Zero Delta Smelt Found in Annual Survey as California Water Wars Heat Up

Zero Delta Smelt, an indicator species that has been villainized by Donald Trump and his corporate agribusiness allies for supposedly being a “worthless fish,” have been caught in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for the seventh year in a row.

It is significant that zero Delta smelt were caught in the survey despite the release of tens of thousands of hatchery-raised Delta smelt into the Delta over the past few years by the state and federal governments. 

“The 2024 abundance index was 0 and continues the trend of no catch in the FMWT since 2017,” reported  Taylor Rohlin, CDFW Environmental Scientist Bay Delta Region in a Jan. 2 memo to Erin Chappell, Regional Manager Bay Delta Region: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/...

“No Delta Smelt were collected from any stations during our survey months of September-December. While FMWT did not catch any Delta Smelt, it does not mean there were no smelt present, but the numbers are very low and below the effective detection threshold by most sampling methods,” she wrote.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has conducted the Fall Midwater Trawl Survey (FMWT) to index the fall abundance of pelagic (open water) fishes annually since 1967 (except 1974 and 1979), Rohlin stated.

Why is this survey so important?  It’s because “the FMWT equipment and methods have remained consistent since the survey’s inception, allowing the indices to be compared across time,” Rohlin wrote. “These relative abundance indices are not intended to approximate population sizes; however, indices reflect general patterns in population change (Polansky et al. 2019).”

Other surveys last year also reveal the functional extinction of Delta smelt in the wild. A weekly survey by the US Fish and Wildlife Service  targeting Delta smelt caught only one smelt in the summer of 2024. “A late April IEP juvenile fish survey (the 20-mm Survey) caught several juvenile Delta smelt in the same area,” noted scientist Tom Cannon in his blog on the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance website: calsport.org/...   

In a recent post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Governor Gavin Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way. He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California.”

I break down the four falsehoods that Trump made in this post here: www.dailykos.com/...

To summarize, the Delta Smelt is definitely not a “worthless fish.” In fact, the Delta Smelt is a key indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. The 2 to 3 inch fish that smells like a cucumber is found only in the Delta.

It was once the most abundant fish in the Delta, numbering in the millions, but now is functionally extinct in the wild due to massive water exports to agribusiness and other factors, including invasive species, toxics and pollution, over the past several decades.   

The significance of the Delta smelt’s role in the Bay-Delta Estuary can’t be overstated. ”Delta Smelt are the thread that ties the Delta together with the river system,” said Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “We all should understand how that affects all the water systems in the state. They are the irreplaceable thread that holds the Delta system together with Chinook salmon.” 

The other fish species collected in the fall survey — striped bass, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and threadfin shad — continued their dramatic decline since 1967 when the State Water Project went into effect. Only the threadfin shad showed an increase from the last year’s index — and the population is still at just a fraction of its former abundance.

The survey uses an “abundance index,” a relative measure of abundance, to document general patterns in population change.

The 2024 abundance index for striped bass, an introduced gamefish, was 136, representing a 49% decrease from last year’s index. 

The index was 175 for longfin smelt, a native fish species, representing a 62% decrease from last year’s index. 

The index was 577 for threadfin shad, an introduced forage fish, representing a 12% increase from last year’s index. 

The index for American shad, an introduced gamefish, was 1341, representing a 45% decrease from last year’s index. 

The index for Sacramento splittail, a native minnow species, was 0, with 0 fish caught. 

Between 1967 and 2020, the state’s Fall Midwater Trawl abundance indices for striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 100, 99.96, 67.9, 100, and 95%, respectively, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

The graphs in this CDFW memo graphically illustrate how dramatic the declines in fish populations have been over the years: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/...

The survey was released as the California Water Wars are heating up. Governor Gavin Newsom has been pushing three projects — the Delta Tunnel, Sites Reservoir and the Voluntary Agreements — that fish advocates say would hasten the extinction of Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento winter-run and spring-run Chinook populations, Central Valley steelhead and green sturgeon.

In one of the latest fronts in the Water Wars, the State Water Resources Control Board has released a Water Quality Control Plan for the San Francisco Bay / Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watershed (WQCP) that is “both illegal and morally indefensible,” said water policy experts from the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) in a press statement. They said the draft plan promotes the Illegal “Voluntary Agreements” between the state and water contractors and violates the State Water Code.

“The draft plan would illegally delegate responsibility for maintaining healthy rivers and vibrant communities to water contractors serving corporate agriculture,” said Max Gomberg, a C-WIN board member and the former Climate and Conservation Manager for the State Water Resources Control Board. “It is morally indefensible for the Water Board to rubber stamp backroom deals that deliberately exclude tribes, environmental justice communities, and scientific experts.”

Gomberg also noted that the WQCP specifically violates Water Code Section 13241, which requires economic considerations for protecting the “beneficial uses” of water resources.

“Keeping water affordable and available to our environment requires reducing diversions to corporate agriculture,” Gomberg said. “Any honest plan would transparently address the ways to responsibly reduce production of luxury export products like almonds. This plan shows a callous indifference to the damage caused by massive agricultural water subsidies.”

Tom Stokely, a C-WIN water policy and fisheries analyst, said the Delta Plan puts the Trinity River – a major tributary of the Klamath River that is essential for sustaining the Klamath’s salmon runs – at profound risk.

“This plan is essentially a raid on the Trinity River, given it will siphon off increasing volumes of Trinity River water for corporate agricultural operations in the Central Valley,” said Stokely. “The Trinity is the cold water tap for the Klamath. Without ample Trinity River water, we will see terrible salmon mortality in the Lower Klamath – as we did in 2002, when 65,000 adult salmon died due to low Trinity flows.”

“Hundreds of millions of dollars were recently spent to remove four dams on the Upper Klamath and restore salmon runs. But as it stands, the WQCP completely undermines those efforts. Sacrificing Trinity and Klamath salmon for export almonds isn’t a good trade,” argued Stokely.