Local Environmentalists Celebrate Coho Salmon Return to the Garcia River*
by Peter Dobbins, Publisher

   This year for the first time in 5 years, the Department of Fish and Game biologists have discovered Coho salmon in 4 major Garcia River tributaries.  This is a welcome turnaround.  Local environmentalists applaud the efforts of FrOG (Friends of the Garcia River) for their efforts over the past 16 years.

   Few people are aware of what is really happening in their environment.  We hear that millions are spent to repair or enhance our dwindling fisheries.  However, a large part of this money, which is earmarked for "environmental projects", is instead spent on the protection of private properties against the environment's best interests.

   The best way to enhance the fishery is to protect the resource.  This has been the recent history of FrOG and the Garcia River Watershed.  Since 1986, FrOG has aggressively worked to prevent actions that it saw as damaging to the watershed and its river.  There has been a rather good study (undocumented) occurring with the Garcia and its sister watershed, the Gualala, each experiencing entirely different approaches to environmental activism.

   The Gualala has had a highly dedicated and hardworking group of activists, the Steelhead Project, who have seen their role in the salvation of the fishery as a nurturing process of saving actual fish.  Since 1980, thousands of fish have been removed from dewatering pools each year to careful rearing in The Steelhead Project's enclosures to be released to the river when conditions were just right.  The Gualala has been the recipient of thousands of hatchery fish during this time as well.

   FrOG, on the other hand, neither saved fish nor accepted any.  They saw the road to salvation as protecting the habitat of the fish.  Efforts there were focused on limiting sedimentary inputs and disruption to the stream.  While some restoration work has been done, it is the natural processes of the stream that do the real work.  The last nineteen years have culminated in a dramatic improvement in the Garcia's geomorphology and fishery, while the opposite is currently seen on the Gualala.

   The Garcia's steelhead population has been very strong for the last 5 years.  Numerous steelhead redds are now found throughout the lower seven or eight miles of the Garcia.

   In 1937 Fish & Game wardens recorded over 116+ pinks at Windy Hollow crossing.  This year, for the first time since 1955, the pink salmon have been discovered making 23 redds (nests) near Highway One.

   Pinks are the smallest of the salmon species, although they are common to Alaska they are rarely found below Canada.  Now, once again the Garcia, once again appears to be the southernmost refuge for pinks.

   This news appears to be related to improvements in habitat on the Garcia where numerous deep holes, lots of spawning sized gravels and good protection against predators can be found.  In the estuary the bed is now gravels and no longer mud.

   Coho salmon belong to the family Salmonidae and are one of eight species of Pacific salmonids in the genus Onchorynchus.  Coho salmon are anadromous (adults migrate from a marine environment into fresh water streams and rivers of their birth) and semelparous (spawn only once and then die).  Coho spend approximately the first half of their life cycle rearing in streams and small freshwater tributaries.  The remainder of the life cycle is spent foraging in estuarine and marine waters of the Pacific Ocean prior to returning to their stream of origin to spawn and die.  Most adults are three-year old fish, however, some precocious males known as "jacks" return as two-year old spawners.  A returning adult may measure more than two feet in length and weigh an average of eight pounds.

   The species was historically distributed throughout the North Pacific Ocean from central California to Point Hope, Alaska, through the Aleutian Islands and from the Anadyr River, Russia south to Hokkaido, Japan.  Historically, this species probably inhabited most coastal streams in Washington, Oregon, and central and northern California.