A Tiny California Fish That Makes a Big Difference

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla
Campaign Director
Restore the Delta

A trial is unfolding this week in federal court in Fresno to determine how to protect the tiny delta smelt from the giant pumps that send water down south from the California Delta. This fish lives only in the Delta, and you’ll probably never see one, even if it doesn’t go extinct.

You may ask yourself, why should I care about this seemingly insignificant fish? That’s a fair question.

The answer is this is about much more than a tiny fish. It’s about whether we’re going to suck so much water out of the Delta that it becomes a contaminated, stagnant pond – harming Delta farmers, fishermen and communities.

The California Delta is the biggest estuary on the Pacific Coast from the tip of South America all the way up to Alaska. It’s also a source of drinking water for some 22 million Californians and a source of irrigation water for California farms. If you drink water or eat lettuce, tomatoes, oranges, almonds or any number of crops irrigated using Delta water, then you have a stake in the Delta’s health.

The Delta once was teeming with smelt. They were the most common open water fish in the entire ecosystem. They were an important food source for countless other critters. And their presence meant that temperature, salinity, volume and other water conditions were properly balanced. When the Delta was full of smelt, it was a sign that the Delta was healthy.

But in recent decades the number of smelt has nosedived. As we reached record levels of water pumping in recent years, the smelt plunged to the brink of extinction. In 2005, delta smelt numbers were the lowest ever surveyed, just a fraction of the survey count when the species was listed under the state and federal endangered species acts in 1993. This spring the massive water pumps in the South Delta killed so many of the remaining smelt that it prompted a brief emergency shutdown of the pumps.