A Fish in Stone
I have been in that
stone for over a million
years. What a journey
to finally come out and
tell my story. Excuse
me, my name is Coho
Salmon. I was fossilized
over a million years ago
when I got trapped in a
mud layer during a large
storm.
I’m looking for my friends Chinook and
Steelhead. We are distant cousins. Our
ancestors have been on Earth for 40 million
years. About 1 million years ago during the Ice
Age, we were abundant in the cool rivers that
flowed from the mountains in the east to the
San Francisco Bay.
We all belong to the
salmonids, a group of
fish that can live in fresh
and salt water. This is a
difficult task for any
vertebrate, because of
how bodies handle
fluids and salt. Our
body changes when we
migrate from fresh
water to marine. Some
people cannot recognize
the change.
The salmonid body uses chemistry to get rid of
salt when it moves to the ocean. They are able
to “poop” it out. This helps to maintain a
balance. When it returns to fresh water it can
easily adjust.
Salmonids are born in fresh water and live in the
creek, river, or lake for about one to three years.
They will then go to the ocean and spend another
one to eight years before they return to the same
stream. They are anadromous or migrating from
salt to fresh water to spawn.
In fresh water salmonids prefer clean, cold running
streams with gravel bottoms. Warm water has too
many dissolved chemicals and disturbs their life cycle.
The body is equipped to get rid of salts, but not other
toxins.
“I have wanted to jump into the creek I was born in for a long
time,” Coho exclaimed. Coho jumped into the river, but was
surprised by the warm temperature and muddy bottom. The
river is not flowing like it used to. He can barely swim in this
creek. He looked around to find some other salmonids, but
instead he saw these unknown creatures swimming.
Coho met a native western pond turtle swimming near
him. Coho asked about the fish. The turtle replied, “In
1873 the California government introduced warm water
fish to California streams. Livingston Stone, a fishery
expert transported fish by train from the east and midwest
to the San Francisco Bay area lakes.”
“Why would they do that?” Coho wondered. “As the population
of the San Francisco Bay area increased in the 1800’s the forests
were cut down and humans started to dam rivers for water
supply. Streams and lakes suffered from pollution from saw
mills, siltation, and log jams. The waters became warm and
local native species could not live in the water anymore. The
fish were brought in for a food source,” turtle replied.
They introduced non-native fish including large and
small mouth bass, bluegill, brown bullhead, black
crappie, and sunfish They could survive in warm,
slow moving waters that the humans had created.
These fish were familiar to the people that moved
from back east.
The water also did not taste the same. Nitrates
from too much fertilizer; phosphates from soap;
and all kinds of paper and plastic bottles could be
detected in the water. Copper, aluminum, iron,
and phosphorus from storm runoff, caused algae
blooms that depleted oxygen in the water.
Humans developed a
complicated system
of pipes under the
roadways called
storm drains, to
protect their homes
from flooding.
Storm drains can concentrate pollution from the surrounding
watershed. Water pours into wetlands, unless there is a system
to help clean the pollution, the toxins remain in the water. The
fish are affected by the chemicals, as they filter water through
their gills.
The turtle told him of several “fish kills” when
pollution from the land was carried by storm water.
A plume of the toxins surrounded a school of
largemouth bass and caused over 1000 fish to die.
We still do not know what caused the kill, but
their bodies were found along the shore. Luckily
they were eaten by scavengers and only the
remains of bones and scales were left. Nature
can help clean up tragedies created by humans.
It was a different world and Coho did not know if he
could survive. He started to realize that maybe he
should have stayed in the stone. Coho slowly moved
back to his stone and laid down, to have a place
forever in history that would tell the story of a land
that once was, but would never be again.
funding provided by
Alameda County Sheriff's Department