Pacific Fishery Management Council said in a report Tuesday that the Sacramento River’s fall chinook salmon population is headed for collapse and suggested that it may be necessary to close the salmon season entirely.

That would spell disaster for both commercial and recreational fishermen at Pillar Point Harbor, who typically depend on the salmon and Dungeness crab seasons for their entire incomes. Poor salmon returns from the Klamath River in 2006 and 2007 previously caused regulators to cut the first month and a half of salmon season, which normally starts on May 1, resulting in untold financial losses for fishermen.
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Fishermen say they knew the Sacramento River runs were weaker than expected last year, but even they were shocked by the low number of chinook returning to the river to spawn. Only about 90,000 returning adult salmon were counted in the Central Valley in 2007, the second lowest number since 1973, according to the report.

More worrisome is that only about 2,000 2-year-old chinooks — whose numbers are used to predict returns of adult spawners in the coming season — returned to the Central Valley last year — by far the lowest number ever counted. On average, about 40,000 juveniles, or "jacks," return each year.

Some believe the losses are related to changes in the ocean linked to global warming. Others blame the troubles in California on increased pumping of fresh water from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, which supplies drinking water to millions of people in drought-stricken Southern California, as well as irrigation for America’s most fertile farming region.

There’s more at the County Times website.

The Half Moon Bay City Council denied an appeal of a concrete crushing plant next door to the Hilltop mobile home park at its meeting on January 15. You can watch the entire proceedings below.

If you’re pressed for time, I recommend watching the eloquent testimony of the appellant [ Quicktime | Flash ] and the response of the city council [ Quicktime | Flash  ].

Not having followed this case closely, I don’t have an opinion about whether this use should have been approved. But I was startled at how little interest the council showed in the amount of noise this use would create for mobile home park residents.  CCWD commissioner Jim Larimer showed up with an SPL meter to testify that the city’s limit of 65 dB was about what he encountered in his Passat, which he seemed to think was appropriate. There was also some discussion of the noise from Highways 92 and 1.

It got me thinking about whether there should be more discussion and understanding of the issue of noise pollution on the Coastside.

• Opening | Quicktime | Flash  |

 

• Report out of closed session | Quicktime | Flash  |

 

• City Council reports | Quicktime | Flash  |

 

• Oral communications | Quicktime | Flash  |

 

• Staff reports | Quicktime | Flash  |

 

• Consent calendar | Quicktime | Flash  |

 

• Appeal of Planning Commission approval of concrete crushing near mobile home park | Quicktime | Flash  | Docs |

 

• Waive permit fee for Saso Gale house at 684 Terrace Ave [moved from consent calendar] | Quicktime | Flash  | Docs |

 

• Appointment to Parks & Recreation and Planning Commissions [deferred] | Docs |

 

• Amend animal control agreement | Quicktime | Flash  | Docs |

 

• Agreement to lease Seacrest gym | Quicktime | Flash  | Docs |

Coastside fishermen may have been trained as certified oil-spill responders, but they had little opportunity to participate in the Cosco Busan oil spill cleanup, reports the County Times.

Eventually, the Port of San Francisco hired 20 San Francisco-based fishing vessels to assist the cleanup and paid them $3,000 per day for four days.

Ironically, MSRC, the private company that supplied most of the manpower, vessels, and oil-cleanup equipment in the oil spill, was also the company that provided oil-spill cleanup training to up to half the fleet of commercial fishermen along the Pacific Coast in the 1990s.

The annual training sessions ceased abruptly in 1999 without explanation, according to Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.

The company conducting the cleanup is funded by the oil industry. Julia Scott has an extensive article on what happened, what didn’t, and why.

Half Moon Bay.  The Coastside Land Trust announced today the election of CLT board member Robert Rogers as board President and the appointment of Jo Chamberlain as the organization’s Executive Director.
Robert Rogers, a resident of Half Moon Bay and CFO of Sell West, has demonstrated his dedication to preservation of open space through his service as CLT board member and secretary. He is active with the Coastal Repertory Theater and in coastside Scouting.
Jo Chamberlain, a Lobitos Canyon resident and the outgoing CLT board president, is dedicated to the preservation of open space along the San Mateo County coastside. Educated at UCSC as a biologist and environmental scientist, Jo has served on several non-profit boards, including the San Francisco Zoological Society and Friends of Westwind, and has recently taught in the Cabrillo school district. With experience in corporate management, environmental education, and the non-profit sector, she brings both organizational and development skills to the Coastside Land Trust.
The Coastside Land Trust is dedicated to protecting the urban open space of the San Mateo County coast, for enjoyment now and for generations to come. Its primary focus is safeguarding scenic bluffs, open space, stream corridors and agricultural lands in and around the communities of Half Moon Bay, El Granada, Miramar, Moss Beach, Princeton-by-the-Sea, and Montara.

Four beaches on the Coastside and in Pacifica have reported tar balls, likely as a result of the Cosco Busan spill, according to Dean Peterson, the county’s Director of Environmental Health.

 

• Linda Mar State Beach - several quarter to softball size tar balls

 

• Rockaway Beach - several quarter size tar balls

 

• Sharp Park Beach - several dime size tar balls

 

• Fitzgerald Marine Reserve - Several quarter to half-dollar size tar balls. There is oil near the seals, no impact has been reported on the seals.

The O’Brien Group, the contractor for the Cosco Busan spill, responded to the beaches and have been collecting the tarballs this afternoon on the beaches. Monitoring will continue.

To report oil or tar balls on beaches please call the county’s OES department at 650.363.4790.

A new documentary by a Soquel filmmaker shows elephant seals are making a massive comeback from near-extinction, reports Metro Santa Cruz.

The fattened young pups are left onshore to figure out for themselves how to enter the water, dive for fish and make a 10,000-mile solo migration that makes their species the unparalleled distance runners of the mammalian universe, outstripping even the accomplishments of the gray whale.

The 25 percent of pups who evade starvation and white shark attacks during this vulnerable period will repeat an astounding annual cycle, migrating to feeding grounds in the Northern Pacific twice each year, diving as deep as a mile for fish and for up to an hour at a time along the way. They’ll return to the rookeries of their births once in summer to molt and once in winter to pup and breed. The males, 14 to 16 feet long and weighing up to 5,000 pounds, will battle furiously for mating rights to entire harems of females, which are much smaller at 10-12 feet and 1,200-2,000 pounds. While on terra firma, both sexes will fast.

Their serial migration is a feat that never ceases to amaze Soquel filmmaker Drew Wharton.

There’s a good audio story about this on NPR’s site as well as a great photo gallery and trailer for the film at Wharton’s site.

The owner of Level Lea Farms, one of the most picturesque farms in Pescadero, sold a conservation easement for $1.27 million to a land trust, reports Julia Scott in the County Times.

Farm owner Meredith Reynolds said the deal, reached with the Monterey County Agricultural and Historical Land Conservancy, would allow her to keep the farm in her family, as it has been since her ancestor, Lafayette Chandler, bought the 190-acre tract in 1860. ...

Under the deal, Meredith and her husband, James Reynolds, gave up development rights on their farm in return for a lump-sum payment of $1.27 millionfrom state and federal agencies. They will invest some of the money in maintaining the land and paying off growing expenses associated with running a farm in San Mateo County — expenses like flood and liability insurance and building repairs.

With its rustic view of the Pescadero hills and location less than two miles from the ocean, the property would likely have proved irresistible to a developer of rural estate homes, according to Charles Tyson, manager of the state Department of Conservation’s California Farmland Conservation Program.

The land could have been split into eight new housing lots someday, according to state regulations. The state program contributed roughly half the funds toward purchasing the easement.

Current farming revenue doesn’t cover the farm’s expenses, but the easement will allow the owners to make the land available to local farmers at an economically feasible rate. Pescadero farmer Joe Muzzi and his sons have cultivated Brussels sprouts, pumpkins, lettuce and other vegetables on 90 acres of Level Lea Farm for years.

The Washington Post reviews "The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada", with its 2,800 illustrations on 366 pages.

It is 366 pages long and contains 2,800 illustrations, each painted by Laws. The new field guide, already praised by outdoor connoisseurs as a naturalist’s bible, begins with "Small Fungi Growing on Wood" (specifically, Calocera cornea, the staghorn jelly fungus) and ends with stars (the night sky at winter solstice). It is small enough to slip into your pocket but includes 1,700 species of flowers, trees, bugs, frogs, snails, skinks, birds, fish and rodents. It took him six years to research and complete. The world needs more of this—this kind of sustained, informed, deep gee-whizdom.
...
There is also something sweet and obsessive, and marvelously 19th century about the whole enterprise, the idea of a lone amateur, now 41 years old (living in a rented $600 apartment in San Francisco), spending season after season tramping around the mountains, painting mushrooms and moles. "The pages and pages of bugs, flies, beetles," says Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday Books in Berkeley, the nonprofit publisher of the field guide. Margolin says he may not be able to "tell one from another, but isn’t it wondrous that they’re out there? Isn’t that marvelous?"

The guide is organized by color, making it a lot easier for non-experts to identify species quickly. (Via Boing Boing)

Paul Perkovic is a director of MWSD

Everyone takes water, telephone, sewer, gas, electricity, and cable utilities for granted, until something goes wrong. The intense rain and severe windstorm that struck the Bay Area on Friday, January 4, 2008, took out half of those services for many residents and businesses on the Coastside, causing significant disruption to people’s lives. But water and sewer (and PG&E’s gas) utilities performed well.

Montara Water and Sanitary District (MWSD) crews, along with those of Sewer Authority Mid-Coastside (SAM), kept reliable water and sewer services running throughout the storm with only minor problems. The rain brought much-needed water to help recharge our groundwater supplies. The storm itself, together with a regional power failure lasting nearly eight hours for most of our s

The county has issued its annual admonition to stay out of coastal waters following heavy storms, reports the County Times.

"You have all these (pathogens) building up during the dry season, above the creek line," [Dean Peterson, director of Environmental Health for San Mateo County] said. "So when you get the first storms, it will wash away this material into the creeks."

In San Mateo County, water quality experts on Monday tested various beaches along the 55-mile coastline and 20 miles of bayshore for elevated levels of the kind of bacteria linked to human and animal waste. If state levels are exceeded, a beach advisory is posted. Warnings, if needed, are posted within 48 hours, Peterson said.

Heal the Bay recommends staying out of the water for 72 hours after a storm.