Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project

By Dave Streig

Hopefully our rainfall season will begin early and produce better than normal rainfall throughout the season. As we approach the end of September 2002, the creek flows are approaching the lowest level we have seen in thepast 20 years, which was the 1989 drought year. This year¹s low summer flows are going to once again reduce the carrying capacity of the streams and result in fewer smolts being naturally produced in the streams which results in fewer returning adults in the next few years. This past March, our smolt production for the last year was planted out into their rivers of origin as follows:

San Lorenzo River Steelhead = 35,937
Scott Creek Steelhead = 7,203

We extend our thanks to the numerous San Lorenzo River Trap Volunteers, who had spent five months this past winter operating the trip at the Felton Diversion Dam. Especially Rob Langdon, Buck Arbsland, and Terry Umstead, who coordinated the trapping operations and collected all the data. This past season they counted a record high of 1,136 adult steelhead passing through the trap moving upriver to spawn. This upcoming season we are looking for some new volunteers to help with our adult trapping operations. Please call 458-3095 if you are interested. This past season we worked with Dr. Carlos Garza & the NMFS Genetics lab. We provided them with DNA samples from all the adults collected for spawning, and he provided us with spawning recommendations and sibling/first cousin warnings who should not be spawned together. By utilizing the modern genetic techniques in our breeding program, we will be producing greater genetic diversity in the population and helping make it stronger and better able to recover from the small number of fish we have seen in the past.

We have also been working with Dr. Bruce McFarlane, NMFS, to develop a Coho Captive Brood Stock facility at the new NMFS Santa Cruz Lab to insure sufficient Coho Adults exist in the future to restore Coho into their historic habitat streams. The salt water pools to be built at the lab and the back up fresh water pool to be added at the hatchery have been ordered and are to be operational by this March 2003. NMFS has also transferred Erick Sturm, Marine Culturist from their Manchester Laboratory, Washington to Santa Cruz to take charge of the marine culture facility and its development. Research activity is also ongoing on how to recreate missing/extinct year classes of Coho which have plagued this area for the last 30 year.

At present the hatchery is home to:

37,000 Scott Creek Coho Salmon13,000 Scott Creek Steelhead50,000 San Lorenzo River Steelhead

All the fish are doing well. In closing, a special thanks to Jenny Newell who assisted with all the spawning and hatching operations this past year after her graduation from University Cal-Berkley. She will be missed and must be congratulated on getting into the University of Washington, Graduate School of Fisheries. Good luck on your work with Dr. Quinn on Steelhead and Sockeye Hatchery vs. Wild Fish interaction studies in Washington.

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