion
If ever there were a story that foreshadowed the political and legal Waterloos that loom in seeking solutions to climate change, surely that cautionary tale is the one about the Columbia and Snake rivers' salmon and their imminent extinction. And like most stories about endangered species or environmental threats, this one is not only about fish and rivers -- it's about us.
The policy deadlock that has resulted from the debate among stakeholders along the Columbia and the Snake -- aluminum smelters, the Bonneville Power Administration, politicians, Indian tribes, states, conservation groups, fishermen, barge operators, agribusiness and wheat farmers -- has flushed billions of taxpayer dollars out to sea over the last 15 years while doing very little to prevent 13 endangered salmon stocks from going extinct.
In March, the federal judge responsible for herding all these cats toward a scientifically based solution that meets the requirements of the Endangered Species Act announced that he had heard enough bickering. District Judge James Redden summoned all the stakeholders to his courtroom in Portland, Ore., with the edict to take "aggressive action" and that "now is the time to make that happen."
In addition to being the judge in this case, Redden acts as the government's "special master" for the Columbia River basin, a network of rivers and streams that fans out over an area the size of France. In that role, he has the final say on any proposed changes to fish habitat and the uses of the rivers' payload: water.
At the March meeting in his courtroom, Redden wore both hats and congratulated all sides for getting "very close" to a final rescue plan for the fish. After losing precious years to political infighting and foot-dragging by the Clinton and Bush administrations, Redden noted that much progress had been made in recent years in formulating a workable plan -- "a biological opinion" -- to keep the salmon from becoming extinct.
However, he warned, there were still problems with the plan. For one thing, government scientists had relied too heavily on statistical sleight of hand to support their argument that endangered fish were trending toward recovery. For another, the removal of four dams on the lower Snake River must be included in the recovery plan in case all other remedies fail.
There it was. Out in the open and on the table. Dam removal -- a remedy that the Bush administration had rejected out of hand -- was back in play. Fax machines across the region came to life when Redden's letter reached the stakeholders.
"Federal law doesn't allow dam removal, and no Democrat-politician-turned-activist-judge can rewrite the law," wrote Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) The Northwest River Partners expressed dismay, and the Portland Oregonian's editorial board described Redden's letter as "puzzling."
"The letter is strongly critical of the key strategy in the plan to focus on habitat improvements to offset the harm that federal power-generating dams inflict on fish," the Oregonian wrote, expressing surprise at such a reaction while conveniently ignoring the fact that billions of dollars spent on habitat improvement, fish ladders and barging young fish around dams have done very little to increase salmon populations.
If anything, these measures have lengthened the odds against the salmon's survival by shifting the focus away from more politically explosive solutions, such as dam removal. Redden first issued his warning about the dams in 2004, when he threw out the first Bush rescue plan.
Politicians and stakeholders have steadfastly resisted the painful solution of dam removal while hoping for a miracle. That hope turned out to be a one-way road on a dead-end street, and in many respects they're now blaming the court for their current predicament. With few exceptions, the region's politicians, past and current, have been challenging the recommendations of scientists (including dam removal and increasing the spills over the dams) for more than a decade. Former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) famously vowed to chain himself to a dam rather than surrender, a prospect relished by many conservation groups.
Throughout this stalemate, fish counts have continued to fall, and the underlying science is clear: In river after river where dams have been removed, native fish populations have rebounded and thrived. As the government's former chief aquatic biologist, Don Chapman, concluded, dam removal is the most effective strategy for saving endangered native fish stocks from extinction.
This was the conclusion reached by the Idaho Statesman newspaper back in 1997 after it conducted a yearlong study of the Snake River dams. The paper reported that the economic benefits of a healthy fishery -- and the resultant tens of thousands of jobs -- would swamp the benefits of leaving the dams in place.
Dozens of reports by natural resources economists have agreed. Among other things, they describe the dams as economic sinkholes, which produce less than 3% of the region's power, do nothing for flood control, irrigate only a handful of big farms and subsidize transportation costs (at the expense of taxpayers and salmon) for wheat farmers in Idaho and eastern Washington.
The Columbia-Snake corridor is the salmon's only option for survival, and Redden is probably their last hope. He is the one person in this entire drama who is legally obligated to use science and the law to protect the fish from extinction and from the whims of politicians. If the law and science are unable to trump politics to save this fishery -- a fishery that was the most productive in the world just two generations ago -- how will we ever meet the towering challenges posed by global climate change?
For the sake of the fish and the 500 other species that depend on this wild and "vital resource" for their survival, many of us hope the judge has the resolve to stay the course and to see the job through.
Fishy situation at Rio del Mar
Santa Cruz Sentinel-7/6/09
By Ramona Turner
Something fishy is going on at Rio del Mar State Beach.
Thousands of dead fish washed up on the beach Saturday night, leaving sea birds a sandy buffet to enjoy overnight and early Sunday.
But the fish problem left area residents concerned about the safety of humans and wildlife.
"Our family went to Rio del Mar Beach to watch the fireworks Saturday night and it was covered with fish," said Becky Steinbruner of Aptos. "On Sunday, we went down to help with the beach clean-up effort and there were more fish on the beach. I'm just curious as to what's causing this with all the birds and sea life dying."
Longtime resident and Aptos Chamber of Commerce co-director John Hibble also was taken aback by all the fish.
"They weren't at Seascape Beach," he said, noting they the looked like sardines. "They were all right here. I've never seen anything like this before and I walk the beach every day."
Save for a few bits and pieces, the fish were gone by late Sunday afternoon.
State Parks officials said they believe the fish came from several fishing trollers, six Saturday and three Sunday, seen circling the Monterey Bay and venturing close to shore at Rio del Mar. The fish, which may have not been what the fishermen were seeking, may have been getting caught and killed in the nets before being released into the water. They then washed them ashore, they surmised.
Thousands of sea birds swarmed the waters off the beach to feed on the fish.
"Pelicans, which normally dive to eat, were full and were floating in the water and partying," said Damon Josephy, who operates a hot dog stand at the beach. "I'm just glad the birds got the dead fish out of here before they started to smell bad."
California water plan could help Puget Sound orcas survive
The Bellingham Herald-7/5/09
By Les Blumenthal
A plan to restore salmon runs on California's Sacramento River could help revive killer whale populations 700 miles to the north in Puget Sound, as federal scientists struggle to protect endangered species in a complex ecosystem that stretches along the Pacific coast from California to Alaska.
Without wild salmon from the Sacramento and American rivers as part of their diet, the killer whales might face extinction. That's what scientists concluded in a biological opinion that could result in even more severe water restrictions for farmers in the drought-stricken, 400-mile long Central Valley of California. The valley is the nation's most productive farm region.
The plan has faced heated criticism from agricultural interests and politicians in California, but environmentalists said it represented a welcome departure by the Obama administration from its predecessor in dealing with Endangered Species Act issues.
The Sacramento plan, they add, represents a sharp contrast to the plan for restoring wild salmon populations on the Columbia and Snake rivers in Washington and Idaho. That plan, written by the Bush administration, essentially concluded that the long-term decline in those federally protected runs did not jeopardize the killer whales' existence, because hatchery fish could make up the difference.
The 85 orcas of the Southern Resident Killer Whale population travel in three separate pods, spending much of their time roaming the inland waters of Washington state from the San Juan Islands to south Puget Sound. During the winter they have been found offshore, ranging as far south as Monterey Bay in California and as far north as British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands. Each whale has distinctive markings, which allow them to be tracked.
In the mid-1990s, there were nearly 100 orcas in the three Southern Resident pods. The population fell to fewer than 80 in 2001. In 2005, the whales were granted federal protection as an endangered species. The whales have been studied closely for only 30 years or so, but historically there may have been up to 200 Southern Resident orcas.
Researchers believe the decline has resulted from pollution that could cause immune or reproductive system dysfunction, and from oil spills, noise and other vessel disturbances, along with a reduced quantity and quality of prey.
With the largest up to 27 feet long and weighing up to 10,000 pounds, orcas are constantly on the prowl for food. They have been known to hunt in packs. Their meal of choice - salmon, particularly chinook salmon.
By some estimates, the orcas eat about 500,000 salmon a year.
The Sacramento and American river systems combined were once among the top salmon spawning rivers on the West Coast, trailing only the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Prompted by lawsuits, the National Marine Fisheries Service last month published its latest plan for the Sacramento and American rivers' winter and fall chinook salmon runs. Without further curtailments of water for agriculture and to serve 23 million Californians, the two runs are in jeopardy of extinction, the plan said.
Without changes, the Southern Resident killer whales, a run of steelhead and a population of North American green sturgeon almost certainly would disappear, according to the plan.
The killer whale population is extremely fragile, and scientists said the loss or serious injury to just one could appreciably reduce the odds that the Southern Resident pods would recover or survive.
The scientists also said that hatchery-raised salmon couldn't be counted on to sustain the killer whales' survival.
"Healthy wild salmon populations are important to the long-term maintenance of prey populations available to Southern Residents, because it is uncertain whether a hatchery-only stock could be sustained indefinitely," the scientists said.
Not only are there concerns about long-term funding for the hatcheries, but scientists have questions about whether hatchery fish are as genetically strong and healthy as wild ones. Though changes to the hatcheries could improve the fish they produce, there is no agreement on what needs to be done and no guarantees the changes would work.
Meanwhile, the latest plan for the Columbia-Snake wild salmon runs concluded that continued operation of the federal hydroelectric dams on the two rivers was "not likely to adversely effect" the killer whales. Earlier, federal scientists found that "perhaps the single greatest change in food availability for resident killer whales since the late 1880s has been the decline of salmon from the Columbia River basin."
Despite the decline in wild runs, scientists said hatchery fish would be able to make up any deficit in the orcas' diet.
Though the Columbia-Snake salmon plan acknowledges the potential problems with hatchery fish, it dismisses, at least for now, their impact on killer whale food supplies.
Lynn Barre, a National Marine Fisheries Service scientist in Seattle, helped write both plans and downplays any differences.
"I think we say the same thing in both (biological) opinions," Barre said, adding that both plans recognize hatchery fish could be a short-term substitute for wild fish, but that there were concerns about whether hatchery fish could be a long-term food source for orcas. "The general principles are similar."
But environmentalists say the differences couldn't be more obvious.
"The contrasts are striking," said Todd True, a lawyer for the Seattle office of Earthjustice, which has challenged the Columbia-Snake plan in a lawsuit in federal court in Portland, Ore.
True said the Sacramento salmon plan was a "candid piece of work that had a strong independent review and the absence of political interference." As for the Columbia-Snake plan, True said it "pretends there isn't a problem."
The judge in the Portland case has given the Obama administration until Aug. 15 to indicate whether it will stick with the Columbia-Snake salmon plan written during the Bush administration or offer a new one.
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/974503.html
Study says two-thirds of state beaches eroding
Scientists say protection structures reversed long-term trend
North County Times-7/4/09
By Dave Doenry
Decades ago, about 40 percent of California's beaches were eroding while the rest were actually growing a little bit over time.
But in the past 25 years, the number of beaches along the state's 1,100-mile coastline that have been losing ground has swelled to two-thirds of the total, according to a new study.
And many of those eroding beaches are in San Diego County.
That's largely because much of the region's shore is armored with man-made structures designed to block damaging waves, said Cheryl Hapke, a coastal geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center in Massachusetts, in a telephone interview Friday.
The man-made structures are slowing the retreat of cliffs and bluffs by shielding them from powerful waves, Hapke said. But the devices are accelerating the erosion of beaches by deflecting waves back onto the sand ---- in many cases, beaches that had been gradually expanding.
The findings were highlighted in a report authored by Hapke and scientists Dave Reid and Bruce Richmond and published in the Journal of Coastal Research. The article is titled "Rates and trends of coastal change in California and the regional behavior of the beach and cliff system."
Hapke said the scientists were trying to figure out whether cliff erosion was a good indicator of beach erosion, as they suspected. That proved to be the case for the sparsely developed central coast, but not for Southern California.
"We don't see the system responding in a way that we would expect because of human manipulations to the system," Hapke said. "Because the system has been so dramatically altered, we can no longer say whether there is a relationship between cliff retreat and beach erosion."
And it is most likely because of the presence of those man-made structures, she said.
The report termed the shore along San Diego and other urban Southern California counties "the most engineered coastline in the state, consisting of numerous harbors, ports, breakwaters, jetties, and groins."
Some of the larger structures ---- such as those associated with Oceanside Harbor in North County ---- have also altered the natural flow of sand along the shore and accelerated erosion.
"You actually shut off the river of sand that naturally wants to move down the coast," Hapke said.
Many beaches in Southern California have been losing ground over the last 25 years after gradually widening during the century before that. The most dramatic example of that is in southern San Diego County, between La Jolla and the U.S.-Mexico border, where the shoreline is retreating at an average of 1 meter, or more than 3 feet, per year after previously expanding by nearly that amount, the study said.
"That is a very dramatic change," Hapke said.
The trend is less pronounced in North County. There, the shoreline is treating by one-tenth of a meter per year after expanding by two-tenths of a meter over the longer term.
But those are averages over wide areas, and rates vary widely by beach.
One of the hot spots is Del Mar City Beach, where the sand is eroding at a rate of more than 3.5 meters per year, Hapke said. Mission Beach in San Diego is retreating at about the same rate.
Another hot spot is Torrey Pines City Beach, with an erosion rate of 2.2 meters per year.
And San Onofre Beach is eroding at an average rate of close to 2 meters per year.
Other North County beaches are eroding at slower rates, generally at 1 meter per year or less, according to a 2006 study Hapke worked on. In the case of beaches in the vicinity of Oceanside Harbor, they are actually growing as the structures there collect and spread the sand flowing down the coast.
Because of the proliferation of man-made structures, Southern California generally has slower rates of bluff erosion than do the cliffs of Northern and Central California.
"Many of the portions of the coast that are backed by cliffs have coastal protection structures, which have likely affected the rates of cliff retreat and thus contribute to Southern California having the lowest average retreat rates in the state," the study concluded.
But Southern California also has some of the highest beach retreat rates, and the 1-meter-per-year average rate for southern San Diego County is the highest in the state, the report shows.
"There is no question that a sea wall, for some period of time, is going to stop or slow the erosion of a cliff or bluff," Hapke said. "But you impact the beach at the base of that cliff and accelerate erosion of that beach. That sea wall reflects the wave energy and scours the beach more quickly."
And, she said, structures can only hold back the sea for so long.
Pelicans
Eureka Times-Standard-7/5/09
By Jennifer Morey
”Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His bill holds more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week.
But I'm darned if I know how the helican.”
-- Dixon Lanier Merritt (1879-1972)
One of several famous poems about one of the largest birds on the planet, Dixon Merritt's ode to pelicans says it all: What a beak!
Watching a brown pelican plunge beak-first into the ocean from 60 feet up and then resurface with a beakful of anchovies is arguably one of the favorite pastimes of birders and non-birders alike on the North Coast.
From the time the flocks of Pelecanus occidentalis make their first appearance in Humboldt County -- around late spring -- until early fall, they're a common sight on the bay, delighting watchers with their daring dives.
Wherever they're seen performing their aerial acrobatics, you'll also find numerous gulls who seem to be enthralled by them as well. What the gulls are really enamored of, though, are the bigger birds' overflowing beakfuls of fish.
Gulls frequently follow groups of pelicans who follow schools of fish until the time is right to dive in with beak closed, turn around underwater and come up with beak open and full of food.
When you hear a raucous cacophony along the waterfront and can see frenzied activity in the bay, you'll know the pelicans have found food and the gulls are trying to steal it right out of their beaks -- often successfully.
I'll never forget the first time we saw this spectacle after moving to the North Coast. We'd taken a drive up to Crescent City and were walking near the harbor when we saw the pelicans diving and stopped to watch.
Never having seen them fishing before, we were amazed at the gall of the gulls as they practically attacked the pelicans' beaks to grab hold of a fish or two. Watching as the pelicans tried to turn their beaks away from the cheeky gulls, mostly in vain, it was quite the amusing scene.
The plunge of the brown pelican provides a perfect example of the physics of how water responds to pressure. As its slightly open beak strikes the water, the curves of the upper and lower beak cause them to close quickly, while the water rushing in carries fish into the pouch.
Holding its beak under water, the pelican's pouch muscles contract and squeeze out the water through small slits on the sides between the upper and lower beaks.
Tilting its head up, it can then swallow the catch. In “1001 Questions Answered About the Seashore” by N.J. Berrill and Jacquelyn Berrill, the authors estimate the pouch can hold about two gallons or more when fully expanded.
It boggles the mind to imagine how many billions of fish have been caught this way by pelicans -- after all, fossils of pelicans go back some 40 million years, according to “Pelicans, Cormorants, and Their Relatives: The Pelecaniformes” by J. Bryan Nelson (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Despite such a robust ancestry, brown pelicans had a rough time of it in the 1950s and 1960s due to reproductive failures caused by the pesticide DDT, recovering only after a 1972 ban on DDT was enacted.
These days, most of the brown pelicans we see here were hatched in Mexico, according to David Fix and Andy Bezener, authors of the field guide “Birds of Northern California.”
”After breeding each year, as many as 20,000 brown pelicans move northward, ultimately spending summer and early fall in estuaries, at river mouths and along the open seacoast,” they write in their guide.
While brown pelicans have begun to return to the North Coast for the summer, it will be another month or so before their numbers reach their maximum.
”They start coming in early summer but get really heavy in August; the numbers get huge,” said Louise Bacon-Ogden, the now-retired original owner of Strictly for the Birds in Eureka.
Bacon-Ogden is currently serving as the secretary for the Friends of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. At the refuge's Salmon Creek Unit in Loleta, she leads bird walks from September through June, the first Wednesday of the month from 9 to 11 a.m.
Interestingly, she said an unusual visitor this past year was another type of pelican not known to frequent the North Coast.
”We had white pelicans at the refuge all winter,” said Bacon-Ogden. “I've been leading walks out there for several years, and I started hearing about them. I think they were reported on the Christmas bird count, so I was looking for them week after week, and finally I saw them.”
She said the white pelicans, which are larger than the brown pelicans, were “hanging around” with the tundra swans at the refuge for the winter.
That's unusual because the American white pelican -- Pelecanus erythrorhynchos -- tends to frequent Central Valley lakes, coastal bays and lagoons in the San Francisco Bay area in the winter.
Fix and Bezener write in their field guide that “in Northern California the two species are regularly seen together only around San Francisco Bay.”
The two species also fish differently; white pelicans don't soar above the water looking for schools of fish into which they dive headlong. Instead, they'll swim through a school of fish and dip their bills into the water to scoop out a fish or two.
”Members of flocks often work together to herd schools of fish into the shallows, where each bird then earns the reward of teamwork,” write Fix and Bezener in their field guide.
If the white pelicans return next winter to the refuge in Loleta, wildlife watchers can get a good look at them from the photo blind on Long Pond at the refuge. It's available from November through May, Saturday through Tuesday. (Reservations must be made to use it; call the refuge at 733-5406 or visit http://www.fws.gov/hum boldtbay/photography.html for more information.)
http://www.times-standard.com/ci_12757290?IADID=Search-www.times-standard.com-www.times-standard.com
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