[env-trinity] Article Submission: HUGE CA WATER STORY: Water Contractors Launch Another Attack on Striped Bass, Black Bass (revised)

[Dan Bacher]

  http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/07/25/water-contractors-launch-attack-on-striped-bass-black-bass/




Photo of Prospect Island fish kill in the California Delta in November  
2007.
Water Contractors Launch Another Attack on Striped Bass, Black Bass
  by Dan Bacher |  posted in: Spotlight |  0
Agribusiness interests and Southern California water agencies have  
launched a new attack in their campaign to eradicate striped bass as  
they scapegoat the popular gamefish for salmon and Delta smelt  
declines caused by decades of water exports from the Sacramento-San  
Joaquin River Dleta.

The Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, the Astroturf group bankrolled  
by Beverly Hills agribusiness tycoon Stewart Resnick, on June 9  
submitted a new petition to the California Fish and Game Commission to  
raise the bag limit and reduce the size limit on striped bass in an  
attempt to reduce their population. This time they’ve added black bass  
as a so-called “predator” to their petition.

The “Coalition” is joined by a who’s who of the state’s agribusiness,  
water agency and corporate interests, including the California Chamber  
of Commerce, the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern  
California, San Joaquin Tributaries Authority, Southern California  
Water Committee, State Water Contractors, Western Growers Association,  
California Farm Bureau Federation, Northern California Water  
Association and Kern County Water Agency.

When the water contractors last tried to eradicate striped bass by  
slashing the size limit and increasing the bag limit, anglers were  
able to defeat their proposal with a large showing of people at the  
February 2012 Fish and Game Commission meeting after Fish Sniffer  
Editor Cal Kellogg and I helped organize a campaign mobilizing over  
450 anglers to show up for a CDFW meeting on the issue in Rio Vista in  
November 2011.

Coalition for a Sustainable Delta spokesman Michael Boccadoro, the  
president of the Dolphin Group, claimed the purpose of the petition is  
to “help preserve” Sacramento River Chinook salmon and Delta smelt.

“California families, businesses and farms have sacrificed  
considerably during this drought to provide water to help preserve  
salmon and smelt,” Boccadoro stated. “Modifying size and bag limits  
for striped bass is an important next step to better protect and begin  
restoring these endangered species. It is clear that more needs to be  
done to halt the continuing declines.”

The proposed changes would increase the bag limits and decrease the  
size limits for black bass and striped bass in the Sacramento-San  
Joaquin Delta and rivers tributary to the Delta, according to Boccadoro.

The black bass size limit would be decreased from 12 inches to 8  
inches and the daily bag limit would be increased from 5 fish to 10  
fish.

The striped bass size limit would be decreased from 18 inches to 12  
inches and the daily bag limit would be increased from 2 fish to 6 fish.

The Coalition also criticized state regulators for focusing on  
increased flows and water pumping restrictions while “predation by non- 
native species has gone largely unaddressed.”

Anglers oppose the proposal because they say it will reduce the  
population of stripers and black bass and not address the real causes  
of salmon, Delta smelt and other fish declines – water diversions,  
overpumping and mismanagement by the state and federal governments.

Dave Hurley of the Allied Fishing Groups explained the gravity of the  
matter in an action alert to anglers. “Those wanting to blame  
introduced species for the water contractors’ sins of overpumping the  
Delta are back on another attack on species that have co-existed in  
the Delta for over 100 years,” said Hurley.

The petition will be addressed at the California Fish and Game  
Commission meeting on Aug 24-25 at the Lake Natoma Inn and Conference  
Center, 702 Gold Lake Dr. Folsom Ca 95630.

The agenda for the meeting has not been posted yet, but will be posted  
soon at: http://fgc.ca.gov/meetings/2016/index.aspx

Prominent scientists disagree strongly with the contention of  
Boccadaro and the water contractors that the proposed regulations  
would “help protect” endangered salmon and smelt, pointing out the  
lack of any peer-reviewed science backing this claim.

“There is NO new peer-reviewed science that would change anything  
regarding this issue from the last time they tried the regulation  
change until now,” said David J. Ostrach Ph.D., Chief Scientist of  
Ostrach Consulting. “There has been some special interest group  
directed ‘studies’ by the water contractors and their allies, most of  
which are bogus or focus on hot spots and then expand that notion to  
the entire estuary e.g. if they’re eating them in mass at the hotspots  
there eating them everywhere.”

“Most importantly. predation at hot spots and throughout the Delta has  
not been shown to affect population levels of salmon or endangered  
species; it is a lower-level stressor. The biggest predators known to  
affect population levels of endangered species in the system are the  
state and federal water project pumping operations, where it’s clearly  
documented that they’ve killed tens of millions of endangered salmon,  
Delta smelt, striped bass and any other fish that enters Clifton Court  
Forebay,” said Ostrach.

In fact, Ostrach points out that Dr. Sean Hayes, NOAA’s lead scientist  
on this topic, made a 45 minute presentation to the State Water  
Resources Control Board concluding that removing striped bass and  
other predators from the system would likely not only do no good, but  
could potentially cause serious harm to endangered species and the  
ecosystem.

“So the federal agency’s own scientists working on this problem have  
come to this conclusion, yet his words are twisted to suit the needs  
of the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta and others,” said Ostrach.

Ostrach emphasized that if the Commission does change the regulations  
so that smaller striped bass are being caught and kept, it would  
likely cause a decrease in striped bass predation on other fish more  
dangerous to the endangered species such as the inland silverside.

“If you remove young (up to 3-4-year-old) striped bass by fishing or  
otherwise reduce their numbers, then the silverside population would  
increase,” said Ostrach. “The silversides are direct competitors with  
salmon smolts for the same food sources, and they also are known to  
eat Delta smelt larvae, juveniles and eggs. This is just one example  
of how trying to perturb an ecosystem already in collapse would likely  
make things much worse rather than do anything better,” he said.

A UC Davis study released in May confirms Ostrach’s argument. The  
study, “Understanding predation impacts on Delta native fishes,”  
written by Peter Moyle, Andrew Sih, Anna Steel, Carson Jeffres,  
William Bennett, asked the question: Will endangered fishes, such as  
Chinook salmon, delta smelt, and longfin smelt, benefit from control  
of predators, especially of striped bass? (californiawaterblog.com/…)

After a review of the scientific literature and research, their  
conclusion was “unlikely.”

“It seems unlikely that a large-scale predator removal program focused  
on striped bass would have a sustainable, measurable effect on  
populations of its prey species, specifically protected smelts and  
salmon,” the scientists concluded.

Like Ostrach, they pointed out that predator control can have  
unintended consequences, including potentially adversely impacting  
endangered native species.

“For example, reducing striped bass populations might cause an  
increase in important prey species, such as Mississippi silverside,  
that prey on delta smelt eggs and larvae. In other words, controlling  
striped bass may backfire and increase predation on delta smelt,” they  
wrote.

“Striped bass get blamed for declines of native fishes because they  
are an abundant, voracious, non-native predator. Yet striped bass have  
been part of the Delta ecosystem for nearly 150 years, plenty of time  
for co-adaptation of predator and prey. In periods when delta smelt,  
longfin smelt, and salmon were abundant in the past, striped bass were  
much more abundant than they are today, suggesting that the same  
factors that drive native fish declines are also driving striped bass  
populations,” the scientists said.

Dr. Ostrach described the petition as “just another diversion by the  
water contractors and their allies to focus attention on predation  
rather than the real cause of the demise of the San Francisco Bay  
Delta ecosystem – mismanaging the water such that we have an  
environment very much similar to an Arkansas lake where things like  
egeria /water hyacinth and freshwater species like smallmouth bass  
largemouth bass can thrive and is not conducive to survival of plants  
and animals that live in an estuary.”

“The key to stabilizing the Delta would be to restore habitat, restore  
the appropriate flows to the river system, and in the case of hot  
spots, reengineer those places that have created a haven for predators  
rather than trying to do things that simply won’t work like removing  
the predators and taking them to lakes and out of the system,” he said.

“Don’t blame the fish – blame the structures in engineering and the  
way they are managed,” he concluded.

The composition of the Fish and Game Commission has changed  
dramatically since they last addressed this issue – and turned down a  
petition by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW),  
under pressure by the water contractors, to increase striped bass bag  
bag limits and decrease size limits. Only one Commissioner – Jacque  
Carmenin Hostler- has been on the Commission for over two years.

Even more troubling, the two newest Commissioners, Russell Burns of  
Napa and Peter Silva of Chula Vista, work for or have worked for  
groups pushing Governor Jerry Brown’s Delta Tunnels plan, a water grab  
by the same water contractors that have proposed changing the limits  
on stripers and black bass.

Burns works as business manager at Operating Engineers Local Union 3,  
a supporter of the California WaterFix, while Silva served as senior  
policy advisor at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern  
California, one of the sponsors of the petition and one of the leading  
backers of the Delta Tunnels.

As the water contractors submit their petition, the numbers of Delta  
smelt, once the most abundant fish in the estuary, have plummeted to a  
new low, according to this spring’s CDFW smelt survey. Only thirteen  
adult Delta Smelt were collected at 8 stations contributing to the  
index in 2016.

The Delta smelt collapse is part of an overall ecosystem decline  
driven by water diversions by the federal and state water projects.  
The CDFW’s 2015 Fall Midwater Trawl demonstrates that, since 1967,  
populations of striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American  
shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 98.3, 99.9,  
97.7, 98.5 and 93.7 percent, respectively, according to Bill Jennings,  
executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance  
(CSPA).

The California Striped Bass Association (CSPA) has posted an on line  
petition to the Fish and Game Commission opposing the Coalition’ s  
proposal. Their petition can be found at: https://www.change.org/p/california-fish-and-game-commission-save-the-delta-fisheries 
.

Stewart Resnick, the billionaire funder of the Coalition for a  
Sustainable Delta Astroturf group, is the co-owner with his wife,  
Lynda, of The Wonderful Company, the largest grower of orchard fruit  
in the world. For more information about the Resnicks and their  
connections with the University of California system, read my piece,  
“The story that disgraced UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi didn’t want  
you to read,” at:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/22/1529480/-The-story-that-disgraced-UCD-Chancellor-Linda-Katehi-didn-t-want-you-to-read
  
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