In-person Meeting

August 24, 2018

Day 1 – Bay-Delta Office, Sacramento

Reminder : The purpose of this meeting was to engage Delta experts and elicit their strategies as part of the development of a CVPIA SIT near-term restoration strategy.

Participants:

Josh Israel, Brett Harvey, Brad Cavallo, JD Wikert, You Chen Chao, Griffin Hill, Duane Linander, Ken Kundargi, Ann Allison, Ivan, Kevin Clark, Chris Kwan, Gabrielle Biosrame, Ben Geske, Dick Pool, Sam Luoma, Bruce DiGennaro, Alicia Seesholtz, Kevin, Sheila Greene, Esther, Mike Urkov, Jeff Stuart, Russ Perry, Katrina Harrison, Shane Abeare, Jim Peterson, Adam Duarte

Summary and background of current Chinook Salmon, Steelhead, and Green Sturgeon CVPIA SIT Process

Chinook

  • Nov 2 selected because fish are distributed during that season. Would be less effective for fall run.
  • Fung et al. 2016 pyrethroids (pesticides) contaminants in the delta. Delta RNP does a monitoring of this to look at residence time. That is, if I fix the problem how long do the contaminants stick around?. USGS monitors a suite of sites and contaminants for this. They look at trends at a spot and intend to do a SWAT model to look at point-source movement of contaminants. Type of contaminant is geographic. Central is agricultural contaminants. It is driven by the land use nearby. Jeff said the east side tributaries are fairly clean in the SJR, the west side are worse. We should also consider the dry vs. wet years. Jim will talk to Deanna about contaminants. Sean said we are not sure what contaminant is doing what, so we should consider a contaminant action is a blanket effect on growth and survival. Delta Resiliency strategy has storm water management and aquatic weed control. Increase aquatic weed control without using contaminants. Adding sediments could increase contaminants.
  • https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/conservation/watersheds/dcf
  • https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=155004&inline
  • Fish screening programmatic directed by CDFW ITP (incidental take permit)
  • We don't know what wild fish are doing in the south delta. We know they stick around longer than the hatchery fish. A strategy is simply to get them fat and happy before they enter the delta or put them in the system further down. It is possible all the SJR fish returning are actually strays, not SJR origin fish (because they all die on their route to the ocean).
  • Dick said he would follow up and send a few proposed projects that him and his group think would benefit Chinook.

Sturgeon

  • Green and white sturgeon are particularly sensitive to selenium (whites are most sensitive because of food web)
  • Tidal wetland restoration might be positive for green sturgeon.
  • Fremont weir passage is actually designed for Sturgeon (they don't swim as well as salmon)
  • Sturgeon are benthic swimmers, so non-physical barriers will not be as effective because they can swim underneath those barriers.
  • In the delta year round so finding an optimal window for dredging (they are attracted to and killed by dredgers) does not exist.
  • Fishing restrictions: can be a restriction of fishing gear types

Steelhead

  • Are there something other than what you considered for Chinook?
    • We are lagging behind on our Steelhead studies. They are a very plastic fish so it is hard to pin them down. *Group agreed Chinook scenarios could be considered beneficial for Steelhead*
Last updated on Dec 5, 2018