Neighbors Along the Riverbed Episode 3: Anadromous

Neighbors Along the Riverbed Episode 3: Anadromous

Mickey Morgan 0:10
This episode was recorded on the land of the Kumeyaay and the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, who are the original people of these lands and waters. I'm currently creating on the lands of the musqueam, Squamish, Tsliel-Waututh, and Sto:lo Nations. The indigenous practice of learning from non human neighbors, like steelhead salmon that are discussed this episode, was something that I first practiced with kQwa’st’not who is a member of the T’Sou-ke Nation and I first heard about from Leanne Simpson’s writings. As an explanation before getting into it, this episode focuses on the anadromous quality of salmon and steelhead. Anadromous means they migrate from the rivers they’re born in out to the ocean, and then return to these natal streams to breed. Oncorhynchus mykiss, or steelhead (sometimes referred to as steelhead trout) are in the Salmonidae or salmon family. Unlike salmon, steelhead are iteroparous, so they can return to spawn multiple times. Adult steelhead may spawn up to four times in their lifetime. O. mykiss also have a resident life history where an individual lives its entire life in freshwater. We start off having a group conversation with folks from the south coast steelhead coalition.

So what can we learn from our steelhead neighbors?

CT Workshop Speaker 1 1:42
I was in a group with Sandra and Serena and Sandra said a lot of things about steelhead I learned so much about steelhead and about Atlantic salmon thanks to Serena. But one of the things as Sandra was was talking about that resiliency and that adaptability and the sort of morphological changes that that the fish engage in as they move from one to another. And, but also like how they're hidden fish. To me, it became it sort of sparked this idea of like, it's a perfect microcosm, or a perfect metaphor for like the trans and genderqueer experience. It was just this like, oh my gosh, like, that's exactly what it's like, like, it's adapting to your environment. And it's like hiding or not hiding who you are, what you are, and, and hiding to survive. And if there was just like, it was [unintelligible], but it was also like, it could also be a metaphor for an immigrant experience, it could be a metaphor for, like, so many experiences that we as humans have, that that the fish are, they just, they're just doing it. And in a beautiful way they do it without apparently having any sort of like, social psychological issues with each other, which is really awesome.

SCSC Workshop Speaker 1 2:51
I would say to you that, you know, something that that Holly and I also talked about was like public buy in and engaged communities around around this word like working for steelhead and, and framing them, framing them in like a neighboring community context. And I think like public buy in and engaged communities are only one part of actually creating change. I think as all of this staff knows, like political buy-in is extremely important for the work that we do. But I would also say that a huge part of that is community outreach about this work, is that conservation often is like extremely lacking in community outreach. And so communities don't know about the work or why they should care. And I think that until until we have kind of like an equitable, an equitable engagement plan for all conservation work, not just what CalTrout does, but all conservation overall, there just won't there we won't be able to, to accumulate the type of public buy-in that's needed for I think, just like for cultural change around how we care for the environment as a part of us as a part of our extended communities.

Mickey Morgan 4:07
Yeah, it's interesting, I'm finding that in Southern California, y'all have kind of a culture that maybe it's not super common for folks to even know that there's steelhead in the area, that there should be steelhead, and occasionally is steelhead moving through. And so that's a really interesting place to be working from to begin to acknowledge your neighbors.

CT Workshop Speaker 2 4:32
For steelhead, it's like an ecology. There's a concept we call shifting baselines. And so I think that's applied pretty accurately here where the normal for most of the generations that are alive now in Southern California is that there are no steelhead. And that's kind of what they come to expect. And that's what they see in the natural world when and that baseline has shifted to be the new normal and so educating people about, yeah, this new normal isn't really normal. This is one of the challenges.

Mickey Morgan 5:09
Bruce King from the group friends of San Lorenzo Creek was able to share the significance of salmon and steelhead’s anadromous quality when moving through all flood channels, and specifically the channel that goes from the bay, all the way out to Hayward where we were chatting.

Bruce King 5:28
And essentially, before they built the engineered channel, steelhead, would migrate up the stream. And when they the engineered channel doesn't have resting pools in it, and it doesn't have, just on the other side of the street, it, this kind of restriction in the channel and fish can't get past it. So in November of last year, we had a big rainstorm event, which sent a big slug of water out to the bay and all the salmon that are coming in from the ocean into the bay go “we're here in the Bay, we're looking for our stream, but we're hatchery salmon” because almost everything is hatchery.

Mickey Morgan
Right.

Bruce King
Yes. hatchery fish in California, I mean, there's still some wild spots of things. So they don't exactly know what stream to go up. So the the Chinook salmon, tried to make it up San Lorenzo Creek, right, and they got as far as, 29 of them. And none of them may have made it past the restriction on the other side of the street here. So they didn't make it into the natural Creek system.



Mickey Morgan 6:46
The same problem applies on Alameda Creek, which has a dam in Fremont. Joe Sullivan, the fisheries program manager in the East Bay Regional parks district took me to this dam where it's brand new fish ladder was installed in 2022, after decades of community advocacy.

Joe Sullivan 7:05
So not only when they inflate this dam, is that that's a complete fish barrier. No fish can get past and there's two there's one here and there's another one just upstream from here. But they also installed this grate control structure. And when the when the dams are down, water is freely flowing when there is water. But fish can't swim up this concrete apron thing, right. So before the fish ladder was installed, fish would get here. And we had a camera right over there. But there's a lot of volunteers that just come out. And to look, we kind of have an idea of when the best times are for steelhead and salmon to show up.

Mickey Morgan
They're kind of seasonal.

Joe Sullivan
Yeah. So it's usually after big storms in the winter. And when the water starts receding, this flows really during big storms, it's really full. And that attracts, that freshwater out in the bay attracts the fish up here. But they get here and can't go any farther. So we would go down and try to, for steelhead we'd go down and try to net them and put them in the back of our truck and truck them up to where, see where it says Niles? That's the start of Niles Canyon where Alameda Creek continues on and past that they are pretty much free to for spawning habitat. So all they need to do is get past this and get through the flood control channel. And once they do, they're free to move upstream into the, where there's more suitable habitat.

Mickey Morgan 8:45
Despite these barriers for steelhead, both Joe and Bruce are optimistic about their potential resurgence and native waterways.

Bruce King 8:55
Fish still want to migrate. They're out there they want to migrate. And and in California, we've totally messed up the the wild stocks, so a lot of them are our hatchery fish. And but they still want to get up there, get up streams. And if we let them get get into the streams, though, they'll spawn.

Mickey Morgan 9:15
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Joe Sullivan 9:17
So there are populations of rainbow trout native, still in this watershed. And that's what that's why we're hopeful especially when we see steelhead returning every now and again. They do interact with the native trout population that's up there. So we are hopeful that we can restore that the native steelhead population, they just they just need the access.

Mickey Morgan 9:47
Historically, there have been distinct populations of steelhead all along the California coast from north to south, the South Central Central and northern California Steelhead are considered threatened, while the Southern California Steelhead is endangered. One of the most obvious ways we can learn from our steelhead neighbors is to be determined and adaptable. Every year in the spring and winter, salmon and steelhead returned to spawn, even if they can't get through. The least we can do is put forth the same effort. If you have any questions or want to add to this conversation, email salmon neighbors@gmail.com