by Becky Preston
California coho salmon north of San Francisco Bay is the most recent group to join in line to be protected by the California Endangered Species Act.
Under the act, the term “endangered species” is defined as a species of plant, fish or wildlife that is in serious danger of becoming extinct throughout “all, or a significant portion of” its range. The act is limited to species or subspecies native to California.
The California Department of Fish and Game has until April 27, 2002, to review a petition and make its recommendation to the Fish and Game Commission regarding whether or not coho salmon should be classified as a state-listed endangered species.
I found myself intrigued, and I started to look into the reasons why the coho salmon’s population declined. I found some startling numbers and statistics. For instance, coho salmon population numbers have decreased 90 to 95 percent. California was home to about 500,000 coho in the 1940s, but now only a few thousand remain.
Throughout the years, the decline in the coho population proved to be disastrous for the fishing industry. During the 1970s, coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest received between $60 and $70 million from the coho commercial fishing industry each year. Today, income from the coho fishing is essentially zero.
The numbers are somewhat descriptive, but they don’t individualize the plight of the coho. I wanted to see for myself the area that was being destroyed and to observe the salmon in their habitat. I wanted to formulate my own opinion and conclusion.
Uninvited yet still eager, I lowered my blue-rimmed, plastic diving mask into a local Humboldt Bay stream — that some coho call home. My mask revealed the shallow, brown-algae covered cobbles on the bottom of the stream. I slowly moved through a small pool.
With the flick of a tail, a flash of silver darted in front of my eyes to the shallow depression at the base of a tree. A series of round black spots decorated the layered scales on the coho salmon’s cigar-shaped body. Its large eyes seemed to indicate amazement by my immersed intrusion. I watched as the reflection of the setting sun transformed the coho’s scaly exterior into a sleek silk dress as it swam under the trunk of its old-growth hiding place.
I did not consider myself a dangerous predator to this young fish. But if I were in its potentially doomed situation, I’d hide too. Who’s to blame? What is the difference between humans who build houses, log trees or divert water? Aren’t all of these people ultimately responsible for the causal factors of killing coho?
In my excitement, I stirred up reposing sediment in the stream bottom. As I waited for it to clear, I imagined myself being in the fins of a juvenile coho living in this shallow stream. On a pleasant summer day, this little fish has to survive the warming pools of water that have become shallower — shrinking its habitat. More and more of its siblings and cousins are forced to share the smaller pools. I couldn’t imagine fighting for living space with my family in a home the size of a closet, not to mention sharing breakfast, lunch and dinner for one.
The fine silt finally settled, and I tried to lay still in the middle of the stream with my arms outstretched to stabilize my movements. Then I saw it. It was an approximately 8-month-old coho salmon, and it cautiously emerged from the darkened haze of the water under the water-soaked log. I named it Cautious Coho, but called it C.C. for short.
As its large eyes suspiciously investigated my foreign body submerged in its home, I wondered if young C.C. would be one of the lucky ones. It had survived the summer months but now had to face the upcoming winter. C.C.’s winter life will consist of sustaining in flood currents and trying to find even more floating insect meals to replenish his expended energy.
The daily threat of predators kept C.C. from swimming any closer to my emerged body. It probably always had one eye toward the bright light of the sun looking for the shadows of birds like herons or kingfishers, and another eye in the water looking for otters. Unfortunately, C.C. only has two eyes, and probably its biggest predator was the closest to him at that moment … a human floating in his pool.
I looked into C.C.’s eyes and felt guilty knowing that I belong to a society whose actions result in the killing of so many coho, such as C.C. I tried to see our actions through its ancestors’ eyes. I pictured the natural events that coho had to endure in their habitat, and I then pictured companies coming in with grinding chainsaws and huge bulldozers to remove old-growth trees down to the waterline.
I asked California Fish and Game Environmentalist Specialist Ken Moore about the affects of overharvesting.
“If too many trees are taken, it reduces the shade to the stream, which increases the water temperature,” Moore said.
This results in unbearable conditions for the very sensitive coho. Coho like cool, deep, dark areas of water usually under fallen, old-growth trees.
In addition to logging, consider the impact of building a road and a home on a hill. All the removed dirt has to be placed somewhere. And many people put it to the side of the clearing or the newly paved road leading to the yellow, picket-fenced home.
When it rains, as it often does in Humboldt County, the water begins to trickle and flow down the hill toward the stream. As it moves down the hill, it picks up more and more soil and charges the stream. The more soil added to the stream, the shallower the stream becomes — which creates less living space and increases the already competitive way of life for the coho.
Now the farmers and water diversion enter this already complex situation. When water is needed, large pipes are placed in the streams and rivers, and water is diverted to the place in need of that water. It’s hard for the coho to stay in the stream if there are no screens placed over the pipes to prevent fish from being sucked up into them like a piece of dirt we vacuum off our living room floors.
C.C. still has about five months to survive in this little stream until it begins its journey to the ocean. I was in awe of the beauty of the fish I had just encountered. But that awe began to turn to sadness as I thought of C.C., and fish like it, trying to overcome the combination of human-caused habitat destruction from poor logging practices, agricultural diversions and urbanization.
That sadness began to set in as I left C.C.’s world and slowly drove home on a road that probably caused harm to coho habitat when it was being built. I started wondering about a lot of little things that I probably had done to contribute to the decline in the coho population — such as running water, electricity, building my house and eating the farmers’ produce that uses water from streams and rivers, such as C.C.’s.
“Coho salmon are the least tolerant of fish. So by protecting coho it would protect other fish — such as cutthroat and steelhead,” said Cal Trout Regional Manager Tom Weseloh, who submitted a petition on behalf of a coalition of 11 environmental groups.
However, while some organizations claim the protection is needed and will have positive benefits for coho, others claim they’re already doing their part and that the listing under the endangered-species act is not needed.
“Pacific Lumber Company has a Habitat Conservation Plan, a multi-species document that guides our forestry and logging activities,” said Mary Bulwinkel, Pacific Lumber’s director of public relations. “The coho salmon is one of the species covered by this document, so the Pacific Lumber Company is already treating the coho salmon as if it was a listed species.”
As April 2002 approaches, groups for and in opposition of the petition wonder with me about the future of coho such as C.C.
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