[env-trinity] Disease killing young Klamath River salmon

[Thomas P. Schlosser]

It's worth remebering that when Reclamation says (below) that there's 
too little water to help now ("We decided that is not the most optimal 
use of a very short water supply at this point,” Person said.") they are 
still using a 2014 Annual Operations Plan for the Klamath Project which, 
at page 2 calculates the project supply of water to be diverted from the 
Klamath at *239,000 acre-feet*. This is what they consider to be "most 
optimal."
Tom

On 5/21/2015 6:32 AM, Tom Stokely wrote:
> http://www.redding.com/news/local-news/disease-killing-young-klamath-river-salmon_18847031
>
>
>   Disease killing young Klamath River salmon
>
> Damon Arthur
>
> 5:50 PM, May 20, 2015
> 5:51 PM, May 20, 2015
> local news <http://www.redding.com/topic/local+news> | homepage 
> showcase <http://www.redding.com/topic/homepage+showcase> | tablet 
> showcase <http://www.redding.com/topic/tablet+showcase> | happening 
> now <http://www.redding.com/topic/happening+now>
>
> Copyright 2015 Journal Media Group. All rights reserved. This material 
> may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
> JEFF BARNARD/AP PHOTO
> SHOW CAPTION
> KLAMATH RIVER, California - A disease flourishing in warm drought 
> conditions in the Klamath River is killing young salmon and steelhead 
> trying to migrate out to sea.
> And while in some sections of the river disease has been found in 
> nearly all of the fish tested, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials 
> also said Wednesday the drought has left little water available to 
> send downstream to improve conditions.
> The Klamath Fish Health Assessment Team says conditions in the river 
> are at orange, which means a fish kill is likely and federal and state 
> agencies need to be alerted.
> “Orange is probably underplaying the crisis,” said Craig Tucker, 
> natural resources policy advocate for the Karuk Tribe, one of several 
> groups with the assessment team that has biologists monitoring the river.
> Scott Foott, project leader for the California-Nevada Fish Health 
> Center in Anderson, said about 90 percent of the fish from Klamath 
> brought to his center for testing have the disease, called ceratonova 
> Shasta.
> Foott didn’t know how many fish were dying of the disease in the 
> river, but said mortality rate among fish with the disease is very 
> high. Fish biologists said conditions in the river are bad this year 
> because of the lack of rain and runoff from snowmelt.
> Randy Turner, the fish health assessment team coordinator, said with 
> low flows and warm water, worms that carry the disease have flourished 
> on the streambed.
> The problem isn’t as bad in years when the river is cooler and runs 
> higher and faster in the winter and spring because the current kicks 
> up the gravel and cobble on the streambed, disrupting the worms’ life 
> cycle, he said.
> The worst section of the Klamath River is from the Shasta River west 
> of Interstate 5 to more than 80 miles downstream to the Salmon River, 
> Turner said.
> Brian Person, acting area manager of the bureau’s Yreka office, said 
> Wednesday that after consulting with other agencies, they could not 
> send more water downstream to improve conditions for the fish.
> “We decided that is not the most optimal use of a very short water 
> supply at this point,” Person said.
> The bureau, as well as other federal and state wildlife agencies, 
> would continue to monitor the fish in the river and could at some 
> point decide to send more water downstream if conditions change, 
> Person said.
> If the readiness level on the river goes from orange to red — which 
> means a fish kill is occurring — there is probably little officials 
> can do because so little water is available upstream in the river, 
> Tucker said.
> Even if more water was sent downstream there probably isn’t enough 
> available to benefit the young salmon, Tucker said. And if they use 
> extra water in the spring to help the young salmon swimming out to 
> sea, there might not be enough water in the fall to help the salmon 
> returning from the ocean to spawn.
> During the past few years bureau officials have had to release more 
> water from the Trinity River to prevent a different disease from 
> killing spawning salmon in the Klamath. That disease, called “ich,” 
> has affected areas below where the Trinity flows into the Klamath River.
> The young fish dying from the ceratonova Shasta in the Klamath River 
> are upstream of its confluence with the Trinity River, Turner said.
> It is likely a large percentage of this year’s salmon hatch will not 
> make it out to sea, which means there will be fewer adult salmon 
> returning back upstream to spawn in three years, Tucker said.
> “I think we’re definitely going to take a hit when the adults return,” 
> he said.
> Copyright 2015 Journal Media Group. All rights reserved. This material 
> may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> env-trinity mailing list
> env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us
> http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20150521/7395d1ac/attachment.html>