Spawning endangered coho salmon have yet to appear in Redwood Creek, raising fears that Cosco Busan oil spill may have driven the fish away.
“No coho have come up Redwood Creek so far this year,” said Steve Hampton, of the state Department of Fish and Game, at a meeting Tuesday night in Mill Valley to discuss the effects of the spill on Marin.
Letter submitted to NOAA and CA DFG. The Redwood Creek coho salmon run comes in from the Pacific Ocean at Muir Beach in Marin County and is closely monitored each year by biologists from the National Park Service. Redwood Creek coho congregate off Muir Beach at the start of the rainy season waiting for seasonal rains to break the berm at Muir Beach so they can begin their upstream migration. On the date of the oil spill, November 7th, 2007, that berm had not yet broken. Thus the fish were likely directly offshore — and may have been in the path of the oil that affected coastal Marin and particularly Muir Beach.
Fish biologists in West Marin are expressing concern over what is shaping up to be one of the worst coho salmon spawning years on record. Numbers of new nests are…
