The endangered Delta smelt population has made strides to recovery, nearly doubling in population over the past year, according to California Department of Fish and Game officials. That population increase, however, represents a small percentage of its historical population, according to a Wednesday DFG press release. Since counting the fish to find exact numbers would be nearly impossible, DFG collects smaller samples and counts the number of fish in the samples to get an indication of the larger population. The average number of young Delta smelt per sample doubled from 3.8 last year to 8.0 this year, but is a far cry from the height of 39.7 in 1999. Adult Delta smelt also doubled th

Goodbye, Sherbet, the huge orange cyclid that loved to be teased in his tank. Goodbye Moby Dick, the giant gourami that held careful watch over the freshwater fish. Goodbye Capitol Aquarium. The owners of the specialty fish store that has been a fixture at T and 29th streets since 1978 turned out the lights on the tank lids for the last time Wednesday after unsuccessfully trying to find a buyer for the struggling business. “It’s really a sign of the times,” said Bob Pasley, son of Capitol Aquarium owner Grant Pasley. “The business wasn’t supporting itself.” Pasley, 44, said the combination of a bad economy and a sharp decrease in sales contributed to the closure after 52 years in busine

The first of about 3 million young salmon were released into the American River Thursday, and California Department of Fish and Game officials said they will finish the job Friday. They hope those fish will return to spawn within two to five years. “They were spawned, hatched and partially raised at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery in Rancho Cordova,” said Dana Michaels, information officer for the Department of Fish and Game. About 25 percent of them have coded wire tags in their noses so Fish and Game staff will be able to track how many of them are returning to their native grounds to spawn. The goal, Michaels said, is to return the number of fish to their natural levels – levels that have d

The Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op is the best place in the state to purchase sustainable seafood, and No. 2 in the nation, according to Greenpeace. “(The co-op) is one of those great stores that has taken amazing steps in realizing that sustainable seafood is incredibly important,” said Casson Trenor, seafood campaigner for Greenpeace. Greenpeace ranks the 20 biggest grocery store chains on how sustainable their seafood is, and Trenor said some smaller grocers are included as well due to their commitment to ensuring seafood is sustainable. Sustainable seafood is seafood that is not being overfished or fished in hazardous ways that deplete the ocean’s stocks or destroy the environment.

New environmental rules for the Sacramento sewer district mean that local residents and businesses will be forced to pay high fees, according to opponents of the regulations. But the new restrictions approved Thursday night will likely be viewed by many others as a big win for clean water and the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Five members of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state regulatory body that oversees water quality in the region, unanimously set new restrictions on the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District just before 11 p.m. on Thursday night. A crowd of more than 330 people gathered for the meeting in Rancho Cordova, which starte

The steelhead trout and Chinook salmon of the American River have the Bureau of Reclamation to thank for restoring more than 15,000 tons of gravel to increase spawning habitats. A popular spawning site along a two-mile stretch of river below the Nimbus Dam had become too shallow to allow the fish to properly reproduce. “Space was limited. Eggs were laid on top of other eggs. Survival was not what it could be,” said Bureau of Reclamation Fisheries Biologist John Hannon. With the Nimbus Dam blocking downstream flow, Hannon said the good spawning gravel was being carried away by the current without being replenished. Gold mining in the 1800s had left many of the river’s side channels dried

This article will be about all kinds of things but, aside from the title, it won’t mention bicycles. Well, except for that first sentence where I had to write “bicycles” to establish the point. And again, just now, in sentence two – but the use of bicycles in that sentence was purely explanatory. Wait…damn. Hmmm…maybe the reason half the articles here are about bikes is that apparently it’s impossible to avoid writing about them, as I learned above. Why, I bet that we can’t even get through today, a perfectly average Saturday in Sacramento, without some further mention of bicycles. Anyway, on to non-bicycle related news. I was walking in midtown today, minding my own business, when a b

You can fish in downtown Sacramento. The lake in Southside Park has been stocked with fish for the past year by The California Department of Fish and Game. I spoke with a Joe Ferrier at The Department of Fish and Game about the history of the program. Ferrier said that the program to stock urban lakes started fifteen years ago when Fish and Game got a grant from the federal government under the Sport Fish Restoration Act. About five years ago a sewage spill contaminated the lake and Fish and Game stopped stocking the lake until about one year ago. Ferrier said that at that point the lake water was no longer contaminated and likely cleaner than ever. Due to budget constraints Southside P

I wanted to talk to someone in the Parks and Recreation department about who stocks the lake? Do fish help to keep the lake healthy?