Decades of Effort Restore Steelhead and Salmon Passage on Alameda Creek

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/decades-effort-restore-steelhead-and-salmon-passage-californias-alameda-creek

by rawgabbit • 2 months ago

242 59 2 months ago

fisheries.noaa.gov

anenefan• 2 months ago

It's so refreshing to see a big company like PG&E reach out to help restore fish breeding ground even if at base level it was a win win situation.

culi• 2 months ago

Well... sure but they created the problem in the first place...

I'd like to live in a world where a company picking up after itself isn't "refreshing"

kiernanmcgowan• 2 months ago

Such good news - for those looking for a relaxing hobby fly fishing is an excellent sport to get into. You spend all day standing in a river trying to out smart some fish and trout are exceptionally beautiful creatures up close.

RajT88• 2 months ago

Agree. I think most fish are beautiful in a way, even the "ugly ones".

What I really love about the fish under discussion here is, for a long time they had no clue why some rainbow trout became steelhead, and some didn't. (They still don't know 100%) Such an interesting story, and a regular rainbow and a steelhead just seem almost like another species - different size, behavior and even taste when you eat them.

a2tech• 2 months ago

You want to have fun, get two fresh water fish biologists in a room and ask them if steelhead and rainbow trout are different species. Everyone has a different opinion they believe in passionately.

bonzini• 2 months ago

People for a long time didn't know what the reproductive cycle of eels is like, because they travel all the way from the Atlantic ocean and back while maturing, so nobody had ever seen a juvenile. Too bad they're critically endangered.

boston_clone9• 2 months ago

Not quite as relaxing if you’re the fish!

constantius2• 2 months ago

In a discussion about increasing fish population "after decades of effort", it's surreal to see a suggestion to kill them, or at the very least rip a hole in their mouths.

I'm always surprised at how people can be so unaware, suggesting killing as a meditative and beautiful activity...

bluGill3• 2 months ago

There are a lot of different fish, and most are not threatened in anyway. Often the larger threat is over population and they need predators - like humans - to prevent that.

kristjansson• 2 months ago

I mean catch and release is better than being dinner, and the prevalence of fly fishing as a hobby goes a long way toward garnering public and financial support for restoration activities.

groundzeros20155• 2 months ago

You just aren’t educated about angling or fish.

Also are you aware of the California native tribes who exempt themselves from fishing regulations?

gausswho• 2 months ago

I'll contrast with sibling comments. You're correct to raise caution towards fishing Pacific salmon, even in catch and release. Release mortality from one study I've found is about 25-40% https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016578362... It's worse during high water temperatures. They're likely quite fatigued by the time they arrive.

That said, this caution is not always warranted generally. Location, species, and season significantly matter. In healthy ecosystems, there's no harm to the group even if the individual fish might not agree.

anamax• 2 months ago

Fishers will spend a lot more money to keep a fishery alive than non-fishers will.

chihuahua2• 2 months ago

There is similar work going on to restore fish passage underneath I-90 near Issaquah, Washington. Although in that case, the part of the streams that's currently inaccessible is less than a mile for most of them, and 2 miles for one of them. It's a major undertaking to restore a stream bed or channel underneath the interstate.

This will benefit Kokanee Salmon, a kind of salmon that spends all its life in fresh water and does not migrate to salt water like most salmon.

In Lewis Creek, they currently have access to only 1/2 mile of the creek, but in 2021 there were about 1000 of them returning (from Lake Sammamish) to spawn.

anitil3• 2 months ago

That's really surprising that they could survive with such a small range! How are they counted during their migration?

chihuahua2• 2 months ago

There's an organization of volunteers who walk the streambed during spawning season and mark nests with colored tape on nearby branches. I assume while they're doing that, they also count the fish somehow? They also put a trap near the end of the stream at certain times of the year and count the fish in the trap - the fish are obviously released from the trap afterwards.

jimjeffers• 2 months ago

There are traditional methods like electrofishing and tagging. But there are also non-invasive methods such as environmental DNA where you can detect organism prevalence from DNA shed into the ecosystem. Our platform was built specifically to help share that type of science for restoration and remediation projects: https://www.ednaexplorer.org

dendrite9• 2 months ago

I remember in 2018 there were only 18 Kokanee counted spawning from Lake Sammamish.

"A striking ebb in the number of Kokanee salmon in Lake Sammamish, just east of Seattle, has officials worried that extinction is around the corner.

Five years ago, more than 18,000 of the unique freshwater species of sockeye returned to spawn in Lake Sammamish tributaries. This past year, only 19 were counted.

While a number of possible factors are likely to blame for the dramatic drop in the population, King County environmental affairs officer David St. John said warm lake temperatures in the summer from 2014-16 was likely the largest driver.

Lake Sammamish kokanee life cycles are measured in roughly three-year cycles. Kokanee migrate from Lake Sammamish to tributary streams where they spawn. The resulting offspring, juveniles known as fry, then move to the main lake where they remain for just under three years before returning to the streams to spawn, continuing the cycle."

Dansvidania• 2 months ago

Silly question but if I remember correctly salmon go back to reproduce where they spawned. This suggests that once access is cut up a river, that location loses its salmon (can’t get there, so they don’t reproduce?)

Do they artificially reintroduce the salmon once access is restored or does that “neighbourhood” of salmon somehow survives and keeps trying every year ?

burner4200422• 2 months ago

IANAS but my understanding is they keep going upstream - while there's current to push against them - as an instinctual response. I believe water temperature also plays a role.

Salmon hatcheries also artificially boost the quantity of salmon in the stream.

If a salmon hatchery released salmon at the base of a dam, when the fish return and the dam was now gone, they'd just keep going.

However, there's more to it than this, because dammed rivers lacking salmon hatcheries have seen salmon runs start once the dams are removed.

I don't think the old adage that salmon will only return to their original spawning grounds is the whole story.

wahern• 2 months ago

I don't think the old adage that salmon will only return to their original spawning grounds is the whole story.

Some percentage will just enter a different stream. Straying could be a genetic strategy, imperfect behavior, accidental, or some mix. And they're not all necessarily distinct; e.g. the genetic strategy might simply work by reducing accuracy in locating the original spawning ground.

Consider that even before humans streams and rivers would naturally be dammed, diverted, or otherwise change in a way that made it more difficult or impossible to reach the original spawning ground. What would be interesting is if the ratio of various phenotypes, like those that effect straying, has changed in response to the ecological upset caused by humans.

totalconfusion• 2 months ago

IANAS - I am not a Salmon?

jimnotgym• 2 months ago

Some get lost or stray. It is natures back-up plan.

Stocking can give it a faster kickstart though

metalman• 2 months ago

salmon mostly prefer to return to there natal habitat, but there are a significant number of fish that are wanderers and colinists, so there are now salmon runs happening in far northern watersheds that have only recently become warm enough for juvinile fish. also, fish from clutches of eggs that are transplanted to streams with no fish, become native, which points to the homing instinct bieng re attached with each generation rather than hard coded geneticly, though that may happen in some sub species

bluGill3• 2 months ago

I'm not an expert, but what I understand is Salmon return to the stream, not the place. They know the stream by smell (that is the minerals and other impurities in the water). They are navigating to what smells like home, every time a new stream enters the one they are in they decide which branch to take. This tends to take them to where they spawned, but there are a lot of errors in each choice.

kaikai• 2 months ago

Some small percentage of fish go to different streams rather than returning to their “home” stream. There’s also hatcheries that release fish raised elsewhere to try and restore runs without enough fish to sustain a healthy population.

Source: I used to volunteer at one of those hatcheries raising endangered coho and releasing them in the spring. I spent a lot of time chilling in the bushes with NOAA scientists talking about fish.

burner4200422• 2 months ago

PG&E, Oliver de Silva, and a Bay Area foundation provided the rest of the funding to complete the project.

Why was a 'Bay Area foundation' referenced yet left nameless? I never understand the logic behind this convention..

durkie• 2 months ago

They may have requested to be anonymous

AdamN• 2 months ago

In this day and age I suspect many environmental and health NGOs are going silent to mitigate backlash.

nkrisc• 2 months ago

Often when you see a vague reference like that it’s typically because the donor requested anonymity. It’s more common with individual donors though.

Sometimes anonymity is a condition of the gift.

fragmede• 2 months ago

People treat you differently if they think you have money or did something heroic. Sometimes people don't want to be treated any differently just because you have or did something special. If you liked who I was before you knew I had money, then I'll know you liked me for me, and not my money. The Bay Area foundation might be someone who made it rich in an IPO but doesn't want their friends to know about it.

bluGill3• 2 months ago

There is also a Christian (and likely other religions/philosophies though I don't know any) teaching to not take glory to oneself.

bombcar• 2 months ago

It’s perhaps understandable why the Society for the Reintroduction of the Bay Area Gizzly Bear stays under the radar …

(/joke)

Shalomboy• 2 months ago

Excellent work as expected from NOAA's Habit Conservation team. These fish ladders are such an excellent investment in the future of our inshore fisheries, I wish it were easier to express that to citizens and corporations,

MostlyStable• 2 months ago

My lab does fish population monitoring around the Bay, including the mouth of Alameda creek, so I suppose one entry in the "good problems to have" is another potential spot where we could start catching steelhead and chinook, given that we have an extremely limited allowance.

ungreased0675• 2 months ago

What an awesome project. It’s nice to see something ambitious and infrastructure-related actually completed.

Decades of Effort Restore Steelhead and Salmon Passage on Alameda Creek

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