Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project

Hatchery Manager's Report
Where have we come from and where are we going?
By J. David Streig

It's been 34 years since University of California Cooperative Extension Sea Grant Marine Advisor Dr. Tom Thompson was involved in several meetings with Commercial and Sport Fishermen's groups in the Monterey Bay area discussing the decline of Coho salmon in the catch. The following spring of 1975 he held a series of meetings with California Department of Fish and Game Region 3 Manager Bob Rawstrom and Marine Region Manager Herb Frey, State Senator Henry Mello, and representatives of the county supervisors of Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties, along with representatives from the three Commercial Fishermen's Association and numerous sportsmen's clubs, along with Sea Grant Fisheries Staff from University of California Davis.

These meetings resulted in recommendations from department of Fish and Game staff to form a Cooperative Salmon Rearing Program under Division 2, Chapter 3, Article 6, sections 1200 thru 1206 of the Fish and Game Code. This required creating a 501c3 non- profit corporation with the Secretary of State of California and the Federal Internal Revenue Service. Meetings were held in May, July and September with the local Fishermen's Association and Sportsmen's Clubs which led to the founding of the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project.

My first meeting was as the new Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service Intern as I began Graduate school at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in September of 1975. The attendees voted to create the Project and began selection of Board of directors and committees to draft Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, and develop a plan of operation with the Department of Fish and Game. Initially the Department wanted the group to prove it could provide the resources and manpower to accomplish Fish Culture and restoration goals; Sea Grant wanted Education and Aquacultures demonstration programs, and the founders wanted to raise fish for the State of California and assist University Anadromous Fish Research.

By the spring of 1976 the Project was incorporated with the State of California. The Demonstration Program began with agreements between the Project, City of Salinas, and Department of Fish and Game to utilize the Salinas Industrial Waste Water Ponds to raise surplus Rainbow Trout from Dr. Graham Gallâs Genetics Laboratory at U.C. Davis with the volunteers coming from 4-H Club Education Projects and the Sportsmen Clubs. The resulting fish were to be planted into ponds in the Page 13 Ford Ord-Hunter Liggett properties of the U.S. Army to provide fishing opportunities.

In 1976 Bob Rawstrom of California Fish and Game was promoted to Anadromous Branch Chief and plans for the following years Coho program began with the goal to produce 5,000 fish in 1977. Water quality problems occurred at the Salinas Waste Water ponds after the initial Trout were planted out and a new site was found on a private reservoir whose donor wished it and he remained anonymous, it was heavily utilized up to 1998. Coho from the Department of Fish and Game were reared annually from 1977 doubling each year up to 1981.

In 1979 problems from the 1975 thru 1978 drought were becoming apparent and the genetics research of Dr. Graham Gall was also showing that that practice of planting northern California salmon and Steelhead into southern waters, especially south of San Francisco was not improving the fish populations, but actually hurting them. The northern fish did return to the streams, some were caught by anglers and some spawned in the wild, but the resulting fry were found to be Northern Hatchery Fish, a Hybrid, and wild fish in the streams in the spring.

A problem was found in fall surveys when only a few wild fish were found in the streams, the Northern fish were not adapted to our Warm Summer Waters Temperatures and their die off resulted in a continuous decline of the native fish stocks. In 1980 Sea Grant Marine Advisor Jim Walduogel comes to the Board of Directors with a new proposal from Fish and Game to find and develop a year round cold water facility to rear Native Coho and for the first time Steelhead. The Department was going to develop local egg sources of Coho from the San Lorenzo River and Steelhead from the Carmel River and hatch them at the Yountville Hatchery in Napa, but could not rear them there thru the summer.

Potential rearing sites below dams were investigated to develop ponds downstream of Los Padres, San Clemente, San Antonio, Nacimiento, and Uvas Reservoirs, all of these presented numerous problems. Les Sternal of the California Costal Commission and Randy Benthin of Fish and Game suggested restoration of the Fish and Game Hatchery on Big Creek in Santa Cruz. The State had maintained Water Rights and Discharge Permits for the Hatchery abandoned in the 1940 flood but could not restore the facility because they did not own the property.

At the end of the year Jim Walduogel moved up to Humboldt-Del Norte County Marine Advisor and was replaced by Ed Melvin who I helped get in contact with the McCrary family who owned the Big Creek property. After several meetings with the Project Board of Directors, Department of Fish and Game Managers, Sea Grant Staff and University of California Researchers, the McCrary Family, owners of Big Creek Lumber Company, agreed to a donation lease of their property to the Department of Fish and Game with the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project as the Cooperative Restoration Operator and Restorer of the facility.

Thus in March 1982 the Big Creek Fish Hatchery was begun to be restored and I was hired as the Fish Biologist / Hatchery Manager after testing and approval of Department of Fish and Game. I met and assisted Yountville staff spawning Steelhead each year from 1982 to 1986 at the Carmel River Los Padres Dam and the green eggs were taken to Yountville that day to be put into incubators; spawning occurred twice weekly; weekends were spent supervising volunteers building rearing pools and water system, by June 5 pools were activated and all the fish were delivered the following week from Yountville, subsequent years they delivered fish by May 15.

We would like to welcome Carla Moss to the MBSTP hatchery team. Carla is a 2007 UCSC graduate in Environmental Studies in Conservation Biology. Currently, Carla works at the hatchery with Hatchery Facilities Manager Dave Streig as a Fish Culturist. Carla will assume Dave Streig's responsibilities when he retires in 2009. Welcome Carla.

In 1985 water problems were occurring in Yountville and the decision was made to have us build our own Hatchery and spawn the remnant population of Coho found in Scotts Creek and develop Steelhead stocks from Scotts Creek and San Lorenzo River. The Department of Fish and Game provided incubators and rearing troughs from Elk Grove Hatchery that was being converted to a Stripped Bass Hatchery, funding was obtained from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to plumb the facility and Big Creek Lumber donated the building materials.

Construction began in November 1985 and was not completed in time to spawn in 1986 but was fully operational in 1987 when we took over the Department of Fish and Games trap at the City of Santa Cruz Felton Diversion Dam to collect Steelhead for spawning and a few Steelhead were spawned from Scotts Creek when we could not find any Coho. Native stocks were returned to their stream of origin. Steelhead captive broodstocks from Carmel River were developed by CDFG and Carmel River Steelheader’s at CDFG’s Granite Canyon Marine Research Station and we spawned them from 1989 to 1994 for planting in the Carmel watershed, and Carmel Steelhead were also spawned from 1997 and 1998.

Coho were originally found once every three years; almost extinct by the 1975 to 1977 drought, wild Coho were spawned at the hatchery in 1984, 1992, 1996, 1999, 2002, and 2005; only one wild three year old male returned and was spawned in 2008. Over the last nine years Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project has cooperated with National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Scientists at the Santa Cruz Southwest Fisheries Lab to create a Coho Captive Broodstock Program to develop fish for breeding in missing year classes and insurance of maintaining genetic diversity in the population. NOAA Fisheries Genetic Researchers produce a breeding matrix based on DNA analysis of every fish in the breeding population.

They also maintain a Coho Sperm Cryogenic Preservation Bank that has also been DNA typed, through their analysis and computer ranking they find the most genetically diverse males; four to each female; to breed for genetic conservation of the species and they also identify brothers and first cousins who can not be used with a given female. Through all this manipulation we have been able to recreate the missing year classes and this upcoming year we will see the extinct year class from the seventies spawn for the third time and I will have reached a goal of seeing Coho recovered in my 27 year tenure in Scotts Creek. They have also been reintroduced into Pescadero and Aptos Creek.

Having passed the Social Security threshold I have decided to retire after completing the 2009 Spawning and Hatchery Operation Season and will be turning over the reins to new Hatchery Manager Trainee Carla Moss. I invite all our volunteers and any potential new members of our organization to our upcoming General Membership Meeting being held Monday, June 9th, 2008 at the Santa Cruz Police Department Community Meeting Hall, 155 Center St. at 7:00 pm. We are looking forward to your participation in planning the future of the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project.

Back