Delta smelt remain on the brink of extinction – We can change that

Recent fish surveys confirm what many biologists, ecologists, and water experts have known for some time – Delta smelt remain on the brink of extinction. Zero Delta smelt were found in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s recent Fall Midwater Trawl Survey. Even the Enhanced Delta Smelt Monitoring Program, which is specifically designed to capture the tiny fish, only successfully caught two Delta smelt from September 8 to December 11, 2020.

Improving the health of native species like Delta smelt is an imperative, as it is critical to the health of our environment and the reliability of our water supplies. As an indicator species, the Delta smelt’s absence tells a grim story about the health of the Delta ecosystem, making these recent findings all the more concerning.

These results are not surprising, when California has made slow progress on actions like habitat restoration that are essential to restoring native fish populations.

Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service

For many years flows, meaning pumping from the Delta, have been blamed as the primary cause for the decline in Delta smelt. As a result, restrictions on pumping from the Delta have been the default approach to protecting these fish.

The fact that Delta smelt populations are still desperately low – despite years of restricted pumping – confirms that a flows-only approach isn’t effectively protecting Delta smelt populations.

Equally concerning is the fact that a flows only approach has at the same time had a detrimental impact on the agriculture industry and the communities that rely on surface water, not only in the Central Valley but for anyone who buys and eats food grown there.

In fact, there are a multitude of stressors on native fish populations – including invasive and predatory non-native species, loss of habitat, contaminants, and changes in food availability and quality – and restoring the health of Delta smelt requires a broad-based approach that includes targeted actions to effectively address all these factors.

Let’s use another analogy: Responding to the near-extinction of Delta smelt by relying on pumping restrictions alone is as effective in restoring their overall health as responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by relying on bar and restaurant restrictions alone. Can some data-based restrictions be a lever for change? Absolutely. But aggressive, austere restrictions that are not supported by the science cannot be relied upon to solve the entirety of the crisis – particularly when there are severe economic consequences associated with the restrictions, too.

Ultimately, we must pursue a combination of functional flow and non-flow measures, including habitat restoration and adaptive management, to meet the needs of native fish and wildlife species. Without a more holistic approach, the Delta smelt will go from endangered to extinct.

More of the Same? Saving the Delta Smelt

More of the Same? Saving the Delta Smelt

More of the same- A record of failure

We agree that the San Francisco Bay Estuary needs to be saved. All Californians need a healthy environment in order to thrive and farmers’ very survival depends on it. Being good stewards of the land is what allows us to produce more than 50% of the U.S.-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables.delta_smelt_by_metric_ruler_usfws

What we disagree with is the method being proposed. Decades of releasing billions of gallons of water to the ocean in an attempt to save the Delta smelt has been a proven failure. This year alone, California has flushed over 1 million acre-feet of water out to sea, enough to provide 6 million domestic users with water for a year or grow almost 17 billion salads. Decades old state and federal policies have failed and brought delta smelt to the brink of extinction. The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Science shows better strategies exist for saving the Delta Smelt

The good news is that recent science shows that there are strategies available to us that could actually help preserve the fragile delta ecosystem all Californians rely on. We should embrace what independent scientists have been calling for since the beginning: a comprehensive strategy.

Focus on common sense, science-based solutions

Farmers, fishermen, environmentalists, as well as urban water users should be furious at this reliance on outdated, failed practices that help no one and hurt millions. We need to focus on common sense, science-based solutions and we welcome all Californians to join us in working for a balanced approach towards allocating the water that we all need to share.

What do fish eat? Fish.

UPDATED 5-29-15

Assembly Member Rudy Salas (D-Bakersfield) has introduced AB 1201, a legislative bill that would require the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to develop and initiate a science-based approach that helps address predation by non-native species on Delta species. According to analysis prepared by Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee staff, the bill would accomplish two primary goals:

1) Makes findings related to the decline of native fish species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) and the potential for predation by nonnative species on those at-risk fish species.
2) Requires DFW, by June 30, 2016 to initiate a science-based approach that helps address predation by non-native species upon species in the Delta listed as threatened and endangered under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA).

A list of supports and opponents as of 5-29-15  is available here.

Fish eat fish.

(Originally published January 20, 2015)

In the Seinfeld episode, “The Watch,” Jerry Seinfeld says to a woman in a restaurant, “You know why fish are so thin? They eat fish.”

Despite their diets all fish aren’t thin. Take bass, for instance. They eat fish. They eat a lot of fish. Bass in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta eat a lot of baby salmon and dining season is coming up fast. You see bass, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, will begin to increase their fish consumption in the next few months.

Bass eat endangered salmon

fish eating salmon
Non-native stripers and largemouth bass consume large numbers of threatened and endangered fish each year in the Delta.

According to “Striped Bass Fishing Tips” on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife website, spring is when bass – an invasive species introduced to provide recreational fishing in the Delta — start their annual feeding frenzy on native salmon.

During the winter, striped bass are spread from San Francisco Bay throughout the Delta and fishing is generally poor because stripers do not feed actively when the water is cold. Fishing success improves as the water warms up in March. Stripers that winter in the bays start moving upstream to fresh water for spawning. During the spring, the bulk of the legal population is spread throughout the Delta and as far north as Colusa and Princeton on the Sacramento River.”  http://goo.gl/fzr9ex

Federal government cuts water supply to farms

On January 1 the federal National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) instituted a management action that reduced water deliveries to 25 million Californians and millions of acres of farmland in the name of protecting salmon. In its December 30, 2014 announcement, NMFS justified its decision by saying the bulk of the migrating salmon move into the Delta by the end of December. Reducing export pumping at that time, according to NMFS, “…would protect a sizeable proportion of the winter-run (salmon) population that has already entered the Delta region.”

Then the very next sentence in the announcement says, “These fish will distribute themselves within the Delta and are expected to rear for up to 3-4 months before continuing their emigration to the marine environment.”

That is if they survive the journey.

During these months, bass increase their fish consumption at the same time baby salmon are rearing in the Delta, growing in size in preparation for the remainder of their migration to the ocean. Good luck, baby salmon! You’re likely to become a meal.

Salmon slaughter

The March 2009 issue of Western Outdoors Magazine article titled “Save a Salmon, Catch a Striper” says it all:

“You see, the peak of the baby salmon’s downstream journey corresponds with the spring spawning run of striped bass. Somewhere along the line, the two migrations crash headlong into one another. It’s a one-sided blood bath, and when the spray and foam settles, the stripers emerge fat and happy while the Chinook suffer heavy loses.” https://farmwater.org/salmonslaughter.pdf

A 2010 article by Alistair Bland in the East Bay Express titled, “The baby salmon feeding frenzy in San Pablo Bay” pointed out that bass fishing party boats target areas where hatchery salmon smolts are released into the bay because the fishing is so good.

Bass fishermen can get their limits in “just minutes” and when the bass are cleaned and filleted their stomachs often contain from one to six salmon smolts.  http://goo.gl/vWnAn1

What, if anything, is NMFS doing to protect salmon from predatory bass at the same time that it ratchets down export pumping? Twenty years of data show that pumping has had no long-term impact on salmon populations. However, a federal study released in 2013 demonstrated that 93 percent of juvenile salmon on the Tuolumne River are consumed by predators while attempting to migrate to the ocean. http://goo.gl/p0zeA

What is the logic in not addressing that? Where is the outrage from the commercial salmon industry?

The real problem gets ignored

Why are other stakeholders and regulators willing to accept the status quo and reject real reform that will restore the Delta to its former productive salmon fishery? At the same time a handful of bait shops profit from the salmon-gobbling bass industry. ESPN and others broadcast high-dollar bass tournaments. And bass fishing advocates continually say that it’s the farmers of the San Joaquin Valley that are destroying the Delta.

Fishy.

Many Delta Stressors Impacting Delta Smelt and Delta Health

Delta bass predation

There are far bigger issues affecting the Delta than water exports and Delta bass predationreturning to a time prior to Western development is unrealistic.

To describe the Delta as altered is to say that New York City is populous or California water politics contentious. Since the 19th century when locals began to reclaim the marshlands, dike the rivers, and develop settlements on the rivers- the history of the Delta has long been one of change. California’s largest river delta, the Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta has been forever altered by human habitation. Little remains of the complex estuary network of tidal wetlands, freshwater rivers and recurring saline incursions.

Long gone are the nuanced networks of sloughs and wetlands that once dominated the historic delta. Today’s Delta is a scene dominated by numerous dried islands often sitting 20-30 feet below the water level just beyond the 1100 miles of earthen dikes. Plans exist to restore more than 30,000 acres of riparian and wetland habitat, but to date these plans continue to undergo environmental review.

Beyond the edges of these islands ongoing dredging of channels for deepwater shipping to the inland port cities of Stockton and Sacramento applies greater pressure to the species looking for shallow water habitat.

The Delta today is one of artificially fresh water- held far to the west of pre-project development, flows originating in the state’s network of reservoirs now support in-delta diversions for use by in-delta agriculture, cities as near as Stockton and as far away as San Diego. It is used to grow avocados on small farms near San Diego and organic cantaloupee near Firebaugh, among more than 300 other types of food and fiber that rely on water flowing through the Delta. as well as providing water to more than 25 million Californians.

There are numerous stressors impacting the health of the Delta and the threatened and endangered species living there, including the Delta Smelt. The region’s biosphere has changed dramatically and is now dominated by invasive species that have decimated native fish populations.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has stated that predation by non-native bass on winter-run salmon is a “major stressor,” while widespread invasive Asian clams and other species continue to alter the delta’s complex food network. Industrial chemicals being found in species at the mouth of the bay are also tied to what has been called Pelagic organism decline by researchers studying the health of the Delta.

Regarding the decline of the Delta Smelt, the federal agency responsible for studying and restoring threatened species, the Fish and Wildlife Service, acknowledges that “we are unable to determine with certainty which threats or combinations of threats are directly responsible.” Since 1994, Fishery and wildlife regulators have limited their focus to delta exports, though the agency acknowledges that its “existing regulatory mechanisms have not proven adequate” to stop the fish’s decline since its listing nearly 20 years ago.

Yet sensational news stories continue, declaring water exports culpable- “With Just Six Delta Smelt Left, Controversial California Fish Species Faces Impending Extinction” and “Threatened Smelt Touches Off Battles in California’s Endless Water Wars” but scientists who study the complex Delta ecosystem suggest that this claim is likely overly simplistic. Researchers discussing the issue with the Wall Street Journal noted that “Other studies have noted that the biggest driver of species abundance in the delta is precipitation, which may explain why the smelt population has plummeted over the past four years of drought after rebounding in 2011—a wet year.”

ExportsInflowandSmelt

Suggested changes to the Delta export facilities, intended to reduce possible impacts to threatened and endangered species while restoring reliability to water supplies remain under review, and could allow the Delta to return to a more natural condition, while restoring water supply reliability to more than 25 million Californians and millions of acres of the most productive farmland on the planet.