http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=24930
STOCKTON
January 6, 2014 4:10am
- State count confirms numbers of fish a tiny fraction of 1967 levels
- “Can only be characterized as a biological holocaust”
The fish are disappearing from the largest estuary on the west coast of the western hemisphere, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Populations of types of fish counted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in its most recent survey — Delta smelt, striped bass and American shad — declined from last year’s low levels while longfin smelt and threadfin shad showed little improvement from last year’s lows, according to a report Monday from the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance in Stockton.
The surveys, which were initiated in 1967, the same year the State Water Project began exporting water from the Delta to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, show that population indices of Delta smelt, striped bass, longfin smelt, threadfin shad and American shad have declined 95.6 percent, 99.6 percent, 99.8 percent, 97.8 percent, 90.9 percent, respectively, between 1967 and 2013, the CSPA says. The 2013 measurements for splittail were not released but results from 2012 showed that splittail indices have dropped 98.5 percent from 1967 levels, it says.
The results from what the state calls the 2013 “Fall Midwater Trawl,” reconfirm “the continuing biological collapse that is occurring in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta estuary,” CSP says.
The Fall Midwater Trawl is done monthly from September through December at 100 stations in the Delta.
“Excessive water diversions from the Delta by the State and Federal Projects and the failure of state agencies to enforce water quality standards have created an extended fish drought that can only be characterized as a biological holocaust,” says CSPA Executive Director Bill Jennings. “And the same agencies that orchestrated and chaperoned this biological meltdown are not only proposing a scheme to divert massive quantities of fresh water flows via tunnels under the Delta, under the guise of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, but they ask us to trust them to build the tunnels now and figure out how to operate them later.”
BDCP proponents have said that the two mammoth 35-mile tunnels under the Delta will not lead to an increase in total water exports. However, actual operations will be determined after completion of the project through a decision-tree adaptive management process “by the same agencies that have historically failed to protect the estuary,” Mr. Jennings says.
“BDCP proponents are not going to spend some $67 billion to receive the same or less water and reduced outflow for an estuary already hemorrhaging from a lack of water is a death sentence,” he says.
The 2013 FMWT indices for Delta smelt and American shad were the second lowest in the 46 years of the survey. The striped bass index was tied for third lowest, while the longfin smelt and threadfin shad indices were the eighth and fifth lowest, respectively, the CSPA says.