Water Quality Blog Posts

This summer continues to be a challenge for the San Francisco Bay Area Network Fisheries Team and the aquatic life that inhabit our coastal streams. During our summer habitat monitoring, we found several drying pools in lower Redwood Creek in Golden Gate National Recreation Area. We also noted fish displaying signs of distress like rising to the surface for air. Our team is working closely with park managers and regulatory agencies to help save these young coho and steelhead.

Dairy and cattle ranching can contaminate streams with fecal indicator bacteria like E. coli. But changing ranching practices can dramatically reduce this risk. In 2019, Point Reyes National Seashore staff worked on a case study showing how water quality improved concurrent with grazing management practice implementation in the Olema Creek watershed. Now, they’ve published a new case study. This one looks at trends in water quality on the Point Reyes Peninsula.

For decades, coho salmon returning to spawn in urban Pacific Northwest streams have been mysteriously dying in the aftermath of large storms. Now, after a painstaking search for answers, a team of scientists have found the culprit: a previously undescribed chemical nicknamed 6PPD-quinone. Meanwhile, scientists in California’s Central Valley noticed odd behavior and high mortality among juvenile Chinook salmon in multiple hatcheries just last winter.

Point Reyes National Seashore staff, in collaboration with UC Cooperative Extension and UC Davis, recently published an article examining the long-term, on-the-ground benefits of collaborative efforts to improve grazing management and water quality in the Olema Creek watershed.