This is just one post in the Delta Issues Category

Scientists breeding smelt in case the species goes extinct in the Delta

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 31, 2008 at 5:18 am

From the Sacramento Bee:

Inside a makeshift collection of modified shipping containers lined up on a patch of asphalt, a system of gurgling pipes and buckets holds the Delta’s future. Or, at least, one future. These faded steel boxes house the beginnings of a new refuge population of threatened Delta smelt. The fish, only finger-length at adulthood, could be used one day to restore the population if their wild kin go extinct.

Unfortunately, extinction is all too likely after five years of steep population declines for the smelt and four other fish species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. All are known as “pelagic” fish because they live in the Delta’s moving water column.

Scientists have been unable to explain the decline, much less solve it. So the refuge smelt are intended as a last-ditch effort to save the species, long considered a bellwether for the health of the estuary as a whole. If the smelt disappear, scientists believe, other species will follow, along with a decline in water quality that could make Delta water undrinkable for the 25 million Californians who depend on it.

Smelt, in other words, are the lead car in an ecological train that’s in danger of derailing. “It’s bigger than smelt,” said Bradd Baskerville-Bridges, a marine biologist and co-director of the UC Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory, where the smelt are being raised. “It’s affecting all the pelagic species right now, and there’s no easy solution.”