Article from Daily Kos.
By Dan Bacher
Friday Apr 22, 2016 · 6:23 PM PDT
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) this week started a controversial operation to remove striped bass from Clifton Court Forebay in the south end of Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and relocate them into Bethany Reservoir.
The operation began without any public notice from DWR, spurring outrage by anglers, conservationists and public trust advocates.
The three-day per week operation will run through June, according to Stafford Lehr, Branch Chief, Inland and Anadromous Fisheries, California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW).
Lehr said this was a task that was identified in the 2009 NOAA/NMFS Biological Opinion (Federal Take Permit under Federal ESA) for the State Water Project (SWP).
“DWR staff will be conducting boat electrofishing operations in Clifton Court Forebay to test the feasibility of reducing predation on listed juvenile salmonids in that water body prior to their entering the area of the Tracy Pumping Facility,” said Lehr.
There is no target number, but this is a pilot project. “All captured fish will be relocated to Bethany Reservoir where the public can have an opportunity to fish for them,” said Lehr.
“The first options that were presented did not have the fish being relocated for public use. We saw that as a no-go, as we believed that if this operation had to happen then the public should be given the chance to catch the fish in another location,” explained Lehr.
Juvenile salmon and green sturgeon, protected under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, enter the Clifton Court Forebay prior to the canal leading to the Delta export pumping facilities. “This required action in the Biological Opinion is an attempt to reduce predation on those species prior to the pumps,” he said.
Lehr also said he believes the tagging data shows that the striped bass pretty much stay at the forebay, “due to the high density of prey fish…not just Delta smelt and salmon but inland silversides and other small fishes.”
“In fact, when they relocated fish in the past out of the forebay, the fish showed back up within a few days basically like a revolving door. That is the rationale to move them out into another body of water (Bethany),” he added.
Neither Ted Thomas or Nancy Vogel, public information officers for the Department of Water Resources, have responded yet to my emailed questions or my phone messages about this operation. If and when they respond, I will post their responses.
“This is another DWR scheme hatched in the dead of night and not subject to public review,” said Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, after hearing news of the striped bass relocation operation. “How about actually providing fish screens at the Delta pumping facilities, as the CalFed Record of Decision promised 16 years ago? Apparently the current massacre of striped bass at the Delta pumps is not killing enough of them.”
Jennings said DWR is under mandate to double naturally spawning striped bass populations under the California Fish and Game Code and “DWR is responding by catching all of stripers they can and packing them like sardines in Bethany Reservoir.”
The daily bag limit for striped bass in Bethany Reservoir is two fish and the minimum size limit is 18 inches long.
Striped bass are not a native species, but they have been in California waters so long that they are an essential component of the Bay-Delta Estuary ecosystem, filling an important ecological niche. The initial introduction took place in 1879, when 132 small bass were brought to California by rail from the Navesink River in New Jersey and released near Martinez. Fishery officials made a second introduction of stripers in lower Suisun Bay in 1888.
Striper numbers have declined in recent years, along with Central Valley steelhead, fall, winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, American shad, green sturgeon, and other fish species, due to the massive export of water through the state and federal pumping facilities in the South Delta to corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
The striped bass’s demonization by state and federal government and water agency officials is in spite of all of the available scientific evidence. Two leading experts on the Bay Delta Estuary and striped, Dr. Peter Moyle, UC Davis fishery scientist, professor and author, and Dr. David Ostrach, former UC Davis research scientists, and other biologists point out that the elimination or reduction in the numbers of striped bass is likely to hurt Delta smelt and other species by targeting a species that preys on the predators of smelt and salmon! (californiawaterblog.com/…)
Located in the northernmost part of the San Joaquin Valley, Bethany Reservoir State Recreation Area is a popular place for water-oriented recreation, especially fishing and windsurfing. It is also the northern terminus of the California Aqueduct. For more information, go to: www.parks.ca.gov/…