Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron&Julie
Mexico has for years, banned the catch of Totuava because their numbers decreased so drastically from overfishing. Apparently
|
Overfishing played a part in their demise no doubt.
They only spawned in the Colorado River Delta and they were easy to target in the shallows as they came in to spawn. Imagine 200 pound+ white seabass stacked up outside the Colorado estuary swimming over sand bars like salmon so thick you could harpoon them.
It was carnage, but that overfishing only went on for a short period of time mostly before the first dam went in and didn't do the long term damage.
Currently over 90% of the Colorado's water is diverted out of the river, and the water that remains is heavily contaminated with agricultural run off. The fish historically spawned there in the Delta after the spring floods when there was the right mix of fresh and salt water, and new clean sand to spawn on. Big Dams equaled no floods. The spawn was actually triggered by certain water conditions that just no longer exist any more. No spring floods mean no new clean bottom to spawn on and the wrong salinity for spawning and the young fish.
When the United States diverted the Colorado River the ecological balance of the Delta and the Gulf was disturbed to the point the fish just couldn't reproduce, and since those fish were in Mexico not the US pretty much no-one cared at the time.
This isn't some kind of isolated incident. Derby Dam on the Truckee River cut off the Pyramid Lake Lahontan cutthroat, the largest inland trout in North America, from it's spawning grounds up a lake Tahoe they died off in a few decades and for a while they thought they were extinct.
The only reason they now still exist is some scientists found some that were stocked in Utah over a hundred years ago and now are raising them in a hatchery. They still are cut off from their spawning grounds so they do not spawn in the wild and would disappear without the hatchery but at least they still exist.
Grand Coulee Dam Blocked the largest North American Salmon from their spawning grounds up the Columbia and killed them off to extinction.
A similar run of 100 pound fish in the Elwa river disappeared after they blocked them off from their spawning run as well.
There's now a debate about whether those fish might possibly come back now that they finally removed the Elwa dams, but no-one really knows and since those dams were there for a hundred years it's unlikely much of the original genetics from that run survives.
I mean what are you going to do? You can't just take this stuff back. Back when they built those dams they were not concerned about the fish, and if not for the hydroelectric dams like Grand Coulee and Hoover with their cheap abundant electricity we'd of probably never been able to make the aluminum to build the planes that helped us win World War II.
In the US at least we are now making some real efforts to save our fish. The deal is no US politician is going to be willing to take away the water from our farmers and leave it in the Colorado for the Totoaba. The Mexicans do not have the millions of dollars it would take to set up a big enough hatchery system to really make a difference.
While looking at the Mediterranean Corvina the huge fish this guy caught I found a lot of info on raising them and Hatchery programs. I did once read about a small experimental restocking program for totoaba at some school at Ensanada years ago but it was tiny and it's hard to believe it's going to make a big difference. We have a Hatchery program for White Seabass it's just a shame that the Totoaba doesn't range further north so we'd have a reason to protect and save them.
I'm just pissed I'm probably never going to be able to fish for them. I have a thing for big fish, and a 200 pound seabass in the shallow water in the Northern Gulf would be a hell of a fun thing to target from a kayak.
Jim