We prize our fish; now let’s protect them

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer. And one thing that means is trout fishing.

Especially this summer, because the five-year drought has mercifully ended. Streams are leaping off the mountains in whitewater cascades, carrying bug buffets to fish lurking in deepwater pools. Coldwater lakes are chock-full.

Trout and their cousin salmon, caught off the coast and savored grilled or smoked, are among California’s most prized assets. They and another cousin, the majestic, ocean-going steelhead trout, are three things that make this state a special place to live.

We’re fortunate to have what’s left. We used to have much more. And, if the trend continues, we’ll have a whole lot less in the future.

Fishery biologists at UC Davis and California Trout, a nonprofit activist organization, issued a 100-page report recently, and its conclusions were alarming. It predicted that threefourths of California’s trout, steelhead and salmon species will become extinct in the next 100 years. Within 50 years, nearly half will die off.

The biologists lump these related species under one name, salmonids, and call them “the iconic fishes of the northern hemisphere.”

The salmon and steelhead are anadromous. That is, they’re hatched in freshwater, swim out to sea for a while, then return to the rivers of their hatching to spawn offspring. California has 21 such species.

Why do they hang out in the ocean? “To get large. If you’re a bigger fish you can lay more eggs and have more babies,” says Patrick Samuel, conservation direc-