Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project

By Allen Smith, Board Chairman & Volunteer Coordinator

Our fantastic "core" volunteers have done it again! They gave us terrific effort and support in making all of these tasks so successful in year 2000:

• Trapping & capturing adult broodstock salmonnids in December 1999 through early April 2000 (special thanks to Matt Rowley & his divers and to all of our great in-stream helpers).
• Planting steelhead and coho smolts in March and April 2000.
• Hatchery reconstruction and storm recovery (special thanks to Bob Eustice and his helpers).
• Chinook Enhancement Program in Monterey (special thanks to Howard Thielbar and his crew).
• Grant proposals support (special thanks to Bob Eustice, Jerry O'Neill, Matt Rowley, Dave Streig, and Carren Wilson).
• Sixth Annual Salmon Derby (special thanks to Larry Wolf and our spectacular supporting crew of 23 volunteers).
• Fish care at Kingfisher Flat Rearing Facility

I thank all of you great volunteers for your outstanding support. Without you we would be out of business!

As i mentioned in our spring newsletter, this year we had the lowest turn out of volunteers, five, to take part in our fish care training program. To make matters worse, shortly their training 4 of the 5 trainees dropped out of the program. We will be deeply concerned if this trend continues in the future. The MBS&TP is an all volunteer organization with one exception, our Facilities Manager and biologist, Dave Streig. It is a matter of fact that all volunteer based organizations go through periods of turnover and drop out for a myriad of human nature reasons. In the past we have been able to survive these cycles thanks to our great "core" volunteers and to some new very dedicated entrants into our project activities. Unfortunately without a continuing number of "new blood" volunteers each year we will eventually die out and cease to exist. We welcome serious minded persons who want to become volunteers to support our mission of restoring and enhancing the endangered and threatened salmonid fish populations in our area streams and Monterey Bay.  

For those of you who are interested in continuing to support us with your volunteer efforts, perhaps you can talk to relatives, friends, or colleagues about what we are doing and see if we can inspire any new dedicated supporters to join us in our mission. I expect to initiate training of new volunteers in March, April, and May of 2001. Anyone interested in being trained to work with us in fish care activities occasionally on a weekend day, holiday, or any day when our Facilities Manager is not on duty, please contact me, Al Smith, at 831-458-3095, or E-Mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or send a note to my attention at P.O. Box 417, Davenport, CA 95017.

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