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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.

Hundreds of Scientists and Thousands of Residents Call on Supervisors to Enact Stronger Creek Protections. San Rafael–Marin County Supervisors are being told by California’s leading scientists with affiliations from almost every leading university in the State and the California Academy of Sciences, that current and proposed policies regarding Marin’s coho salmon do not adequately protect this critically endangered species and are likely to lead to their extirpation.

Nominations were being accepted through August 17 for designation of priority conservation areas in the nine county San Francisco Bay Area that contain lands important for protection via fee title acquisition or easement over the next few years through local governments and organizations.