A Fish in Stone

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A Fish in Stone
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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.
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Im 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Why would they do that? Coho wondered. As the
population of the San Francisco Bay area
increased in the 1800s 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.
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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.
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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.
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Humans developed a complicated system of pipes
under the roadways called storm drains, to
protect their homes from flooding.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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funding provided byAlameda County Sheriff's
Department