Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project

From Stephen Rudzinski:

The Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project organized the annual fin clip at 8 AM at the hatchery in Swanton and all five tables and a total 40 stations were filled with volunteers of all ages and genders, some seasoned professionals and most curious and energetic students of high school age and younger. Fathers with sons and daughters at my table #1. It only took an hour and a half to clip the fish destined for the San Lorenzo or about 12,000 fish ranging in size from "Pinkie" length to big piggies in the 6-7" range. All from the spawn taken last winter.

The second phase was to move and clip the fish housed in the above ground tank and from Scott Creek. Est. around 5,000 were netted and transferred to the in ground pond where the San Lorenzo fish had previously occupied. One or two steelhead kept trying to  hide under the arch of the wader boot while the netters were standing still. Always looking for cover to avoid the net and transfer etc. This is a very hardy fish as you would think there would be more moralities with all the movement and handling and sliding down a raceway into a new pond, I don't think i saw more than ten dead fish set aside for study. Only a small number of fish got away without a fin clipped.

Everyone was smiling and a very fine BBQ followed all the hard work. I saw a lot of very pink hands when the rubber gloves came off, also a few "Club" members and some old friends and co workers from UCSC so i could catch up on the "gossip on the hill" too.

I heard a report that Chinook Salmon have been spotted spawning in the upper San Lorenzo and have been seen in the lower lagoon as well. The hatchery director said these are fish suspected to have been released from the Harbor and are finding a new home in the Santa Cruz mountains. Some fish still return to the harbor and some find their way back to the Feather R. to spawn. The new nose wire implants in the fish this year will be identified more accurately in the future.

As any organization, volunteers with a passion for being part of the solution keep this hatchery vital and vibrant with young conservationists ready to carry on when the older generation's backs give out and they just want to go fishing instead.

As the 2009-2010 steelhead season progressed on the San Lorenzo River, anecdotal reports came in from fishermen indicating that most of the fish being caught were of hatchery origin, and that there were very few wild fish in the river. Subsequently, when a fish trap was put in place on the fish ladder at the Felton Dam, we found a ratio of better than 10 hatchery fish [from wild parents] to each in-stream produced wild fish. In other words, this year there were more than ten times as many adult spawners in the San Lorenzo River than there would have been without hatchery fish.