Typically, fish heading down the San Joaquin toward Stockton make a left turn into Old River, which draws them into the south Delta and perilously close to enormous pumps that send water to distant reaches of California.

The rock barrier will keep those fish in the San Joaquin, hopefully steering them away from the pumps.

Click here to read more at Recordnet.com

While 2011 was a good year for FLCR, 2012 may bring even more exciting developments, like:

• 2012 Stockton Steelhead Festival
• 2012 State of Our River Symposium
• Another great year of Riverwalks, this time with snacks and refreshments!
• An expanded Calaveras Outreach and Education Day.
• The Calaveras River Native Grass Demonstration Project
• Adaptive Management Environmental Educaiton with Dr. Dirt
• Nature Journaling with John Muir Laws
• From Big Trees to the Delta: Calaveras Watershed Leadership Program
• Research and development of a the idea of forming a Calaveras River Parkway Trust!
• Coastal and Polar Bear Cleanups
• MAYBE… just MAYBE… a Calaveras River Draft Habitat Conservation Plan to review!

Have a SAFE and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! 

The E.P.A. argues that improving urban water quality is central to sustainable urban development. “Many urban waterways have been polluted for years by sewage, runoff from city streets and contamination from abandoned industrial facilities. Healthy and accessible urban waters can help grow local businesses and enhance educational, recreational, employment and social opportunities in nearby communities. By promoting public access to urban waterways, E.P.A. will help communities become active participants in restoration and protection.”

Click here to read more at Dirt.asla.org

We’ll have a story in the paper and online Thursday. In the meantime, here’s the Department of Fish and Game memo, with charts showing the abundance of five fish species since the late 1960s.

And here’s a snapshot of the numbers (this is an index, not the literal number of fish in each population):

This year       Last year        Historic high

Delta smelt:               343                  29           1,673 (in 1970)

Striped bass:              272                  43           19,677 (in 1967)

Longfin smelt:            477                 191           81,737 (in 1967)

Threadfin shad:          228                 120           15,267 (in 1997)

American shad:          894                  683           9,360 (in 2003)

Science to the rescue! Researchers are learning tons about which kinds of coral species are either resistant to bleaching or bleach more quickly—and using that data to figure out which reefs are going to be more resilient to climate change … which will feed into where to focus protection efforts. As part of the work, marine scientists often need to do painstaking fish and coral surveys in beautiful but remote locations—which is why The Nature Conservancy sent a science team led by Joanne Wilson and Sangeeta Mangubhai to spend two weeks in November in the Indonesian archipelago of Raja Ampat, known as the global center of marine biodiversity. I caught up with Wilson and Mangubhai—barely dry from all their diving—to get the skinny on what they found, including giant clams and an anchovy fish ball.

Click here to read more at Grist.org

Water districts that spend $1 million each year studying fish on the Stanislaus River are publicly blaming the federal government for the destruction of nearly 200,000 salmon eggs, after the feds rapidly decreased river flows earlier this month.

Normally, the water districts chastise the government for sending too much water downstream. You might have seen newspaper ads or billboards warning that New Melones Lake, east of Stockton, could go dry if more water is sent down the river for fish.

This time, the districts say the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation first released too much and then not enough water from New Melones, ignoring the districts’ advice and wasting their money.

Click here to read more at Recordnet.com

Anyone that has assisted with Coastal Cleanup Day in San Joaquin County can tell you that we contribute more than our fair share of polystyrene, plastic bags, and other plastic waste to the Great Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean. Here’s and interesting piece published  in the Christian Science Monitor exploring the ramifications, and what attracts fish to the plastic in the first place! – Jeremy

Pacific Ocean trash patch mystery: How many fish eat plastic?

Small fish living in a region of the Pacific Ocean where floating trash collects in a huge, slowly swirling bowl eat as much as 24,000 tons of plastic waste each year, scientists have found.The region, dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is double the size of Texas. It contains plastic flotsam and jetsam – toys, cups, wrappers, and bottles – that slowly degrade under sun and wave action into smaller and smaller fragments, until fish often mistake them for food.

Because of a problem in collection methods, prior studies tended to exaggerate the amount of plastic that fish consumed, as well as the percentage of fish consuming plastic. Now, the new study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows that nearly 1 in 10 fish in the region had plastic in their stomachs.

Click here to read more at csmonitor.com