Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project

By Allen Smith, Board Chairman

This past June we completed MBSTPs 12th annual Chinook Salmon Enhancement Program at Monterey City & Santa Cruz Boat Harbors. In our sea pens at these locations we acclimated over 231,000 chinook smolts to salt water and reared them until their subsequent release into the
Monterey Bay to grow to adulthood in the ocean. Since the Chinook Enhancement Program began 12 years ago, we have released over 1,230,000 chinook smolts into the Monterey Bay to enhance the region fishery. We continue to give our special thanks to the Monterey Harbor and Santa Cruz Port Districts for their outstanding cooperation and assistance in Providing facilities for our chinook sea pens.

MBSTP is continuing to work very actively with NMFS & CDF&G to implement a coho salmon captive adult brood-stock rearing program. NMFS has placed on order much of the related necessary equipment and has engaged the appropriate human resources needed to conduct the program beginning this year. The purpose of the program is to turn around the severe decrease in our local coho populations occurring frequently now in many of the year-classes of these salmonids. MBSTP will provide the juvenile coho fish to be committed to this program, and by next year we expect to provide some ancillary captive brood-stock rearing at our site for this program.

In our previous newsletter of this year, I mentioned that we were in The process of working (since February 2002) with NMFS to work out the implementation of the Section 10 Permit revision for our continued rearing of coho salmon. Unfortunately the process has been painfully slow, and we have identified several significant issues that must be resolved before we can adequately perform our program mission and goals regarding Central Coast coho salmon and steelhead restoration activities. I have just been advised by NMFS management that this process of issues resolution is being substantially expedited. Let¹s hope so.

Well, fall is here again and it¹s nearing the time to get ready for Our for our 25th Annual Albacore Feed fund raiser. As most of you know, we are a nonprofit volunteer organization, and this fund raiser dinner is one of the more important sources of our financial support. For your planning, this year¹s MBSTP Albacore Dinner will be held on Saturday, November 9, 2002 at the Recreation Center, 11261 Crane Street, Castroville, CA. Tickets will be on sale at the Recreation Center starting at 6:00 pm with dinner served at 7:00 pm. I hope to see you there.

We at MBSTP offer our continuing gratitude to the following organizations, groups, businesses, and individuals for their outstanding financial and other forms of support of our coho, steelhead, and chinook restoration activities and operations: David & Lucile Packard Foundation; Fish & Game Advisory Commissions of Monterey, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz Counties; Commercial Salmon Stamp Committee; Scott Creek Watershed Council; Monterey City Harbor District; Santa Cruz Port District; and the many individuals, businesses, schools, and community organizations who continue to provide their outstanding support.

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