Water Contractors Launch New Assult on California Delta Fish

New Assault Launched on the Fish and Delta!

by John Beuttler

Just when I though it couldn’t get much worse for the public’s Central Valley fisheries than the tragic collapse of the fall-run Chinook salmon, growers from Kern County decided to fired a shot at the heart of the Delta and its once premier sport fishery, striped bass. They same shot was also aimed at people who love to fish (about 3 million anglers statewide), and at the very existence of the Delta’s ecosystem. My point is they don’t give a damn about the people who fish or the public who owns the water and the fish, or even those that just care about the Delta and estuary of which it is a part.

Striped Bass were introduce in 1887 and again in 1892 by the Fish and Game Commission to establish a public fishery in the Bay-Delta estuary. After nearly seventy years it became the premier fishery of the estuary and a surrogate species for the health of the Delta estuary during the 1970's & 80's. The reason this happened was because striped bass are true estuarine species that has critical needs shared by other Delta species. These life sustaining requirements were demonstrable, in part, by scientific correlations between the fisheries population size and the fresh water that used to flow through the Delta into Suisun and Honker Bay's to maintain striped bass and the health of the Delta.

As water exports began taking an ever increasing toll during the last four decades, the fish fell from being one of the greatest urban sport fisheries of all time to being targeted for extinction because some believed too much of the Delta’s fresh water was needed to maintain the fisheries abundance. When the population fell from 4 million to 1 million during the past decade, the attacks to eradicate it escalated under the disguise that it was “nonnative” species. When some of these same folks figured out that fish in the estuary had an actual symbiotic relationship with the Delta’s food web and that they might eat species listed under Endangered Species Acts just as it was being eaten, it because a scapegoat and a target of opportunity.

Some of these growers, who use the public’s water to produce their crops, don’t seem to care that the fishery generated a great deal of economic activity to regional and local economies that also helped to feed and cloth people by supplying $50 million annually to Bay Area and rural economies. Just like the nonnative species grown by the state’s agricultural sector, the striper fishery is economically important.

The suit filed by the folks calling themselves the “Coalition for a Sustainable Delta” would remove game fish status from striped bass and make it vulnerable to unlimited exploitation and potential extinction. But, this just might do away with something far more important. That would be the “x2" standard (short for a salinity isohaline) set by the State Water Board to enable enough fresh water to get down to Suisun and Honker Bays where many fisheries and the foodweb need it for their productivity and survival.

Without an outflow standard to protect the fishery, all that water just might be available for export to growers. Perhaps even to growers like those who live in Kern County where much of the desert that once surrounded Bakersfield has turned green, mostly due to nonnative crops and nonnative people who are very fond of perpetuating nonnative myths.

There are several hundred nonnative game fish in the state, many of them intentionally introduced like the striped bass. If this litigation prevails, and if any of these nonnative public fishery resources swim in the Delta, I’m betting they are next on the Committee’s chopping block.

Beneath the surface, it appears these growers from Bakersfield are attempting to make people pay for trying to protect what little remains of one of the greatest living ecosystems on the planet. Fighting for the right for Delta smelt or any other Delta fishery to have the water they need to survive has become a necessity if we are to maintain a natural resource legacy that belongs to the public. We don’t have another choice like our growers from down south.

Thanks for standing in for the fish! The great anthropologist Margaret Mead once said
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

John Beuttler
Conservation Director
California Sportfishing Alliance
1360 Neilson Street Berkeley, CA 94702-1116
510.526.4049


CSPA is a nonprofit fishery conservation organization. You can support our efforts by becoming a member. Donations are tax-deductible, greatly needed and most appreciated. Send checks to CSPA at 1360 Neilson Street, Berkeley, CA 94702-1116. Membership starts a $30. Questions? 510-526-4049.