100,000 Steelhead Killed By Defective Dam Pump (California)

[hatrack]

A failed pump cut off the water to more than 100,000 steelhead trout at a fish facility at Lake Mendocino, killing the yearlings just days before they were to be released into the Russian River.

A Fish and Wildlife technician who lives at the Coyote Valley Dam Fish Facility woke up early Friday to find 150 adult trout and about 104,000 10-inch yearlings dead. The 100-by-9-foot concrete raceway in which they were held was drained of water.

"It was sickening. It's just devastating to us," said Brett Wilson, who manages the trapping and imprinting operation as well as a companion hatchery at Warm Springs Dam in Sonoma County. "There's a tremendous amount of work that goes into these fish. To have this happen a week prior to releasing them hurts real hard."

The loss was significant, representing about half of the 200,000 yearlings that the Coyote facility expected to release this year. But Wilson said the real impact won't be known until 2008, when the adults return. While steelhead are considered a threatened species, the trout hatched and raised in captivity, and distinguished by a clipped fin, don't fall under the same protections of the Endangered Species Act.

EDIT

Oops.

http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060122/NEWS/601220442/1033/NEWS01

[Odin2005]

1. DOH!

poor fish. :cry:

Steelheads are a developmental morph of rainbow trout (one form's ofspring can can develop into the other form) arn't they, isn't that why they can't be classified as endangered?

[wordpix]

2. not enough $ for an environmental program due to war in Iraq sucking it

up?