Steelhead Conservation through Stewardship
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When a healthy steelhead hits your bait it’s an exhilarating feeling worth chasing. But what happens to those avid anglers when their local populations decline and face serious threats to habitat and population size? In the Carmel Valley they have become champions and stewards of the species. This has manifested in many different ways including the pursuit of policy reform, public education, or boots on the ground action.
One example of this is fish rescues in areas where river connectivity fails in the warm months of summer. On the Carmel River tributaries, during the summer, river flow is regularly low or ceases completely and local volunteer anglers and fish enthusiasts perform fish rescues on in areas that run dry. They move fish that are stranded within hot, oxygen depleted, pools to areas where flow stays connected and water temperature is more appropriate for the species.
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These rescues are permitted through the federal permits from the National Marine Fisheries Service and state permits through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and completed in close coordination with the fish agencies. The planning process starts well before volunteers gather to help rescue stranded fishes and requires close coordination with local and regional fish agencies, rescue location scouting and planning, and equipment training.
When this is complete, the rescues can start. In teams of four to five individuals groups work their way through areas of the tributaries that are no longer receiving flow with electrofishers, buckets, and nets. The groups rescue stranded fish and take them to larger holding tanks for transport to the mainstem Carmel River.
The efforts bring together a mix of every different kind of person, from professional biologists who help run the teams, to young adults in the process of getting their degrees and experience in fisheries-related fields, to fish heads who are there to learn about the animals they love.
It is an opportunity to share knowledge and advocacy and to teach people, including kids, new skills. Every fish rescued from a stranding location gets a new opportunity to outmigrate and come back to the river to spawn to continue the population.
These rescues have proven to help stranded steelhead survive, but also are an avenue for data collection, relationship building, and public education. The data collected through these rescues is incorporated into additional datasets for the species and utilized in decision making processes. Perhaps most importantly, they have proven to be a good way to get people interested in the species and add advocates to the ranks.
If you have a local group that is interested in starting something similar please feel free to reach out for a discussion.
Great Post! We have a similar conservation group in the San Francisco Bay Area that focuses on habitat restoration of Pescadero Creek. My son and I have been fortunate enough to catch and release a few steelhead during the legal season. Hopefully our efforts lead to a healthy population in the future! Seems to be working.
-Jason