By

Alastair Bland
About the author

A native to San Francisco, Alastair Bland is a freelance journalist who writes about water policy in California, rivers and salmon, marine conservation and climate change. His work has appeared at NPR.org, Smithsonian.com, Yale Environment 360 and News Deeply, among many other outlets. When he isn't writing, Alastair is likely riding his bicycle uphill as fast as he can.

Articles by Alastair Bland

blue whale feeding
31
Oct

Blue Whales Consume Microplastic Particles by the Billion

The age of humans, termed the Anthropocene, might just as well be considered the age of plastic. The dangerously durable material, made ubiquitous in products and packaging through the late 20th century, has inundated our planet’s environment. Today, miniscule plastic pieces are present in deep-ocean sediment, high-mountain snow and just about every place in between. Plastic waste has also entered the marine food web, and according to new research, baleen whales are ingesting staggering quantities.  Blue whales off the California coast...
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12
Oct

South Bay Fish Fight

Two decades after the South Bay’s main water supplier agreed to restore aquatic habitat in the streams that flow from its reservoirs, fish in the region remain in dire straits, and local river advocates say it’s the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s fault. The agency, which serves the taps and toilets of 1.9 million Santa Clara County residents, has made some improvements on fish habitat along miles of stream and increased the amount of water it releases from its reservoirs....
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30
Aug

Drought Plan Means Full Lake, Empty River

In the mountains and foothills of California, an enduring drought has depleted the state’s major reserves of water. There is virtually no snowpack, and most of the state’s large reservoirs are less than 40 percent full. But in the central Sierra Nevada, a trio of artificial lakes remain flush with cold mountain water. The largest of them, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, from which millions of Bay Area residents receive water, is more than 80 percent full. This remarkable plentitude is the...
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16
Jun

Reorienting to Salmon Recovery

The days when salmon and steelhead teemed in California’s coastal watersheds faded away last century. Today, many populations of the fish are gone or dwindling, the river systems where they spawn drained by diversions or too warm for native fish to survive. Warming trends and drought are squeezing water resources tighter. Nearly all efforts to revive the state’s ailing salmonids have failed, often stalemated by political tensions, and it takes hatcheries and truck transport of juveniles to saltwater to maintain...
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field in delta with irrigation
13
Apr

Rain or shine, farmers in California use about the same amount of water every year, while residential water use varies considerably with precipitation.

A research team led by UC San Diego’s John Helly processed 15 years’ worth of water-use data from the state’s Department of Water Resources, reporting in the March 2022 issue of San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science that while “the annually precipitated water supply in the Bay-Delta” varied by 30%, agricultural water use scarcely changed year to year. “The water management system maintained nearly constant agricultural water use even in periods of intense drought, with year-to-year variation of about 7%,”...
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15
Feb

West Coast Salmonids All Tired Out?

West Coast salmon and steelhead populations have declined steeply in the past century – a plight that biologists have primarily blamed on habitat loss. Dams, for instance, block adult fish’s access to historic spawning grounds, and juvenile survival is impacted by streamside development and water diversions. Now, it turns out, microplastic pollution may be a much bigger factor than anyone knew just several years ago. In 2019, scientists with the San Francisco Estuary Institute and the Los Angeles-based nonprofit 5...
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15
Feb

Murky Future for Herring

This winter, herring spawns in San Francisco Bay – visible from land as frenzies of birds and pinnipeds and even water discolored by herring milt – have been few and far between, according to recreational fishers who pursue the fish each year using hand-thrown cast nets. With few other eyes on the resource, it seems reasonable to assume that the downward trend in biomass documented through the 2019-2020 winter has continued. But nobody knows for sure. For decades, the California...
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15
Dec

Scientists in the Central Valley are honing a novel way of giving young salmon the nourishing benefits of wintertime floodwaters without undertaking costly floodplain restoration work.

The method, being practiced along the Sacramento River, mimics the flood patterns of natural Sacramento Valley wetlands by diverting water onto floodplain farm fields, retaining it there for three weeks, and finally flushing the water—now rich with zooplankton and invertebrate protein—back into the river. Onsite studies have shown that salmon smolts grow faster when provided with this supplemental nutrition source, giving the method promise as a tool for boosting survival rates of outmigrating juveniles and, ultimately, helping sustain imperiled Chinook...
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25
Oct

Habitat Tramplers Run Amuck – Cows Versus Creeks

The water of a small stream in western Sonoma County flows slowly under a highway bridge, coursing its way through private ranchland to the ocean about seven miles away. Ducks paddle among floating vegetation, and an egret tiptoes slowly through the shallows. At the edge of the waterway, called Americano Creek, a cluster of cattle huddles under the willows. They frequent this spot and have trampled the banks to mud. Hoofprints can be seen leading into the water, and cakes...
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17
Jun

Perspective:

As drought parches California, obliterates its snowpack, and reduces rivers to trickles, a familiar feud over water has resurfaced. Farmers want more of it to irrigate their crops, while fishermen and environmentalists want more left in rivers to protect the state’s Chinook salmon. Mainstream news outlets often portray the struggle as one between two groups ravaged by environmental whims and climate change. However, this interpretation weaves a false equivalence through the narrative. Whereas the state’s Chinook and coho salmon runs...
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07
Jun

New research indicates that survival of juvenile Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River system can be significantly boosted by achieving key thresholds for river flow.

The findings, published in the journal Ecosphere, add important context to the general scientific understanding that more water in the river improves fish survival. Previous studies, the authors explain in their paper, have demonstrated that more juvenile salmon migrating toward the sea complete their journey when the Sacramento River system contains more water. Just how much water has been the source of much controversy among user groups. “These studies have not explored the potential nonlinearities between flow and survival, giving...
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07
Jun

Water turbidity in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta can be used as a reliable indicator of smelt entrainment rates in the fish screens of the export pumps at the southern edge of the Estuary.

In a new study published in the March 2021 issue of San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, researchers Lenny Grimaldo, William Smith, and Matthew Nobriga used advanced statistical approaches to understand what factors best predict Delta smelt entrainment at the pumps. The paper builds upon research that Grimaldo conducted in the 2000s, which provided the basis for regulations established in the 2008 Delta smelt Biological Opinion. “This study reinforces previous work that adult Delta smelt salvage is largely explained by...
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23
Mar

Kayaking to Hawaii

After a French-American resident of Larkspur helped row a small boat from Monterey to Hawaii in 2016, he vowed he’d never undertake such a journey again. But Cyril Derreumaux spoke too soon. “My imagination took off, and I started dreaming about doing the same trip again in a kayak,” he says. Now, after several years of planning, Derreumaux is getting ready to embark. He plans to leave Monterey Bay in a custom-made kayak with no companions in late May and,...
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01
Mar

As agencies wrangle over how best to protect the Delta’s dwindling native fish species, researchers want to see more consideration to the needs of the estuary’s birds.

 “If we want to restore the ecology of the Delta, we can’t just be looking in the water,” says Kristen E. Dybala of Point Blue Conservation Science. In a paper published in San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, Dybala and two co-authors make the case that “birds and their habitat needs are often not addressed in science syntheses, conservation planning, and large-scale restoration initiatives in the Delta.” While some birds use the same sloughs and channels that support such high-profile...
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18
Nov

As organizations and agencies scramble to preserve the Central Valley’s dwindling Chinook salmon runs, a group of scientists believes they may be overlooking a key factor in the decades-long decline of the fish: disease.

In a paper published in September’s issue of San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, a research team proposes that diseases—caused by viruses, bacteria and other microbes—could be suppressing juvenile salmon survival in a river system that once hosted millions of adult spawners each year. According to tracking studies, nearly all juvenile Chinook born from natural spawning die before they reach the Golden Gate Bridge; habitat enhancement efforts have failed to mitigate this mortality rate. Short-term studies of Central Valley salmon...
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18
Nov

Spawning and rearing habitat for important forage-fish species in San Francisco Bay apparently shifts geographically by many miles depending on how much freshwater is flowing into the Estuary.

In a recent study, a team of scientists found that in a dry year, Pacific herring and longfin smelt larvae occurred farther up the Estuary than in a wet year, when spawning and recruitment was pushed seaward. The results suggest that the fish have broader geographic ranges than previously believed, a finding that could inform efforts to manage and protect their habitat. Biologists have long assumed that longfin smelt, a protected species in steep decline for decades, spawn strictly in...
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28
Sep

Science in Short ~ Podcast

David Ayers: How Fish Interact with Wetlands Topography  In this podcast, Estuary News reporter Alastair Bland and UC Davis PhD student and fish researcher David Ayers discuss the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, its fish, its marshlands, its flows, and its future. Ayers explains the focus of his research, which seeks to reveal how underwater topography in the wetlands fringing the estuary affects interactions between predators and small fish. While restoration projects often focus on adding more water to this ecosystem and...
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22
Sep

Trolling for Salmon by Kayak

Whales scare us much more than sharks. They erupt from the ocean with a rush of displaced water and a poof of air. A collision could be disastrous. “Whale – go-go-go!” I shout. We pedal double-time to dodge the humpback, behind us and approaching from the left. A moment later it surfaces again, with another poof, now off to our right, moving away. We relax and slow back to our standard trolling speed of about 2.5 miles per hour, and...
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13
Sep

By looking solely at the results of a single annual fish-counting survey, Californians may be seeing an incomplete reflection of Bay-Delta fish population trends.

A team of scientists analyzed 14 survey programs carried out by state and federal agencies, as well as UC Davis, and concluded that employing such a diverse variety of long-term surveys is essential for accurately tracking and assessing the overall health of San Francisco Estuary’s ecosystem and its resident fishes. The research is described in the June issue of San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science. Lead author Dylan Stompe, of UC Davis, explains that the research arose from concerns that...
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13
Sep

A unique adaptive behavioral trait that may once have helped winter-run Chinook salmon thrive in the Sacramento River system could now be working against the fish as they face extinction.

The trait – which cues fish when to spawn based on water temperature – isn’t syncing up with current conditions in the Sacramento River below Shasta Dam. A paper published in the June issue of San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, reports that cooler springtime river temperatures seem to prompt earlier winter-run spawning while warmer temperatures push back the peak spawning period by a week or two. Under historic conditions, when winter-run Chinook spawned in high-elevation streams now inaccessible to...
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