Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project

Spring is here in full array with nature doing her thing all around and in the local streams and at our hatchery. Times are busy and exciting with MBS&TP activities as well. This summer the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is planning to implement the so called 4(d) rules of the Environmental Species Act (ESA). These rules are designed to add substantial new protection for threatened salmonid species such as steelhead trout. The implementation of these new rules could significantly affect our present methods and procedures of performing fish culture, and very likely affect the arrangement and physical makeup of our Kingfisher Flat Rearing Facility on Big creek.

In anticipation of these probable requirement changes, I am working with a team of MBS&TP volunteers and some members of the Scott Creek Watershed Council to generate a substantial grant proposal (The Pacific Coast Salmonid Recovery Fund) to underwrite the very significant modifications and upgrades necessary to perform fish culture and rearing activities under the new rules. The proposal effort itself is a very large task, and I thank all the members of our team for their vigorous continuing efforts.

A couple of new activities are in our near term future. For the first time in our Project history we are now performing a captive coho broodstock rearing program in collaboration with NMFS and CDF&G. The mission is to rear about 300 coho smolts from our 1999/2000 inventory to adulthood in a seawater environment, and then spawn some of them at our Kingfisher Facility. The remaining coho adults will be released into local streams for natural spawning. This may be one of the most important ways to stop and turn around the severe decrease in the local coho populations. The other new activity will involve the expansion of our chinook salmon enhancement program to include acclimation and rearing in a new net pen facility to be located in Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor in 2001. This new facility will potentially double our chinook smolt output to about 240,000 chinook smolts per year to be released into Monterey Bay waters.

Our reconstruction efforts to recover from the devastating storm damage in 1998 are proceeding reasonably well. However, the largest remaining task of repairing all of the structures, netting, and shade cloth surrounding the raceways is on hold, pending the requirements fallout from the 4(d) rules implementation. We received somewhat of a recovery setback on Valentines Day this past February when huge runoff from an enormous rain caused trees, stumps, and logs to come to our Kingfisher Flat facility and form a dam completely across Big Creek. Severe bank erosion occurred on our side of the Creek adjacent to the hatchery and emergency generator buildings. Although no damage to our structures occurred, a substantial bank repair is required to protect our facilities from future catastrophic damage.

On a sad note, one of our greatest volunteers, Bob Montgomery, will be moving to northern California this summer. Bob has been our key representative for our various South Bay activities. It will be very difficult to replace Bob's outstanding service to us, but I know that other volunteers will ably fill the roles that Bob leaves behind. We wish the very best to Bob in his northern California fishing retirement. We very much appreciate the excellent funding commitments from CDF&G and private industry grants for our Salmon & Trout Education Program (STEP) 2000/2001 activities . Also we continue to be deeply grateful to the following organizations and groups for their financial support of the ongoing restoration and operation of our fish rearing facilities.

• David & Lucile Packard Foundation.
• The Fish & Game Commissions of Monterey County, Santa Clara County, and Santa Cruz County
• Scott Creek Watershed Council.
• The many individuals, businesses, schools, and community organizations who have provided outstanding support.

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