The Drying and Dying of Salmon Seeding

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
– John Quincy Adams

Above, recent facts and evidence of the human impact on the salmon population -- ten water specimens taken from various collection sites in the Lagunitas watershed -- await transportation to a lab that will test them for impurities from homes and businesses along the waterway. Results will offer a small slice of understanding in the drastic decline of coho salmon, a problem Californians claim they are passionate to resolve.

One hundred years ago, 6000 coho salmon spawned in the Lagunitas watershed on the northwest side of Mount Tamalpais. So many so that recreational fishers scooped them up like pennies from the wishing well. This year, so few were counted, fisheries biologists can't bring themselves to utter the number. But if in 2008 they counted only 20 egg nests, I fear the term "extinction" will come tumbling out if they open their mouths at all.

A series of dams built during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the San Geronimo Valley, through which the Lagunitas waterway rambles, blocked about 50 percent of the coho population. Homes and roads built along the waterways damaged riparian habitat, creating further decline. That's a lot of disincentive for the female salmon that travel 33 miles from the Pacific Ocean though the San Geronomo Valley water system to lay their eggs in the same place they were born three years earlier. Add to that three years of drastically low rain levels, and you get a hostile ecosystem too dry and too dangerous for the fish to reach their spawning grounds.

In 2005, the coho were listed as an endangered species, and in that year, only 190 egg nests, or redds, were counted in the Lagunitas watershed. In 2007, 148 redds were counted. That doesn't look like a big drop unless you know that in 2006, 338 redds were created by the females born in 2003, when 383 redds were counted, but the 190 redds counted in 2007 came from a population of 496 redds. It doesn't take a math whiz to calculate the inevitable for the 20 redds counted this year. Whatever may be our wishes for the coho recovery -- and the recovery of salmon population throughout California -- the facts and evidence suggest recent low rain levels fail to balance the compromised flow of dammed waterways already hindered by stripped riparian habitats, and spawning will deteriorate to the point of no return if left to nature alone.

The Lagunitas watershed is considered the keystone watershed along the coast because A) it has supported the largest wild run of salmon left in the state, historically about 10 percent of California's coho population, and B) fisheries agencies look to Lagunitas to seed neighboring watersheds in their recovery efforts. But with so little rain the last three years, the number of redds in the watershed this year represents an alarming 89 percent drop in the number of returning offspring. The dams aren't going away and no amount of wishing will recalibrate the climate shifts that reduce rain levels and dry up what little water has collected in the watershed in the past four dry years. What's a watershed to do? For one thing, organizations like Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN) and The Marin Municipal Water District rescue trapped juvenile salmon as waterways dry up. Since 1996, SPAWN (and more recently, MMWD) has been restoring habitat and monitoring the creeks. SPAWN also supports land acquisition, and educates the community.

As a result, the community support is overwhelming. During the first day of a six-week field study testing water quality in the watershed, neighbors around several of the specimen collection sites in town came out of their houses and shops to inquire, report, or worry about low or no fish sitings. Several offered to help in the effort, even if it was to show off their riparian repair efforts along the creeks running through their back yards or to direct us to fuller collection pools. In the more remote areas, people pulled over to the side of the road to come watch the collection and measurement efforts. And to inquire, report, or worry about low or no fish sitings. The study will measure the impact at the half-way point of a two-year county ordinance banning new construction inside the county's mandated Stream Conservation Area within the San Germonimo Valley, which seems to have enthusiastic community support. One of the collection volunteers who learned she could not build a ground base station for a solar-panel installation shrugged her tolerance.

As passionate as we seem to resolve the decline in the salmon population, its impact on the state's fishing industry, and the repercussions to human health, these efforts are a spit in the sea compared to the enormity of the problem statewide. Laudable and necessary, that goes without saying, especially given the dire need for human activism to reconcile its own impairments. With little hope of any significant reversal in global warming this year, however, we'll need something immediate on the order of a 40-days-and-40-nights miracle to restore hope for this spawning season. If you know any rain dances, send instructions soon.