2005 November - State of the Project
By Allen Smith, Board Chairman
At the time of publication of this October Newsletter, approximately 80% of year 2005 has gone by since our January issue with several significant events having taken place in the interim period.
In the mid Spring of 2005, I was advised by the CDFG in Sacramento of their approval of our Grant Request for some operating funds that I had requested in May of 2004! This grant approval will provide to us some funds from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), through CDFG, for a significant portion of our operating budget from June 2005 through June of 2007. With these funds and your continued excellent contributions support we should be able to continue our operations well into 2007. That was a close encounter with the "edge of the funding precipice!"
This spawning year we had very good returns of coho salmon and steelhead adults for our spawning and rearing programs. We have over 24,000 coho that we spawned from adult wild fish at our rearing facility. We also have an excellent quantity of juvenile coho, approximately 4,000, from our Coho Captive Broodstock Rearing Program. This combination results in a present total of approximately 28,000 juvelile coho potentially available for planting in the spring of 2006.
At the time of this writing, approximately 15,600 steelhead fry are being reared at our facility for planting in the spring of 2006. Although this quantity of steelhead fry is substantially less than our average yearly steelhead inventory, it is the result of the commission of a very serious criminal act performed by an unknown person or persons at our Kingfisher Flat fish rearing facility. In mid March of this year, this serious criminal act of poisoning our adult steelhead broodstock was committed by using a significant dosage of chlorine which in turn killed all of the steelhead broodstock in our possession at that time. The perpetrators are possibly unaware that this incredibly irrational act of killing our 12 steelhead adults resulted in the loss of perhaps 35,000 to 40,000 juvenile steelhead from our program. Mr Joe Giordano of NOAA said "This falls under the endangered-species act. This is a multiple violation case, and they could face 6 months in jail and a fine of $50,000." NOAA Fisheries is continuing the investigation of this crime, and they are offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of anyone responsible for committing this senseless criminal act. Anyone with information regarding this fish killing act is asked to contact Mr. Giordano at 707-575-6073.
Over our 29 years of operation since 1976, MBSTP has released over 2,001,000 coho salmon and steelhead into area streams from whence they out-migrate to the ocean and grow naturally to maturity.
Earlier this year we were able to complete the process of expanding our coho salmon fry rearing capability by about 60% with the inclusion of 6 new deep-rearing troughs. This planned expansion came about just in time to accommodate the significant coho fry population for the 2004/2005 fry rearing season. The new high-efficiency, automatic filtration, system that we installed last fall has performed extremely well in providing high quality water for our hatchery building activities' needs. Next year we will install a duplicate filtration unit for our Coho Captive Broodstock Rearing Facility to improve rearing efficiency and effectiveness.
Recently I submitted the coho, steelhead, and chinook Permit Applications and Planting Plan for the forthcoming 2005/2006 season to the CDFG for approval. The allocation requests for spawning program broodstock and chinook juvenile fish for acclimation are the same quantities requested and approved for last season.
MBSTP's Chinook Salmon Enhancement Program continued this year to yield very positive and efficient results. This year the chinook smolt survival rate through the acclimation and release phases was as successful as that of the last two years, an outstanding 99.9% +. As was the case in 2003 and 2004, the juvenile chinook fish delivered to, and released from, our sea pens this year were in excellent physical condition. A significant contributing factor was no doubt the fact that these chinook smolts again came from the Mokelumne River Hatchery. This year approximately 244,000 chinook smolts were released, and the overall total of chinook salmon smolts released into the Monterey Bay during the fifteen years of the Chinook Enhancement Program is now well over 1,905,000 fish.
Some down-side aspects of the program have occurred as might be expected for most human endeavors. Some of our equipment, such as sea pen liners and small-mesh fish netting are no longer repairable or usable due to age and the marine environment in which they must perform, including ocean surge effects. We encountered these occurrences 10 or 11 years ago as well. In addition, some of our chinook equipment storage locations and some key operations volunteers are no longer available to us for this program. These events will require us to replace two sea pen liners and fish nets. It will also be necessary to procure mobile equipment for moving chinook rearing and acclimation equipment to and from sites remote from the MBSTP hatchery and to procure equipment for the storage of chinook equipment at our hatchery when this equipment is not in use. These expenditures will be paramount to our ability to continue the operation of our Chinook Program. I have submitted a grant request to an area private foundation to help us to fund some of these Chinook Program expenditures.
We will continue in the future to pursue sources for grant funding for our various Project needs. History shows us, however, that we cannot rely heavily on grant funding repeatedly, and consequently we will not be able to continue our steelhead and salmon restoration mission without your continued support.
All of us in the MBSTP want to thank all of you for your exceptional help and support to-date this year. Our continued thanks to The David & Lucile Packard Foundation; Fish & Game Advisory Commissions of Monterey, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties; commercial Salmon Stamp Committee; Scotts Creek Watershed Council; Santa Cruz Port District; & Moss Landing Harbor District. You all are the Best!
