I come from a long line of fisherfolk. My grandparents had a tiny cabin on a Quebec lake. We visited some summers. My grandfather let me drive the big white speedboat at a snail’s pace while he smoked cigars and trolled for trout off the stern. Once, when I caught one bigger than his catch-of-the-day, he “accidentally” knocked it back into the lake with the net. On the dock, we’d sunbathe while he cast lines overhead with a precision worthy of the movie A River Runs Through It. At the lake, we ate trout and eggs, trout salad, baked trout. I survived on spoonfuls of Cool Whip. (Photo above is editor as a teenager with Kay Rubbra, my grandmother, and our bass catch.)
I’ve not only fished off my grandfather’s dock, but also in ice-cold Sierra lakes with my backpacker dad, and with my own kids. Once we sent my tween daughter and godson out with a professional guide and they came back with a beautiful salmon, which our friend then gutted and served up as sushi right there on the shore. I get chills thinking of their experience, catching and eating something of such natural perfection on a wild river, not a supermarket in sight.
This issue of ESTUARY is all about fish, not fishing. But I mention fishing here because of the way it connects us to our food and our ecosystem. When we fish we interact directly with water and wildlife. But the study of fish, right here in our own Bay and Delta, also affords this intimacy. There are scientists in California who know more about steelhead gills and smelt otoliths and sturgeon scutes and salmon eggs than they do about Britney Spears, Jimmy Garoppolo, extra virgin olive oil, or any other thing or person of celebrity.
As an editor, dedicating an issue to fish feels like centering the region’s relationship with its waterways and waterbodies. Forget the fires, the floods, and the harmful algal blooms, and think about the basics: without our interest in fish, as a challenge to catch, as a symbol of the wild, as an indicator of current health or slow planetary death, as a miracle that lives underwater where we can’t live, so much of our work would occur without a reference point.
In this issue, we share both the heroics of saving a fish near extinction as well as the secrets of some sturdier, healthier natives. We detail how South Bay fish are faring now that so much fish-food-producing marsh habitat has been restored in their environs. We examine how our incessant habit of driving everywhere is not only warming the planet but also leaving behind shreds of rubber that are creeping into fish guts and poisoning Pacific Coast coho.
Our stories discover fish in bone-dry streams under boulders, and tally steelhead in two entirely different watersheds: one urban, one valley, but both often starved of flows by human diversions. And we even take a moment to drill down, once again, into the perpetual failure of the best-laid plans and policies to actually protect our beloved salmon, especially in drought when there isn’t enough water to go round. In this sharing of fish tales, we invite you to marvel at the swimmers off our shores and riverbanks. Good fishing.
Estuary Reporters Remember Fishing
Bluegill Blues
Growing up in Arkansas and Georgia, I used to go fishing with my father. Just hook and line, for bluegill, crappie, and the like. It was a challenge to my attention span; I tended to get distracted by birds and forget to watch the bobber. I remember losing one fish because of an anhinga that flew over. But I enjoyed the result, dredged in cornmeal and deep-fried. Lunch on the fishing trips was always Vienna sausages, straight out of the can, and saltines. Once when I wasn’t along, my father caught a largemouth bass of sufficient size that he decided to have it mounted, which was probably a relief to my mother who would otherwise have been expected to cook it. He had heard from a coworker that there was a taxidermist somewhere in the vicinity, and drove the bass, on ice, down the backroads of Thomas County, Georgia, looking for him, getting lost repeatedly. He finally broke down and asked somebody who was working on his car where the taxidermist was. “I don’t know about no taxidermist, but there’s a guy down the road a piece that stuffs fish,” was the response. The fish was duly stuffed, and it’s still somewhere in my storage unit. Joe Eaton
Fresh from the Freezer
I never fished as a kid. In fact, my first time fishing was last year when my husband and I joined a Fish Emeryville charter aboard the Sea Wolf. We left the Emeryville harbor at dark o’clock and headed out the Golden Gate with the sun rising behind us. It was a treat to be out on the water at dawn among those enmeshed in maritime culture. The sea was too rough to go to the Farallones as planned, so we headed north and fished for rock cod and lingcod in deep pockets of water along the coast. I rented all the equipment needed and caught plenty of fish, all of which were stunningly kaleidoscopic. I had my fill of fishing after a few hours and turned my attention to watching birds, observing the surface of the water, and motoring below that beautiful bridge–always a spectacular experience no matter how many times I’ve done it. We ate fresh Pacific cod from our freezer for several months, and I look forward to doing it again. Aleta George
Tell Us Your Favorite Fishing Memory or Fish Story
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Special Issue on Fishes of the San Francisco Estuary
Ariel Rubissow Okamoto is both today’s editor-in-chief and the founding editor of ESTUARY magazine (1992-2001). She enjoys writing in-depth, silo-crossing stories about water, restoration, and science. She’s a co-author of a Natural History of San Francisco Bay (UC Press 2011), frequent contributor of climate change stories to Bay Nature magazine, and occasional essayist for publications like the San Francisco Chronicle (see her Portfolio here). In other lives, she has been a vintner, soccer mom, and waitress. She lives in San Francisco close to the Bay with her architect husband Paul Okamoto.
Our magazine’s media motto for many years has been “Where there’s an estuary, there’s a crowd.” The San Francisco Estuary is a place where people, wildlife, and commerce congregate, and where watersheds, rivers and the ocean meet and mix, creating a place of unusual diversity. In choosing to tell the...
Ever since the state and federal water projects were built in the 1930s and 1940s, California has captured snowmelt in foothill reservoirs, and moved the fresh water from dam releases and river outflows to parched parts of the state via aqueducts hundreds of miles long. A convoluted system of ancient...
Though the Clean Water Act did an amazing job of reducing wastewater and stormwater pollution of the San Francisco Estuary, some contaminants remain thorny problems. Legacy pollutants like mercury washed into the watershed from upstream gold mining, PCBs from old industrial sites, and selenium from agricultural drainage in the San...
Brian Sak: Having fished for just over 50 years makes it impossible to select a favorite memory. Each outing has been special in its own way, with the time spent on the water with family and friends evoking a range of emotions. My father, carrying me as a kid on his shoulders across a roaring river to get to his favorite hole, warms my heart. Watching my oldest daughter, landing her first fish by walking backwards up a steep bank (because she didn’t quite get the idea of reeling yet), keeps me laughing to this day. While seeing the tears in my youngest child’s eyes, as I sternly made her hold a bass by its lower lip for a photo, saddens me. Of course we all have the infuriating fish that got away story. The list of memories goes on — some incredible, some not so good, and a bunch in between. With the best part being that I plan on creating many more.
Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
Brian Sak: Having fished for just over 50 years makes it impossible to select a favorite memory. Each outing has been special in its own way, with the time spent on the water with family and friends evoking a range of emotions. My father, carrying me as a kid on his shoulders across a roaring river to get to his favorite hole, warms my heart. Watching my oldest daughter, landing her first fish by walking backwards up a steep bank (because she didn’t quite get the idea of reeling yet), keeps me laughing to this day. While seeing the tears in my youngest child’s eyes, as I sternly made her hold a bass by its lower lip for a photo, saddens me. Of course we all have the infuriating fish that got away story. The list of memories goes on — some incredible, some not so good, and a bunch in between. With the best part being that I plan on creating many more.