way too much news

This week was a big mix of coho salmon related fantastic-ness. It was also super busy.

The storm Saturday night brought the flows high enough for the coho salmon to jump up the pools at the Inkwells, which I think I already wrote about.

So anyway, to continue, I suppose, the salmon run is really hot. Heidi and I have been going out a lot this past week to both look at fish and just check out the area and also do some surveying. Tuesday we took a video camera to Roy's Pools (a series of pools built so that spawners could migrate upstream, though it's a migration barrier to smolts migrating back to the ocean) to watch them jumping up the pools.

Unfortunately, by the time we got there in the afternoon they were no longer jumping every minute, but more like every 10-15 minutes. I tried to get a picture with my camera phone, but everytime they'd jump it'd be a surprise and by the time I got over the "HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THAT!!!" moment, the jump would be done. But we did catch at least one fantastic, perfect leap on the video camera.

Marjorie, the law intern, had her last day on Friday. It was sad - so on Tuesday (or possibly Mon or Wed, can't really remember) Heidi and I took her around to see the salmon, and indeed we saw lots. Marjorie works on the Sea Turtle Restoration Project/GotMercury.org project, so she doesn't have these requisite "hey we're gonna check out Lagunitas Creek today" excursions. It's so exciting - these huge fish in these streams! Their behavior is so clear - it's really easy to humanize them and get excited about what they're doing and what their objectives are while you watch them.

We went out later in the week with one of our volunteers (and because we were possibly going to do a CBS interview - didn't happen) and saw a salmon missing it's nose. It had gotten stuck while jumping through the Inkwells (a series of pools at the confluence of Lagunitas and San Geronimo Creeks) and ended up not making it - and staying in the larger creek. And he lost his nose in the process!

So, other office-y news:

Megan, our lead naturalist (who occasionally brings us delicious homemade food ever since she discovered that we were on food stamps) called into a show on NPR and mentioned our creekwalks on Tuesday, so every since then the phone's been ringing off the hooks. Heidi and I come back from outdoor excursions and we have billions of messages. I ended up hooking up with one of the creekwalks today, after our habitat restoration in the morning, because I signed up a friend of mine (yes, I have A friend in San Francisco) and his roommates. It was so packed! And we saw coho and possibly a chum salmon, so it was quite a success.

I need to go to bed:

So this will be short.

The coho salmon are spawning!

Monday Heidi and I took Marjorie (the law intern who is leaving to go back to Wisconsin and her parents while she awaits the bar exam) to an area to see them - we watched males fighting, females building redds (nests), amazing.

Yesterday Heidi and I watched them leap through Roy's Pools (a series of pools that allow the salmon migrate through in high flows and, in lower flows, act as a dam. The dam that was there before was too high for the salmon to get over)!!!

Today Paola took Heidi and I on a spawner survey - so we got decked out in our chest waders and went in the stream, walking upstream (out of the stream as much as possible) in a tiny tiny creek (literally 2-10 ft wide) for 2.5 hours looking for salmon building redds and males hanging around waiting for their gals or fighting with other males.