Delta smelt on the brink

The fight to save the delta smelt, the beleaguered fish at the center of an increasingly bitter tug-of-war over water rights in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is as close to a lost cause as ever, but fisheries biologists vow to continue the struggle to protect the species. There are only about 13,000 endangered delta smelt remaining in the estuary this year, the lowest number in recorded history, according to estimates released last week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It means a fish that for thousands of years could be found only in the delta is perilously close to extinction. “It’s a very small number of fish,” said Steve Martarano, spokesman for the Bay-Delta office of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “They have a life cycle of about a year, so to have that low of a number in a body of water as large as the bay delta is very alarming.” The population this year is well below last year’s estimate of 112,000 fish, the previous record low. Martarano said the yearly counts, which are extrapolations based on the state’s annual spring trawling surveys, go back to 2002, when there were 597,000 smelt. Bad news in wet… Read full this story

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