BY DAVE HURLEY
OAKLAND – ‘Life, uh, finds a way,’ is one of the most memorable lines in the original Jurassic Park movie, and life is finding a way into previously barren streams in northern California and southern Oregon. Despite decades of pollution and the establishment of physical barriers including culverts, concrete channels, and weirs, salmon have been returning in increased numbers to creeks inside of San Francisco Bay and throughout the California Delta. Returning salmon are abundant in the back sloughs of the Mokelumne and the San Joaquin Rivers, and although these fish may have a difficult time finding adequate spawning grounds, their presence provides optimism. The recent atmospheric river along with two years of greater than average rainfall combined with stream restoration and the removal of barriers seem to be paying dividends for unchartered waters. Prior to human impact within the past 150 years, returning salmon were an annual visitor to these streams. Another factor may be the increased releases of salmon close to the Golden Gate keeping the fish from imprinting on their stream of original, allowing them to seek out any available stream.
Cal Trout is requesting the submission of photos of salmon and steelhead to assisting in building a ‘more complete picture of fish migration through and around Bay Area watersheds to inform our restoration and management efforts.’
Salmon have been flooding into the south bay creeks of Los Gatos, Alviso Slough, Coyote Creek, and San Tomas Aquino Creek along with the Alameda Creek near Fremont, the largest watershed in San Francisco Bay. Dead Chinook salmon have been found along the banks of Oakland’s Lake Merritt. Further upstream, salmon are once again returning to Marsh Creek near Oakley. Bud Chaddock, Western Outdoor News Columnist, has been monitoring Marsh Creek on a regular basis, and he said, “Last year we had a number of big fish, but this year, there are more jacks returning.”
Salmon are also thick in the back sloughs of the Mokelumne and San Joaquin, and bass anglers are finding incidental catches of salmon on jerkbaits and crankbaits. The fish wiggle their way into the narrow channels of Pixley Creek and Fourteen Mile Slough north of Stockton. Poaching is a major threat to these fish as they are extremely vulnerable in the shallow and narrow creeks. Several citations have been issued for poachers snagging or netting salmon in Marsh Creek.
One more testament to life finding a way is the first coho salmon to return to the Fall Creek Fish Hatchery after the removal of the Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River. According to the Eric Jones, Senior Environmental Scientist who oversees the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s north state hatchery operations,
“To see coho successfully returning this quickly to this new habitat post-dam removal is exciting. We’ve already seen the Chinook make it back and now we’re seeing the coho make it back.”
Although California’s salmon have a long way to go to recover since our most productive spawning region, the upper Sacramento, remains barren, the reemergence of fish in previously uninhabited streams is encouraging.
We could be seeing what Jeff Goldblum’s character stated in the first Jurassic Park film, “The history of evolution has taught us that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh, there it is.” Despite decades of human interference, life may be finding a way.
