The effort to preserve a healthy population of salmon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is a huge challenge. Those little salmon have a lot of factors working against them. Now a bill in the House of Representatives is trying to take on one of them, the striped bass.
The “Save Our Salmon Act” by Republican Jeff Denham of Turlock would update a 1992 environmental law that manages fish in the Delta. That law sought to increase the number of salmon, but it also set out to double the number of striped bass.
“This nonnative fish is eating all of the fish we’re trying to save,” Denham says. “This is a great way for republicans and democrats to address an issue of water and of saving our salmon.”
"This nonnative fish is eating all of the fish we're trying to save." - Jeff Denham
Denham’s bill would allow people to catch more bass with the hope that salmon would benefit.
“We are opening up the striped bass to we can allow for greater removal, allowing fishermen to fish higher limits, which will actually give our salmon a fighting chance to survive,” says Denham.
The bill successfully passed through the House in early July. Democratic Congressman Jim Costa of Fresno says the bill received bipartisan support. Costa says the drought helped give lawmakers a better understanding of the issue.
“More and more people have begun to learn the science, biology of the multiple factors that are causing the decline of fisheries that are native to California,” says Costa.
He says the bill is imperative to keep salmon alive, but also to preserve water for farmers looking at tiny allocations of water again this year.
“We also hope that as a result of this we can not only help the salmon but gain greater water supply reliability, which the San Joaquin Valley has been devastated by,” says Costa.
"It's much easier to blame the predators for fish decline rather than the fact that whole ecosystems have changed because there's insufficient water to make them work right." - Peter Moyle
Striped bass aren’t native to California, but even still 24 years ago authors of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act set the goal to double their population. Advocates like Aubrey Bettencourt, the Executive Director of the California Water Alliance, applaud the “Save Our Salmon Act.”
“Implementing a predator management program like the save our salmon program is a practical step to addressing one of the many stressors in the Delta,” says Bettencourt.
She says by decreasing the amount of bass farmers could in the long run have more access to water.
“The health of the salmon and smelt is a critical factor in determining the operation of our water supply,” Bettencourt. “So there’s a domino effect into effect to how each of those elements relates to each other.”
"We're a predator not only by the direct harvest of fish but also by the fact that all of our stream diversions and various other things we do to the water also harvest fish." - Peter Moyle
Denham’s bill quotes a 2013 study along the Tuolumne River near Don Pedro Dam east of Modesto saying that 93 percent of juvenile salmon smolts ended up as dinner for striped bass. But not everyone is so sure that efforts to decrease the bass population will actually save salmon.
“They are not a cause of any of the declines,” says noted UC Davis Fish Biologist Peter Moyle who studies fish like the threatened Delta smelt.
“They’re just a symptom of the general decline of the system because striped bass are actually decreasing any way because their habitats have been declining in quality,” Moyle adds.
Moyle says the larger issue for salmon isn’t bass, but humans.
“We’re a predator not only by the direct harvest of fish but also by the fact that all of our stream diversions and various other things we do to the water also harvest fish,” says Moyle.
He says hatchery released salmon are especially vulnerable since they’re raised in giant tubs and fed by humans. When released they can die of exhaustion and are often eaten by scavengers like the white catfish because they lack the skills to avoid predators. Moyle says the best way to preserve the salmon population is to improve the ability of the ecosystem to support them because the early life stages set population size.
“It’s much easier to blame the predators for fish decline rather than the fact that whole ecosystems have changed because there’s insufficient water to make them work right,” says Moyle.
He says if the bill becomes law it should be instituted as an experiment with clear objectives to determine its success. But for it to get there a companion bill will have to go through the senate where a larger conversation about water legislation in California is taking place.
