Caspian Push and Pull

Native Species



20
Jun

Caspian Push and Pull

The origin story of a project to lure Caspian terns to several barren islands in the South Bay Salt Pond Habitat Restoration Project stretches all the way to the mouth of the Columbia River in Washington. This bird story that turns out to be a fish tale shows what can happen when multiple agencies and states work together to protect the numbers of an endangered species by changing the patterns of another species. In this case, the robust population of Caspian terns in the Columbia River basin have instigated efforts to redistribute the population to protect endangered salmonids exiting the Columbia River bound for the sea, and their efforts have been led to some success in the San Francisco Bay.
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13
Jun

An Eggfull of Estuary

Birds’ eggs don’t lie. Just as thinning eggshells once revealed how DDT was affecting peregrines and pelicans, the eggs themselves are now telling scientists how long-lived some contaminants are in the Estuary and where they are the most problematic.
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05
Jun

Beyond the Blubber

When John Kucklick talks about interrogation techniques, his subjects aren’t tight-lipped terrorists, they’re bits of blubber. Harbor seal fat is a well-known repository of legacy contaminants from the Bay like PCBs, flame retardants and DDT, but the Regional Monitoring Program for Water Quality in San Francisco Bay (RMP) wanted to know what they might be missing. In 2010, they asked Kucklick, a scientist with access to a national database of 330,000 chemicals and some pretty cutting edge software, to check their blubber for unknowns.
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19
Jun

Freeing Fish While Locking Up Mercury

Restoration planners were worried that connecting a former salt evaporation pond with the Bay could introduce long-dormant mercury to the wider ecosystem, and initial studies of levels in water bird eggs and fish reinforced that concern. A set of adjustable gates between the pond and the river allows seasonal closure of the pond and the ability to control the flow. But that raised a new question: would the river’s steelhead run get sidetracked...
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