Rivers of a Lost Coast

It was November 1990, nearly two decades ago when Russell Chatham wrote his intro to the second edition of The Angler’s Coast. A recent article on the very real possibility of silver salmon extinction in Lagunitas Creek by Peter Fimrite in the SF Chronicle had us return to the pages of Chatham’s intro. For clarification to the reader, Lagunitas Creek was previously known as Paper Mill Creek.

“Of all the losses one could list, the saddest voids for me are the virtual extinction of the Paper Mill Creek silver salmon, the Tomales Bay striped Bass, and the utter ruination of the Russian River. I wrote almost nothing about these places for magazines because they were too important personally, and even twenty years ago there were too many fishermen and I recognized that proselytizing might make matters worse.
“Paper Mill Creek was mentioned in Time and Tide, and from those passages a reader might infer that fishing was pretty good. But those were steelhead, and Paper Mill was famous for its run of silver salmon. Many thousands of fish once gathered at the head of Tomales Bay in late October, and when the first rains arrived, they surged up to the northeast slope of Mount Tamalpais, through the San Geronimo Valley to Woodacre, and through the Nicasio Valley almost to Lucas Valley. But one by one the spawning streams fell to dams – first Alpine in the twenties, then Carson Dam in the mid-fifties, and finally Nicasio Dam. The crippled spawning system survived until the latter two projects, which were brought on by Marin County’s population boom and deeply unattractive growth. Various stocking programs were attempted at Paper Mill, using fish from northern California and Oregon, but these fish were genetically unsuited to the latitude and wanted to run months before the rains. The introduced fish died out, and only a few survivors of the native run have managed to return to the remaining few miles of silty stream, much of it polluted by dairy operations.
“The dam also caused a substantial drop in the flow of water entering Tomales Bay. With less freshwater flush on the ebb tie, the bay silted in, spoiling the flats. It now seems probable that few, if any, striped bass or silver salmon will ever again be caught in Tomales Bay or Paper Mill Creek. Although stripers ran up Paper Mill and spawned in its estuary, this was not significant to the run. These bass migrated north from San Francisco Bay. The run, never big to begin with, suffered in proportion to the whole fishery. A remnant population still exists, but they are considered threatened.”

Last friday Peter Fimrite of the SF chronicle, noting the terrible outlook for the future of silver salmon in Lagunitas Creek reported, “The lack of rain this winter has contributed to what fisheries biologists say is, so far, the worst return of coho salmon in the recorded history of Marin County’s Lagunitas Creek watershed (formerly Paper Mill Creek), one of California’s most critical ecosystems for the endangered fish.”

Only a smattering of coho were spotted and only 20 egg nests, or redds, were seen in the two main tributaries - Lagunitas and San Geronimo creeks - during the annual winter survey of fish, watershed biologists said this week.

The paltry showing of redds represents an 89 percent drop in the number of returning offspring of parents that gave birth in the lush western Marin watershed three years ago. Last year at this time, 148 redds had been counted, then the lowest number in the 14 years that records have been kept, said Paola Bouley, the conservation program director for the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network, or SPAWN.

“It’s just frightening, actually,” Bouley said. “We were expecting 70 redds, which is still a 63 percent decline. It’s definitely a crisis situation.”

The waterway, which winds its way through the picturesque San Geronimo Valley on the northwest side of Mount Tamalpais, typically supports the largest wild run of salmon left in the state, historically about 10 percent of California’s coho population.

During the first winter rains, the spawning fish swim 33 miles from the open ocean into Tomales Bay and up the creek through the redwood-studded valley to lay their eggs and die. The females lay their eggs only after they’ve found the place where they were born three years before. The decline this year is alarming given that 190 redds were counted in 2005 when the parents of these coho laid their eggs.

The plummeting coho numbers exacerbate a near catastrophic decline in the overall population of salmon along the West Coast. So few chinook salmon returned to spawn in the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system last year that ocean fishing had to be banned in California and Oregon.

The number of coho eggs throughout the state declined about 70 percent last year. The low number of coho in the Lagunitas watershed in 2007 was shocking given that a record 496 redds were counted in 2004, the year they were born.

To read more from the Fimrite article visit . . . SF Chronicle Article Link