August 2009
Northwest fear, invasive mussels are headed its way
The Modesto Bee
By Les Blumenthal
August 26, 2009
Highly invasive mussels are lurking on the Northwest's doorstep, threatening to gum up the dams that produce the region's cheap electricity, clog drinking water and irrigation systems, jeopardize aquatic ecosystems and upset efforts to revive such endangered species as salmon.
Despite efforts to stop them, the arrival of zebra and quagga mussels may be inevitable.Steelhead restoration plan swims in difficult waters
North County Times
By Dave Downey
August 25, 2009
Restoring the steelhead to San Diego and Riverside county streams will be virtually impossible, a local water manager said Tuesday.
"You have set up a task that you can never, ever achieve," Don Smith, director of water resources for the Vista Irrigation District, told a federal official at a public meeting in Carlsbad to discuss a preliminary plan to bring one of the nation's most endangered fishes back to the region.How will warmer oceans affect sea life?
Scientific American
By David Biello
August 25, 2009
This June, the world's oceans reached 17 degrees Celsius, their highest average temperature since record keeping for these data began in the 19th century. And a new experiment suggests that those balmier waters might mean big changes for the marine food chain.
Marine ecologist Mary O'Connor of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill set up five four-liter "microcosms" of seawater filled with microorganisms from the Bogue Sound estuary on the North Carolina coast. Over the course of eight days last spring, the scientists then exposed the microcosms to varying degrees of warming and nutrient levels to mimic storm flow into an estuary.Alaska pollock fishery is one of the best managed
Fish Information & Services
By Michel Loubet
August 26, 2009
Genuine Alaska Pollock (GAPP) has released a report stating that the Alaska pollock fishery, the largest fishery in the United States, is one of the most well-managed in the world. For over 30 years, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) has managed the Alaska pollock fishery on a precautionary basis, resulting in annual harvests averaging 2.5 billion pounds, or 1.13 million tonnes.
Both the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska pollock fisheries have been certified as sustainably managed by the independent Marine Stewardship CouncilState to close Sacramento River to sturgeon fishing
The Sacramento Bee
By Matt Weiser
August 25, 2009
Another of Northern California's native fish could become contraband for anglers next year as officials mull over more drastic steps to protect wildlife amid a growing water crisis.
The California Department of Fish and Game proposes a ban on sturgeon fishing in more than 80 miles of the Sacramento River, between Redding and Butte City.The conversation: saving the Delta
The Sacramento Bee
By Daniel Weintraub
August 23, 2009
The Delta is in crisis. All the water that flows from the northern Sierra and the Cascades to Southern California and parts of the Bay Area moves through the Delta, and the movement of that water south is blamed for damage to habitat that has threatened chinook salmon and Delta smelt. The courts have curtailed water shipments to save the fish.
Scientific experts also have warned that sea-level rise in the coming decades will flood the freshwater Delta with salt water, permanently changing its composition and rendering the current system of pumps obsolete. Farming could become impossible in much of the region. Finally, an earthquake could easily damage Delta levees, allowing ocean water to flood the area in a few hours, ending freshwater shipments to Southern California for years.Can salmon undo Yosemite dam?
The Fresno Bee
By Bill McEwen
August 22, 2009
With salmon on the California coast disappearing, I wonder how many billions of dollars will be spent on hatcheries, habitat restoration, fish ladders and even trucks in an attempt to save the species.
I also wonder how long government will rely on these failing approaches until confronting the obvious: the dam in Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley must come down if salmon are to thrive again in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.Summer steelhead run approaching 400,000 fish
The Columbia Basin Bulletin
August 21, 2009
The Columbia River basin's 2009 "upriver" summer steelhead run is muscling its way toward elite status as the count of the silvery spawners climbing Bonneville Dam's fish ladders approaches 400,000.
Only two yearly summer steelhead counts at the dam have surpassed 400,000 - the record total of 630,200 in 2001 and a follow-up run of 478,000 in 2002.Snake River sockeye swim back from the brink
KUOW News
August 20, 2009
The most endangered run of Pacific salmon is beating the odds this summer. You can't get any closer to extinction than Snake River sockeye salmon did last decade. This is the run that gave us "Lonesome Larry," so named because he was the one and only sockeye to complete the migration in 1992. Correspondent Tom Banse reports Lonesome Larry's descendents are coming back this year, by the hundreds.
Snake River sockeye are currently performing an incredible feat of migration. They swim upriver for 900 miles. Their route to the spawning grounds in central Idaho crosses eight hydropower dams. The fish climb to an elevation of about 6,500 feet at their destination, Redfish Lake. Idaho Fish and Game's Dan Baker waits there beside a fish trap.King salmon undercounted on the Yukon
UPI
August 20, 2009
A sonar station that counts salmon traveling up the Yukon River in Alaska malfunctioned this year, resulting in a smaller allowed catch, officials say.
Russ Holder, federal fisheries manager for the Yukon, said the king salmon season looked like "one of the poorest we've ever had," the Anchorage Daily News reported.June's record ocean warmth worries fishermen
McClatchy
By Brendan Doyle
August 19, 2009
WASHINGTON - Ocean surface temperatures around the world were the warmest on record for the month of June, according to federal scientists, though they caution that one month doesn't necessarily imply global warming.
The warmer temperatures do confirm that an ocean phenomenon known as El Nino is building in the Pacific Ocean.Battle heightens over water in Delta
The San Francisco Chronicle
By Kelly Zito
August 19, 2009
The pitched battle over California's water crisis shifted from desiccated Central Valley farm fields to the Capitol Tuesday, with state lawmakers debating how to fix the maze of rivers, pipelines and state laws responsible for delivering water to millions.
Amid ecological disaster in the hub of the state's water system and ongoing drought that has forced water cuts from Redding to San Diego, a joint committee of the state Assembly and Senate held a wide-ranging hearing on five bills that aim to end four decades of wrangling over California's most precious resource.A new shot at settling Delta water war
The Sacramento Bee
By Dan Walters
August 16, 2009
Gov. Pat Brown's proudest achievement was California's historic water system, including Oroville Dam - the nation's highest - on the Feather River and the California Aqueduct that carries water south to San Joaquin Valley farms and millions of Southern California homes.
But that half-century-old system had a weak link - the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta into which Oroville's water flowed (via the Sacramento River) and out of which the aqueduct's immense pumps drew water for shipment southward.OSU to create detailed maps of Oregon coast seabed
The Columbia Basin Bulletin
August 14, 2009
Surveyors and scientists from NOAA's Office of Coast Survey and Oregon State University over the next two years will create the most detailed maps ever generated of the seafloor along Oregon's coast.
Using the latest technologies, they will measure water depth, search for navigational hazards and record the natural features of coastal seabeds and fragile aquatic life. The images will help researchers and coastal managers protect coastal communities and marine habitat.It's fish versus farmers in the San Joaquin valley
The Wall Street Journal
By Devin Nunes
August 14, 2009
In 1931, a severe drought began that within a few years engulfed the Oklahoma panhandle and a third of the Great Plains in a "Dust Bowl." Tens of thousands of people fled the region-many traveling to California along Route 66, which John Steinbeck called "the mother road, the road of flight" in "The Grapes of Wrath."
A lot of the "Okies" settled in the San Joaquin Valley. In the decades that followed, state and federal officials built dams and other irrigation projects that helped turn the valley into some of the world's richest farmland.Summer steelhead set one-day record at Bonneville
The Oregonian
By Bill Monroe
August 13, 2009
The summer steelhead count Tuesday at Bonneville Dam was 18,671, a one-day record since counts began in 1938.
Joe Hymer, spokesman for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the previous record was 14,432 fish on Aug. 3, 2001.Lawsuit seeks protection of Sacramento splittail
Central Valley Business Times
August 13, 2009
Another tiny fish that calls the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta home is the center of a federal lawsuit that ultimately could impact use of fresh water from the Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of North America.
The "Sacramento splittail" should be restored to the federal endangered species list, says the suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the Center for Biological Diversity.Feds seek solutions in Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
The Sacramento Bee
By Matt Weiser
August 13, 2009
The federal government is saying it's ready to be a team player again to solve water and environmental problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the hub of California's water system. But the ballpark may have become a battlefield.
That was one of the impressions left in the wake of a Sacramento visit Wednesday by Deputy Interior Secretary David J. Hayes, named by the Obama administration to help California solve its water woes.Millions of salmon disappear from Canadian river
Reuters
By Rod Nickel
August 13, 2009
Millions of sockeye salmon have disappeared mysteriously from a river on Canada's Pacific Coast that was once known as the world's most fertile spawning ground for sockeye.
Up to 10.6 million bright-red sockeye salmon were expected to return to spawn this summer on the Fraser River, which empties into the Pacific ocean near Vancouver, British Columbia. The latest estimates say fewer than 1 million have returned.Lamprey on the brink
The Columbian
By Erik Robinson
August 12, 2009
Lampreys have survived for 350 million years.
They've adapted to the coming and going of ice ages, continental drift and predators that pre-date the dinosaurs. Yet, researchers attribute an "alarming drop" in a West Coast population of the ancient creature to a comparably recent development: Us.