Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project

By Allen Smith, Board Chairman & Volunteer Coordinator

This past spring and summer our great volunteers gave outstanding performances in supporting our Chinook Enhancement Program and our Annual Salmon Derby. This year we doubled our chinook salmon rearing capacity by installing new sea pens in Monterey Harbor and for the first time in Santa Cruz Harbor. Our Chinook Enhancement Program this year yielded a release of approximately 191,500 Chinook smolts into the Monterey Bay. This output was 73 % greater than last year's Chinook smolt release. To date we have released approximately 964,000 Chinook salmon smolts for the 10 year life of the Program. As result of our operating experience this year, we have determined that some modifications to our sea pens are desirable, and this activity will take place this fall.

The Monterey Bay water conditions were not good this past June and July for our Annual Salmon Derby. Our volunteers did a terrific job in helping us to make a last minute change in this year's MBSTP Derby scope to include Chinook salmon, albacore tuna, and halibut. This change allowed us to avoid an economic disaster in this important fund -raiser for our Project.

Our volunteer fish culture activities for the rest of this year are expected to be:

• Continued rearing of approximately 45,000 juvenile steelhead

• Modifications to our chinook rearing sea pens in November

• Fin clipping of our steelhead inventory is scheduled for Saturday, December 1, 2001 starting at about 9:00am at our Kingfisher Flat rearing facility. For those persons interested in helping us with this activity, I need to know in advance approximately how many persons plan to participate. Please contact me at one of the numbers given below for more details.

• Adult steelhead and coho salmon broodstock trapping starting in late December 2001 for our year 2002 spawning activity.

I need to continue to point out in each newsletter that MBS&TP is an all-volunteer organization (with the exception of our facilities manager/biologist, Dave Streig). Historically volunteer based organizations go through periods of turnover and drop out for any number of reasons. In the past we have been able to survive these cycles thanks to our dependable core volunteers and to some new volunteers. Unfortunately, without a continuing number of 'new blood' volunteers each year, we will eventually be unable to continue our Project activities. This year we have acquired a small number of really great new volunteers! To those of you interested in continuing to support us with your volunteer efforts, letâs see if we can inspire some new dedicated persons to join us in our volunteer mission to enhance the salmonid populations of the Central Coast region. I usually train new volunteers for fish care activities at our Kingfisher Flat rearing facility in March and April of each year.

I want to extend our deepest thanks and sincerest appreciation to our magnificent volunteers for their continued support of our Project mission. Also I want to extend our continuing gratitude to the following organizations, groups, businesses, and individuals for their financial support of the ongoing restoration and operation of our fish rearing facilities: David & Lucile Packard Foundation; Fish & Game Advisory Commissions of Monterey, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz Counties; Commercial Salmon Stamp Committee; Scott Creek Watershed Council; and the many individuals, businesses, schools, and community organizations who continue to provide their outstanding support.

Anyone interested in being trained to work with us in occasional fish care activities and some of our other Project activities, please contact me, Al Smith, at 831-722-4753, 831-458-3095, 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 MBS&TP, P.O. Box 417, Davenport, CA 95017.

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