Pescadero anglers prepare to tackle fish kill
As marsh conditions worsen, locals grow impatient

By Greg Thomas [ greg@hmbreview.com ]

Around this time each year, the sandbar separating Pescadero Marsh from the Pacific Ocean breaks, ushering in another season for fishing steelhead trout and, to varying degrees, another episode of what Coastsiders call the “fish kill.” It’s a yearly phenomenon in which fish turn up dead at a critical point in their lifecycle.

For about five years, a working group comprised of government agencies, scientists, academics and local fishermen has convened to seek solutions. Those conversations typically render research endeavors rather than action plans because the marsh is an intricate and delicate system, and because gaining consensus among agencies with differing mandates is tricky.

A freeze on state bonds earlier this year has essentially derailed the working group. A plan to install an arrangement of rubber dams at key passageways in the marsh fell through because the California Department of Fish and Game didn’t get the necessary project permits before the marsh filled up.

Fly fishermen appear Saturday morning in Pescadero Creek, looking for steelhead. The sandbar broke late last month, leading to the usual fish kill in the Pescadero Marsh.

That was the last straw for two lifelong Pescadero fishermen, who have waited for the agencies to follow through on a resolution while each year another crop of silvery fish corpses washes up.

“We’re not going to let this slide this year,” said Steve Simms, president of the Native Sons of the Golden West, Pebble Beach Parlor. Simms has fished in the marsh since he was 3 years old.

Simms and Tim Frahm, also a member of Native Sons, believe taking the lead on an action plan might spur a restoration project.

“I think the conflict has to do with a willingness to move forward (on the part of each agency), depending on how much information is at hand,” Frahm said.

Several years of observing and analyzing seasonal transitions has led many to the conclusion that fish in the marsh suffer when the sandbar breach stirs up the water column’s salty, sulfuric under-layers. That typically happens in late fall. Some of the native fish, which include steelhead trout and top water smelt, die instantly from an overdose of hydrogen sulfite – a byproduct of decaying matter in the marsh – and others suffocate from a lack of oxygen in the water.

Knowing what’s going on hasn’t improved conditions in the marsh. In fact, things may be getting worse.

This year, the marsh was as full as observers can remember, and tests showed water quality “consistently bad everywhere we measured it,” said State Parks Senior Resource Ecologist Joanne Kerbavaz. Days before the sandbar broke – on Nov. 29 – Simms lamented on the foul marsh water.

“Hydrogen sulfite – you can just smell it down there,” said Simms, comparing the acrid stench to rotten eggs.

When the sandbar broke, a passerby mistook the outpour of brackish marsh water in the ocean for an oil spill, and reported the ominous black cloud to Fish and Game.

Finally, according to biologists and fishermen, trout populations have been declining. In 1986, biologists projected between 20,000 and 25,000 trout rearing in the marsh during fall. In 2007, that number dropped to 1,500. Last year, experts estimated the total at 750.

Simms and Frahm are mulling a host of actions, including isolating the marsh from two adjacent waterways that filter into it and building the sandbar earlier in the year with a bulldozer.

Kerbavaz prefers the steadier course of studying hydrology and “trying to understand water quality.” Studies, she asserts, are “a valuable part of action,” particularly “in an area that’s incredibly complex,” such as the marsh.

Simms counters with an argument that there is enough preliminary research on the books, and implementing a project is better than standing by for another year.

“It might be wishful thinking, but it’s gotta happen,” he said. Simms said the proposal should be ready before the end of the week.

Copyright © 2010 Half Moon Bay Review