2006 May - State of the Project
Our fish culturing and rearing activities for this 2005/2006 season have been quite active. For the first time in many years we have been allowed to plant our juvenile Coho Salmon in four different streams. We have recently completed planting a total of approximately 26,000 Coho juveniles into Aptos, Scotts, Pescadero, & Waddell Creeks. About 14% of these Coho were progeny of our Coho Captive Brood-stock Program. In addition we have completed planting our Steelhead smolt inventory of approximately 14,350 fish into 9 streams of the San Lorenzo River and Scotts Creek watersheds. The quantity of Steelhead would normally have been much larger, but as I mentioned in my article in the November 2005 Newsletter, a serious criminal act was committed at our rearing facility by the poisoning of some of our Steelhead adult brood-stock. This irrational act caused the loss of an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 juvenile Steelhead. So far the perpetrators have not been apprehended.
We have completed the spawning of our adult Coho Salmon for this year with an approximate yield of over 21,000 green eggs. At the time of writing this article, the spawning of our adult Steelhead is about 90% complete with an estimated yield of well over 50,000 green eggs.
Our Chinook program for 2006 is well underway with an estimated release of approximately 180,000 Chinook smolts into Monterey Bay waters.
A performance summary of our overall programs shows that for our Coho Salmon and Steelhead 29 year program history we have released well over 2,001,000 fish, and for our Chinook program we have released over 1,905,000 Chinook smolts during the 15 year history of this program. Our STEP activities are discussed elsewhere in this newsletter.
For some time now, many of us on the MBSTP Board of Directors have been pondering our “state-of-health†so to speak. Several of us on the Board have entered that blissful state of senior citizenship, and some of us are more “senior†than others. I have been a member of the MBSTP for 19 years, and I have been on the Board of Directors for over 12 years.
At a recent Board meeting, I informed my colleagues that I will be resigning as the Board Chairman by mid-year of 2007. My intent is to remain on the Board as a Director but my participation in Project activities will be quite substantially reduced. I have made this decision with some remorse, but it becomes necessary for most of us at some point in our lives to face the reality of where we are in life and change our focus accordingly.
It seems obvious to me that our Board is going to have to infuse some more “youthful blood†into our ranks this year and early next year for us to remain as a viable dynamic organization to perform our Project Mission and Goals. Although I can’t speak for all of the members of the Board, many of us believe that it is imperative for some of our supporters to step forward and offer to serve on our Board in order to keep our organization viable and going for the future. If we don’t get the necessary new members for our Board soon, some of us are convinced that we will eventually have to shut down the MBSTP.
In the immediate future I will be contacting individuals that I know who may be interested in helping us to resolve this dilemma. We believe that it is going to take many of you to get more proactive in helping us to resolve the issue as well. Please talk to your relatives, friends, colleagues, fishing groups, and other organizations that you are familiar with in order to discover some people that share our Salmonid preservation interests and concerns. Have any interested persons contact me at 831-722-4753 or 831-458-3095 or contact our Volunteer Coordinator Mary Hermansky at 831-331-5586.
As a final status item, I want to advise you that our annual funding dilemma has improved somewhat since late summer of 2005 with the provision of some grant funding that I had requested from NOAA through CDFG to help us with our operating costs through early 2007. Also I was recently informed that an additional funding request that I submitted in 2005 for operating funds assistance from NOAA has been approved for mid 2007 through mid 2009. We will continue in the future to pursue sources for grant funding for our various Project needs. History has shown us, however, that we cannot rely heavily on grant funding repeatedly, and therefore we must continue to rely on your great support. No doubt some of you, if not many of you, are employed by companies and organizations that have “donation match†programs. It would be a very effective way for those of you who are employees covered by such donation plans to increase the impact of your personal support to MBSTP through such matching donation programs.
All of us in the MBSTP want to thank all of you for your exceptional help and support. 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; and Moss Landing Harbor District. You all are the best!
