ENN: California drought hard on Chinook salmon

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48147

From: Alastair Bland, Yale Environment360
Published January 5, 2015 09:14 AM

Gushing downpours finally arrived in California last month, when December rains brought some relief to a landscape parched after three years of severe drought.

But the rain came too late for thousands of Chinook salmon that spawned this summer and fall in the northern Central Valley. The Sacramento River, running lower than usual under the scorching sun, warmed into the low 60s — a temperature range that can be lethal to fertilized.

Chinook, the largest species of Pacific salmon, need cool waters to reproduce.

Chinook eggs. Millions were destroyed, and almost an entire year-class of both fall-run Chinook, the core of the state’s salmon fishing industry, and winter-run Chinook, an endangered species whose eggs incubate in the summer, was lost.

FULL story at link.

[Brother Buzz]

1. Muir Woods coho salmon vanish, fanning fears of extinction

Muir Woods coho salmon vanish, fanning fears of extinction

By Peter Fimrite
29 November, 2014

The cherished coho salmon that historically wriggled their way past beachgoers up Redwood Creek into Muir Woods vanished this year and are now on the verge of extinction, prompting a last-ditch attempt by fisheries biologists to save the genetically unique species.

No salmon eggs were spotted in the shade of the world-famous redwood grove this past winter, and not a single baby coho could be found in the summer. The situation was so bad in August that 105 juvenile salmon had to be removed from the creek and brought to a hatchery.

“It’s a crisis in terms of this kind of intervention has never happened before” in Redwood Creek, said Laura Chariton, the director of the Watershed Alliance of Marin. “Historically these fish evolved in this watershed, so it could be the beginning of local extinction or extirpation.”

State fisheries biologists believe the 2014 generation of the beleaguered species is extinct — although their demise has not yet been confirmed. The Redwood Creek coho were done in, officials said, by decades of environmental pollution and habitat degradation combined with drought.

“We believe the persistent drought and restricted access into the creek could have been the last straw,” said Manfred Kittel, the regional coho salmon recovery coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “When abundance is already so low, any little thing can wipe out the year class.”

<more>

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Muir-Woods-coho-salmon-vanish-fanning-fears-of-5925337.php