Delta pumps trap over 250,000 threadfin shad

From the California Progress Report:

The massive federal pumps that export water from the California Delta to agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley entrained (trapped) over 370,000 threadfin shad, a major forage species on the Delta, in one week.

On one day, October 16, Bureau of Reclamation biologists observed 250,000 shad in collection buckets in the pumping facilities. After collecting the buckets, the federal workers put the fish into a tanker truck and released them into the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. “We were able to salvage most of the fish and get them back into the Delta,” observed Jeff McCracken, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, dismissing an earlier media report that some of the fish had to be buried.

McCracken said the large number of shad being taken in one week occurred when large schools of shad moved into the area of the Delta pumps, resulting in the entrainment of the introduced species. “We feel that we do successfully return most of the entrained fish to the Delta alive,” said Ron Silva of the U.S Bureau of Reclamation. “However, we haven’t assessed the survival rate of the threadfin shad because it is not a listed species like delta smelt, king salmon, steelhead or green sturgeon. In our salvage operations, we focus on the listed species, with the exception of one species, striped bass.”

To read the full text of this article from the California Progress Report, click here.

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