Delta Smelt: The Tiny Fish Caught in California’s War With Trump
On a warm November morning, John Durand squints over the stern of a small research boat, and gestures toward gray-blue water, and the chaotic tangles of tube-like tule reeds.
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California Gov. Newsom Makes Move to Halt Trump Water Grab
/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis AlexanderCalifornia’s water wars escalated Thursday, as state leaders vowed to fight the Trump administration over plans to ship more water to Central Valley farms.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and members of his administration announced that they were preparing a lawsuit against the federal government to prevent California’s rivers and wildlife from being cheated out of vital supplies.
State leaders said boosting agricultural deliveries, a longtime campaign promise of the president, could upend fragile watersheds and threaten such protected fish as the iconic chinook salmon and delta smelt
California’s Delta Smelt Are Dying: How This Affects The State’s Water
/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /ABC 10by Tyler HorstThe Delta smelt is such a small and translucent fish that it often disappears from view when it swims in the turbid waters of its home in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
However, it’s also been disappearing from the Delta entirely.
“The Delta smelt has gone from being one of the more abundant fish in the Delta to being just on the verge of extinction today,” Peter Moyle, an Emeritus Professor of Fish Biology at UC Davis, said.
These Fish Are At The Heart Of California’s Water Debate. But Extinction Could Be Close
/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /The Sacramento Beeby Ryan Sabalow and Dale KaslerAs a young biologist in the 1970s, Peter Moyle remembers towing nets behind boats in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and catching 50 to 100 translucent, finger-length smelt in a matter of minutes. Moyle doesn’t see those days coming back. “I think extinction is imminent the way things are going,” said Moyle, a prominent UC Davis fisheries biologist. State biologists have found hardly any Delta smelt in their sampling nets in the past two years. Consecutive surveys in late April and early May found no smelt at all. Those results don’t mean the smelt have completely vanished.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
