Responding to the Ron Rindge letter of April 30 questioning the motivation for the extensive fish stocking programs run by the California Board of Fish Commissioners in the late 1800s and the very early 1900s, Rindge speculates this was done to satisfy “powerful fishing interests” who wanted steelhead stocked in Southern California streams closer to the Southern California home of these “interests.” As an extension of this speculative premise, Rindge implies steelhead didn’t live in Southern California streams till this stocking effort put them there.
Two problems with that speculation: 1. Genetic markers in the several separate steelhead groups found up and down the California Coast indicate that our Southern California fish are probably the progenitors of the California steelhead in general. A newly stocked Southern California steelhead simply could not develop these unique genetic markers in 100 years as was suggested, much less spread them to the several unique steelhead population groups north of here. Genetics just doesn’t work with that speed.
2. Let’s not impinge the motives of the pioneer fish biologists who devised and implemented this original stocking program. These men sought to maintain and expand the numbers of several fish specie, the steelhead being one of them. They hoped to do this by finding a way around the great mortality rate of juvenile fish between the egg and the fry stage. A 5-pound female steelhead lays 4000 eggs, 1000 reach the I 1/4″ fry stage, only 2 to 3 become reproducing adults. The hope was that a hatchery environment would get many more juveniles through the very vulnerable egg-to-fry stage.
Gravid females were captured and stripped of eggs, then released back to their native stream. The eggs went to a hatchery and were raised to the fry stage, the fry then were released back to these same native home streams. The fry were native fish, put back into their ancestral waters. The fry didn’t come from someplace else, they came from a population native to the stream. The steelhead were already there.
Obviously some fish were used in experimental stocking of potential new stream homes, this is a traditional fish stocking procedure, the list of successes is long. References for this stocking program are available in the DF&G Library in Long Beach.
Support for this steelhead program comes from an impressive list of interested parties: Sierra Club, Heal the Bay, Surfriders, California Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries, Santa Monica Mountains Task Force, National Park Service, Los Angeles County, Ventura County, the Center for Biological Diversity, Cal-Trout, Trout Unlimited, a half dozen Southern California Fishing clubs, etc. That’s a lot of people, there must be a reason.
As always, I’d love to talk to anyone about this program. If you have a question, call me. 310.422.8155.
Bo Meyer