June 18, 2009
Myself and our new AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project (WSP) inters Claire and Andrew surveyed Larsen Creek for salmon fry and habitat quality. No salmon fry were spotted at all! This was very alarming, as Larsen creek can support coho and steelhead, and we usually help relocate hundreds and hundreds of fry from Larson creek before flows trap them in drying pools.
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Did any salmon or steelhead spawn in Larson Creek this season? Our spawner survey, smolt monitoring, and now fish rescue survey all say NO. This will go down in history as a very low year for our beloved salmonids!
The good news is that the creek was still flowing well upstream, and all pools were connected to the riffles and surface flow, but downstream near the confluence with San Geronimo Creek the flow is reduced to a trickle and will soon go subsurface. Last year this subsurface flow cut off all fry from moving downstream in early May! Thanks to the rains we had, this year looks better for flow.
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
May 4, 2009
Rain! Good, wet, steady rain fell last night and the creeks are flowing well. Still no signs of coho fry in any surveys or in our 3 outmigrating smolt monitoring stations. All over the state the coho spawning took a catastrophic drop in the 2008/2009 spawning season, and only 26 redds were confirmed in the entire Lagunitas Creek watershed. There are coho fry downstream by the SPAWN office (see Envirnmental Education/Virtual Watershed Experience Video Collection), and SPAWN is keeping a close watch over them!
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
April 22, 2009
Once again, a drought is upon us. In upper Arroyo Creek, flows are low, and I am keeping close watch over an area that SPAWN conducts rescue operations every year. We had a report of smolt sized fish (bigger than 100mm or 4 inches) in a nearby pool, so those older fish may be in danger as well. Arroyo creek is showing signs of a good steelhead spawn this year, with lots of fry to be seen in the riffles and runs, but nowhere near the density of fry we saw last year at this time. No signs of coho fry so far. Coho spawning took a catastrophic drop of 86% for this year class, and SPAWN members are only reporting a few sightings of coho in our creeks this year. If there are coho fry, SPAWN will keep a close and protective watch over them!
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
September 13, 2008
Vivian, Parker, and Angela joined me for a morning of fish rescue and water quality monitoring around Woodacre. Pools holing adult steelhead had decent water quality, but a very large pool holding dozens of stranded fry last month was showing almost no oxygen, dark brown/black water, and no visible swimming fish! Ugly and sad. We hiked upstream and found a shallow, silty pool that had a few fish in in when I did a quick sweep of the net. Working at this drying pool for 30 minutes resulted in >30 steelhead fry, a steelhead 1+ yr old, and a COHO SMOLT! The smolt was large, silver, no spots, 200mm long and was likely trapped this Spring when water levels dropped below the Railroad Ave. culvert. All fish were relocated to an area downstream with fresh flow, deep pools, shade, and cover.
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
September 10, 2008
The press is in!
http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_10421601?IADID=Search-www.marinij.com-www.marinij.com
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1507785266/bctid1786938401
September 9, 2008
I met 9 volunteers from the Week of Caring, a volunteer effort that brought folks from Autodesk GBS PMO out to the San Geronimo Valley to help SPAWN. We gathered around a difficult pool and rescued steelhead fry that were stranded in the drying pool. We also rescued 2 fry out of a mud puddle the size of a serving platter! We were joined by Mark Prado of the Marin IJ who were alerted to the dire conditions for salmon by SPAWN.
To all the Autodesk volunteers, THANK YOU, and I hope you can join SPAWN this fall for our creek restoration plantings!
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
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September 4, 2008
San Geronimo Creek water levels are the lowest ANYONE can remember, and SPAWN is passing on all the observations and concerns of our members to MMWD, CA Fish & Game, and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Long reaches are now dry gravel, and habitat along the mainstream is being reduced to isolated pools. I am planning more rescues and need help, and if you can not join me, please help with a DONATION to SPAWN.
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
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August 23, 2008
SPAWN teamed up with GGNRA's Big Year Event for a special fish rescue August 23rd. Salmon lovers young and old gathered, listened attentively to my safety and sensitivity talk, then split in to 2 teams for fish rescues. Kevin and Jenny led a team to Arroyo Creek where SPAWN observed coho spawning this winter. Much of the creek was already dry, but the team relocated several steelhead and coho fry! I led a team to the north fork of the San Geronimo Creek to tackle a large, shallow series of pools. We caught over 150 steelhead fry and 2 large smolts! Dedicated SPAWN volunteers Mel and Lee shouldered the responsibility of handling the 3 rounds of relocation and release while the rest of us were on a non-stop flurry of rescue action. THANK YOU to everyone that attended and helped to make this a success!
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
August 1, 2008
I've scheduled a big Fish Rescue Day with GGNRA's Big Year Event for August 23rd, but my surveys show some areas that can't wait that long. So, I headed out solo to a pool Kevin and I found upstream of the BIG culvert on San Geronimo Creek in Woodacre that runs under Railroad Rd. In less than an hour I had scooped 84 steelhead fry and juveniles out on this one pool, but NO COHO! Weighing and measuring all the little fish took more time than catching them, but it was worth it.
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
July 29, 2008
Tom Yarish and I collected water samples today and I noted that most tributaries feeding San Geronimo Creek have ceased their surface flow contributions. Tom commented that he had never seen the creeks so dry. East Fork Woodacre, Norht Fork San Geronimo, Montezuma, Larsen, and Arroyo Creeks are all drying up fast. Fish rescues are planned for later this week - please email me to join in chris@spawnusa.org
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
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July 25, 2008
Today was possibly the best rescue day to date! Sam B had emailed me about getting some work done with SPAWN towards his Eagle Scout project and wanted to help with fish rescue. We started the day with a survey of Willis Evans Canyon and saw good creek flow near the pedestrian bridge so we headed over to Woodacre. Research indicated that the North Fork of the San Geronimo Creek usually had stranded fish, so that was our next stop. Flow from this reach had ceased before reaching the mainstem, and isolated pools were drying up. Sam and I spend 30 minutes netting fish out of 3 pools, lots in the 50mm range. We sat down to measure, weigh and ID the fish and WOW there were 8 coho fry! We had found the elusive coho fry of 2008, and if it were not for our efforts these fry would have surely perished! After we released these fish, we surveyed upstream and found that it was pretty stable for now, with 2-3 big, deep pools.
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
June 27, 2008
Roy's Pools Phase II commenced early on Friday morning with the valuable assistance of Eric from MMWD and MMWD interns Deanna and Kit. I was joined by SPAWN crew Kevin and Jenny, and we all worked together. What a great rescue day it was! Not only did we find lots of BIG salmonids, but many of them were COHO SMOLTS!!. The crew working together over 2 hrs relocated 34 fish from this trapped enclosure, and of these almost HALF were coho smolts. The majority of coho smolts were on their way downstream to the ocean in late May, so these fish were likely stranded for over a month. Once released downstream in San Geronimo Creek they could be seen swimming rapidly downstream, on their way to catch up with their many coho cousins who swam downstream last month. Due to the success of this operation, and the obvious failure of Roy's Pools to provide coho passage year-round, I am currently speaking with NMFS and others about engineering a better solution. I am also planning another 2008 rescue from the lower portion of this structure under the road, where subsurface flows have created an impassable area to ALL SALMONIDs in upper San Geronimo Creek watershed. Stay tuned!
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
June 26, 2008
After a few brief phone calls over the last week, I had arranged to meet James Fong and his extended family to rescue stranded salmonids out of Larsen Creek, which continues to dry up and is cut-off from the mainstem San Geronimo Creek. He arrived with a van-load of helpers! After our SPAWN intro and safety talks, we proceeded to catch over 150 large and small steelhead. The kids had a great time and learned a lot along the way. Thank you for all your help, catching and measuring the fish! What a great day, and a great example of how the efforts of one family can make a big difference for the fish.
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
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June 24, 2008
Jenny, Kevin, and I met with Woodacre resident and renowned SPAWN volunteer Al. Al knows the upper watershed like the back of his hand, and most residents are his personal friends. With Al as our guide, we surveyed areas of the W. and E. forks of Woodacre Creek and saw many pools with steelhead fry and smolts. In town, the creek is dry, but up in the upper watershed there is flow fed by springs (or is it just sucked dry in the lower areas?). In a week or less, we will need to re-visit many of these areas to rescue the young salmonids,
Al also led us to view a few large, adult steelhead in Woodacre Creek. These steelhead were easily 2 feet long and were looking happy, although confined. There are currently 11 adult steelhead in the San Geronimo Creek watershed that I have been monitoring in June, and conditions at the moment are favorable for their continued survival. Please contact me ASAP if you can report any adult steelhead stranded in the watershed - Thanks!
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
June 19, 2008
Roy's Pools is a large fish passage structure built on San Geronimo creek at the edge of the San Geronimo golf course and consists of 4 large pools for winter flow passage and a narrow fish ladder for summer fish passage. Roy's Pools is a brilliant project on paper, and much better than the dam that used to reside in this space, but one condition that persists at Roy's Pools is the formation of isolated pools that prohibit passage of fish trapped in them when the flow through the big pools ceases.
Fish trapped in these pools can not move far and are subject to the decaying conditions as the pools dry up, warm up, and become depleted in oxygen due to the temperature and much that decays in the pools.
SPAWN volunteers met with MMWD Ecologist Eric for the Roy's Pools rescue operation - Phase I. Eric was needed because he would be operating an electroshocker. Due to the size of the pools and the many deep cracks the fish can hide in it is preferred to use this method to briefly stun the fish and net them before they revive. Eric was a pro and we were quickly scooping fry and smolts into our buckets. These fish, a total of 17 from the 2 lower pools, were then weighed and measured. One smolt hiding in only inches of water was almost 7 inches long!
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The upper pool was too deep to work on, so Phase II of this operation will occur later in the season when the level of water drops down further.
In past years, many coho have spawned in this upper area of San Geronimo Creek, but none were found in our rescue operation. The 2008 coho babies remain elusive, and are hopefully all safe and sound in stable habitat.
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
June 5, 2008
The search for stranded coho continues! On this particularly focussed rescue operation I set out with avid naturalist David Seaborg and fish rescue expert Mel Wright to survey drying pools for stranded coho. Our first stop was Larsen Creek, which made a small surge after the heat wave and regained some flow, but remained cut-off from the mainstem San Geronimo Creek as it has since May 5th, 2008. Three steelhead fry were trapped in the Larsen fish ladder at the last, leaky pool and were quickly saved by David and Chris. Led by Mel, our search continued into the upper watershed in Woodacre. Thanks to permission from a very SPAWN friendly landowner we surveyed a reach of Woodacre Creek with a very large, isolated pool and many smaller pools linked by a trickle of water. A wonderful re-vegetation project exists at this site and I noted how well the new redwood trees supplied by SPAWN were doing in their creekside habitat. The pool we surveyed remained cold and deep, and the smaller pools well linked for the finger sized fry, so we decided to leave this area undisturbed for the time being and continue our search for stranded coho in the lower watershed where their spawning occurred.
David, Mel, and I entered Samuel P. Taylor state park and had a nice chat with Ranger Todd about our mission and then debated a woodpecker sighting. Todd agreed with Mel that it was an Acorn Woodpecker. With permission to proceed, we had VIP parking and quickly reached an isolated pool off Larsen Creek. A large root ball provided plenty of undercut shade and temperatures in the pool remained cool and water quality good. I spotted a salmonid fry, a baby threespined stickleback, signal crayfish, and a rough-skinned newt in the pond. After 5 minutes sweeping with the nets, no salmonids could be coaxed from the undercut, so we moved on knowing this pool was weeks away from drying up.
The team returned to Larsen Creek and gently corralled another half-dozen steelhead fry out of an isolated pool and returned them to San Geronimo Creek, but still no coho! We were happy to have saved a dozen steelhead fry and to complete a thorough survey, but were disappointed that our search for coho came up short.
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist
May 17, 2008
In recognition and support of national Endangered Species Day, SPAWN staff and volunteers headed to Larsen Creek to rescue endangered coho and threatened steelhead fry from the enclosed pools they were trapped in. Due to the extremely dry spring, Larsen Creek went subsurface and was a dry patch of gravel before connecting to San Geronimo Creek as early as May 5th! With no chance of swimming to stable habitat, it was up to us to save them.
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Led by volunteer numero uno, Mel Wright, myself and and 6 other intrepid coho lovers submerged ourselves in 4 hours of fun and exciting work. We gently corralled the fish in the pools and baffled areas into our nets, using teamwork and experience to catch them from in between rocks and roots. We weighed and measured a good portion of the fry, and recorded over 250 rescued fry.
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Way to go gang!
Unfortunately, we caught a lot of steelhead fry and no smolts or coho. The coho spawn was very dismal this year and we were hoping to see a few coho fry, but not on this trip. We'll be back to Larsen Creek again to search through the deeper pools for the elusive, endangered coho before the raccoons and birds get to them first.
Chris Pincetich, Watershed Biologist