Volunteer's  Activities Corner
By Allen Smith, Board Chairman & Volunteer Coordinator

Although this is the relatively slow part of our yearly fish culture activities, we have some noteworthy accomplishments to mention and our volunteers¹ activities will be increasing substantially as we proceed
through the fall and into winter time this year as noted below:

• June 29, 2002: Trained five new volunteers in fish care at MBSTP¹s fish rearing facility.
• July 5,6, & 7, 2002: Conducted the 8th annual Big Fish Derby fundraiser.
• October 2002: Fin clip & transfer approx. 3,000 fingerlings to our satellite rearing facility in Santa Cruz County.
• November 9, 2002: 25th Annual Albacore Feed fund raiser at the Recreation Center, 11261 Crane Street, Castroville, CA
• November 16, 2002: Fin clip total of approx. 50,000 coho salmon & steelhead. Please call Allen Smith if you can help at 831-458-3095 or 831-722-4753.
• December 7, 2002: Fin clip a total of approx. 50,000 steelhead. Please call Allen Smith if you can help at 831-458-3095 or 831-722-4753.
• December 2002: Weather & mother nature permitting, begin obtaining adult coho & steelhead for our spawning program.

We are a volunteer based organization and as such we typically go through periods of turnover and drop out for any number of reasons. To those of you interested in continuing to support us with your volunteer efforts, please talk to others about us, and what we do. Perhaps you will inspire some special people to join us in our salmonid population restoration and preservation mission. I send our deepest thanks to all of you great volunteers!

Anyone interested in being trained to work with us in occasional fish Care activities and some of our other Project activities, please contact me, Al Smith, at 831-722-4753, 831-458-3095, E-mail mbstp@aol.com, or send a note to my attention at MBSTP, P.O. Box 417, Davenport, CA 95017.

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STEP...Into Year 2003
By Hugh Miller and Becky Fitch

At this time, we look, briefly back on last year with lots of pride. In January, 36 teachers attended our two-day STEP workshop, which was wonderfully received. One workshop attendee, a local school principal, wrote to say that he is "committed to being a Steward of STEP," that he had a high regard for the leaders and instructors of our STEP team, and that he would be, personally and actively, teaching the STEP curriculum at his school.

Every year the STEP training team seems to outdo themselves, gathering increasing accolades annually. In May and June, 122 teachers and their classes participated in our Classroom Incubation and Fry Release program. Throughout the year, we received many nice comments, including picture-cards, from STEP students and teachers expressing thanks and appreciation to STEP for making this hands-on program available.

Now, we're at the beginning of school year 2002-2003 and there's lots ahead. We need to "get things together" for the upcoming 2003 workshop, usually scheduled in January. (Note: At this time, no date has been set for the 2003 Workshop). Already, teachers are calling asking for particulars regarding this training. There appears to be a big interest in the workshop from Monterey County area teachers. We see no immediate change in the governmental NMFS 4-D ruling, so our STEP-trained teachers will still be limited to releases in the San Lorenzo and Scotts Creek Watersheds only. And, as always, there's the need to replenish Resourse Kit inventories, and to make mailings regarding both the workshop and egg applications. Such are the perennial challenges of STEP volunteers.

California Department of State Fish and Game has been working towards a state-wide Aquarium in the Classroom program. Our STEP members are concerned that this program may mandate a lowering of our local STEP training standards. Based on the extremely positive feedback we receive continually from STEP-trained teachers, we hope that reason will prevail and others will recognize that we have an ongoing, valuable, well-established, and highly informative thematic training program. STEP is far more than an Aquarium/Incubation program. (See attached note of STEP Leader/Instructor Don Chesarek).

If you wish to get involved in STEP activities, contact STEP Coordinator Hugh Miller email: HMiller334@aol.com.

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Saturday, Novermber 9th 2002
Castorville Recreation Center
11621 Crane Street, Castroville, CA
Tickets: $14.00 Available at the door
6:00 no host cocktails; 7:00 Dinner

Don¹t miss this wonderful dinner, sponsored and cooked by THE CASTROVILLE ROTARY CLUB. The Albacore Feed has been put on by The Castroville Rotary Club for the past 25 years and seems to get better every year. We can¹t thank them enough for their outstanding efforts and continuing support.

The MOSS LANDING COMMERCIAL FISHERMAN¹S ASSOCIATION has been a faithful
supporter of the Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project. We thank you very much, especially Tom McCray, for providing the fish for this event. Without the help of all our supporters, our project would not be in existence today.

We are still in need of raffle prizes. If you can help in this area, Please call Mary Jane Rogers at 831-763-0926. We appreciate the past support of our generous donors and hope they will continue to be so helpful.

Please remember we also have our silent auction, which contains many great fishing tackle deals donated by Penn Reels as well as other great gifts. This is a great time to get some of your holiday shopping done early and help our project. All funds received directly benefit the hatchery.

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State of the 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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2002 Big Fish Derby Results
By Larry Wolf

Once again the Salmon returned to the Monterey Bay and we had a very Good turnout for our 8th Annual Big Fish Derby. The winning fish was again a 33.04 lb halibut caught by Albert Dasilva of Pacific Grove. Mr. Dasilva won $1,000.00. The largest salmon, 31.12 lbs was caught by Bob Martin of Modesto. Mr. Martin won $200.00. The largest and only sea bass caught weighed 26.14 lbs. Casey Faneuf caught the sea bass. Mr. Faneuf also won $200.00. There were no tuna turned in this year due to the rough weather. The tuna were out there but no one could get out far enough due to high winds on the outside. Over all we had over 400 fish entered into the derby. The majority of fish turned in were salmon.

We did have some problems with our new format. Under current fish and game rules, commercial fisherman who fish for ground fish or halibut may choose the days they are commercial fishing and the days they are sport fishing. For those of you who saw commercial fishermen turning in fish for weigh in for the derby from boats with commercial licenses, this was legal if they were not commercial fishing on the days of the derby. In addition, they cannot sell the fish caught while sport fishing. Last, they are also required to declare in their log books, they were not commercial fishing on the days in question. Because we were unaware this was legal there was some confusion in the beginning about who could turn fish in and be eligible to win any prizes including the grand prize. A review of fish and game regulations and many discussions with other commercial fishermen Corrected our original opinion and we allowed fish caught by commercial fishermen who were not commercial fishing during the derby. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused but we did finally get it right.

We would like to thank all of you who participated in the derby and for all of your generous donations. We raised over $7,000.00, which goes directly to the Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project. None of the Directors receive any compensation for their efforts and time spent putting this event on or for any of their time spent working for the hatchery. We appreciate all of your suggestions and ideas for future derbies. Last, we need your help. All our volunteers including myself do our best to make this a fun and successful event. If you love to fish or are just interested in helping us keep this area the best it can be for recreational purposes, please give us a call. There is plenty to do and many other ideas we just don't have the time to complete.

Thanks again,
Larry Wolf  

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Fall 2002 Hatchery Manager's Report
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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Genetics/ Hatcheries and the 4D Rule
By Carlos Garza (NMFS Geneticist)
& Jamie Alonzo (MBSTP Board Member)

Genetics and Endangered Species Act Listed Salmonids California is Blessed with a diversity of salmonids that exceeds that of any other state in the nation. Many are anadromous, spending part of their lives in both fresh and salt water. Anadromy, along with highly variable environmental conditions, has led to widespread specialization and adaptation to local conditions.

Adaptation deals with all of the small changes that accumulate in a species over time (also called evolution). These changes help in the specialization of animals by increasing their ability to survive and reproduce in their particular environment. Genetic material called DNA acts as the instruction book for the development of all animals and during reproduction, DNA from two parents is mixed and passed down to offspring. Adaptations are 'coded for' in an animal's DNA and, thus, are also passed down through the generations. As an example, egg size in chinook (King) salmon, generally decreases as one moves north in latitude (this has to do with differences in water characteristics such as temperature, flow and productivity). Chinook salmon living in central California have relatively large eggs which better enables them to survive in this climate. This characteristic (i.e. females that produce large eggs) is passed down from generation to generation and can be considered a specialization or adaptation to local conditions.

Even though chinook salmon living on the central California coast generally have larger eggs than chinook salmon living in more northerly latitudes, there is still variation in egg size among central coast Chinook salmon. This is true with most all adaptations. It turns out that this variation in adaptations is also very important to the health of a population. These differences in adaptation between animals in the same population, even if small, can have a very large effect on the size of a population, especially over many generations and in small streams. Again, this has to do with the populations ability to survive and reproduce in its environment (discussed below). Though differences in adaptations are often difficult to measure, the fact that they are represented in an animal's DNA instruction book allows scientists to look for differences in DNA to determine if there are differences in adaptations.

As discussed previously, variation in adaptations is important to the health of an animal population. This is true for at least three reasons. First variation in adaptation keeps populations from experiencing inbreeding depression. Like adaptations, genetic diseases can also be passed down from parents to offspring through the DNA (e.g. Parkinson's Disease in humans). However, many of these diseases require that there are two copies of the disease-causing DNA in the individual before the disease is expressed: one copy from the mother and one from the father. If a population of animals has a lot of variation in adaptations, it means that they also have a lot of variation in DNA, which decreases the chance that any individual will inherit two copies of the same disease-causing DNA from its parents. Populations with low genetic variation are characterized by more genetic diseases, which make the population as a whole more unhealthy.

Second, the ability to fight off new parasites or diseases can also be genetic. If a population of animals has a lot of variation in the DNA, there is a better chance that some individuals will be able to survive when a new parasite or disease enters a population. In populations with low genetic variation, a severe epidemic could wipe out the entire population.

Third, having genetic variation is what allows fish populations to change as the environment changes. For example, we know that DNA is involved in a steelhead trout's ability to tolerate high temperatures. Fish with different kinds of DNA can tolerate very different temperatures. The presence of these different genetic types in a population could be the difference between survival or extinction if stream temperatures rise.

In the last ten years, 10 of 16 anadromous salmonid stocks in California have received protection (i.e. been "listed"), under the US and California Endangered Species Acts (ESA). One of the initial phases in the ESA listing process is the implementation of 4(d) rules that act to regulate certain activities that could result in harm to these endangered populations. These regulations are due to declines in population numbers and environmental health, and are in response to citizen petitions. The ESA 'listing' sets in motion a process that uses scientific-based criteria to direct management and regulatory decisions.

Because of the reasons described above, one of the types of scientific information used to guide such decisions is information concerning variation in adaptations and DNA. One of the activities that
Are regulated by the 4(d) rules is hatchery practices. There is a
Substantial body of evidence that hatchery practices, if not properly carried out, can cause great harm to wild stocks. Two ways that this can occur are as follows. First, salmon stocks that have become accustomed to the hatchery "way of life" can cause widespread decline by displacing and/or breeding with locally adapted stocks. Second, many times only a few parents are used for many thousands of offspring in hatcheries.Over time, these offspring generally lose some of the DNA variation found in the wild population and become inbred. If these inbred fish then replace or breed with the wild populations, the new resulting population is missing much of the variation in DNA necessary for survival.

One way to combat this problem is to look at the DNA of the parents before breeding so that the variation in DNA is maximized and inbreeding minimized. Big Creek hatchery, run by MBSTP, does this. One specific 4(d) regulation that prohibits fish from being moved between basins, is based on another genetic principle called outbreeding depression.

Though we outlined above how variation in DNA or adaptations is good, there are some cases where it can be bad. Imagine that two adult salmon are brought to the hatchery for breeding from a stream far away, where the environment is very different. These salmons' adaptations won't necessarily match the new environment around the hatchery. As a result, their offspring will experience low survival and reproduction In this new and different environment as will the offspring of the natural fish they breed with. In this way, fish in different basins can be at risk for outbreeding depression if introduced to 'foreigners'.

These are just some of the complex and difficult issues involved in The management and recovery of our salmonid fisheries. While many are skeptical that recovery can be achieved, if it does not, the science-based approach will not be to blame. A lot of human activity over a long period of time is responsible for many of the problems that we see today. The science-based approach is meant to shorten the time and activity that will be required to reverse the effects. Though regulation will likely leave all parties feeling as if they are making unnecessary sacrifices, it is the eventual hope that all of the groups involved will be able to work together to ensure the preservation of these magnificent fish.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that hatcheries are not always Considered the 'bad guys' when it comes to raising salmon. In fact, many scientists believe that, if hatchery practices are carried out properly, hatchery stocks will not be a detriment to the natural populations and that they can actually play an important role in recovery and conservation. Many of the problems observed in hatchery stocks come from the large industrial hatcheries where, historically, little thought was given to product quality or the potential consequences associated with raising 'un-natural' fish.

Smaller operations, such as the Big Creek hatchery, can and do take more care in raising a quality product. This has a lot to do with their ability to adapt their hatchery practices as the science behind raising fish improves. Unfortunately, hatcheries tend to be managed
as a group with regulation based on the worst offenders.

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