What to Find at Point Reyes, CA

May 17


Spring and summer won't be the months to spot the once famous Marin County Coho Salmon making their way from open ocean to estuary and finally up the creek at Point Reyes – they are most likely to be seen in December and January – but what a show they must have once been.  Before widespread

commercial fishing and agriculture, the west coast used to virtually teem with these very dynamically critical 'anadromous' fish whose life cycle primarily consists of swimming and feeding in the open ocean, but that make their way back to freshwater annually to give birth.  "As they make their way upstream to spawn, females take on a bronze cast while male salmon turn dark red and develop an enlarged, hook-shaped upper jaw....Salmon reproduce only once in their lifetime; after salmon spawn, they die. Some live only 24 hours in freshwater; at most, they spawn 21 days after entering the stream."  This near mythical life affirming ritual by the fish would have been highly anticipated

by all and everything surrounding its arrival.  Grizzly bears, at a time in the past when they still lived here, certainly would have eyed the stark pink streaks swimming seemingly directly toward their own habitat; the Miwok Indians native to the coast here would have depended heavily on the fish stock; not to mention that once these fish predictably die at the end of their route, they serve as heavy natural fertilizer and sources of nitrogen for plants.  The story of the Coho, however, is primarily described in the past tense: nearly 94 percent of the Coho population has declined since the 1940's due to a variety of reasons.  The most verifiable problem for the Coho – and that which has turned its numbers to a threatened species – is the sharing of the shallow coastal waters with the needs of agriculture and its residual runoff and damming.  Naturally occurring southerly currents have also moved through a cycle of waning intensity and changed the dynamics of water levels at Point Reyes Seashore.  The visitor can still see the occasional Coho in the months mentioned above, especially Olema Creek

thanks to a newly determined rehabilitation project headed by the national parks service, some habitat restoration is being constructed and monitored. As the volunteers of such projects would point out, the first step to habitat restoration is first an understanding of the history of the species, a visitation would help, and a desire to curb practices of other resource users.