it seems like a nice and simple thing and it is in a lot of ways it's it's a bigger more complicated issue i'm tim and i'm tom and we're going to talk to you about why fish need water here in the couch and in the coaxial different species of salmon and trout need different amounts of water at different times of year in different places at different times during their life history the runs are so precarious we've got climate change we've got all these other issues um we want to make sure that fish have water at the right time when they need it so stick with us because over the next couple minutes tim and i are going to talk to you about why fish need water in the couching and cox island watersheds why do you release so much water in the spring months and not hold it back for the summer months that's a great question and i often get people asking me why are you letting all that water out of the weir in the springtime we should be saving it for the summer there's a lot of reasons but i can tell you three really quickly steelhead lay their eggs in the gravel in the late winter early spring if we reduce the flows in the spring where the steelhead lay their eggs will look like this they'll be dry all the eggs will die secondly chinook salmon babies the fry come up out of the gravel early march they're very small and they have to stay in the river and feed for 90 days where they like to go is right up against the edge of the river and the vegetation and if the river isn't full to brim they have nowhere to go they get washed out into the ocean thirdly the coho smolts who have been living in the river for a whole year these little babies are getting ready to go out to the ocean but they don't live in the middle of the river they live off in the side in side channels and pools and if the river drops too soon they can't get out and they're stuck there so there's a very good reason that we like to see good flows in april may and june so we're not wasting the water we're releasing it so that salmon can thrive and survive okay so the water is really low right now because it's basically summer time but i don't think that it really matters the water flow because there's no fish in the water right that's actually a great question um in the summer there are salmon species that that move out quite early but coho in particular uh resident trout and uh in both the couch and in the coaxial early run chinook all have really important flow values that have to be protected so for coho because they live in stream so what after they hatch they live in stream for basically an entire year you need enough pool habitat for smaller fry and fish to hide away from predators they need to be able to access vegetation to get food and to hide but they also it's also important to have strong riffles between each of those pools for fish to be able to access for trout and other species that really more heavily use that riffle habitat that faster moving water between the pools it's just as important for them to have that kind of habitat as it is for coho's to have back eddies and for all of those fish to be able to go from habitat to habitat wherever they need to go to find food why can't the salmon just wait in the estuary until the big rains come and the river levels rise salmons swim up the river in the fall so so they come in in the bay and they swim up the river to lay their eggs that's happened for thousands of years with climate change the river is lower later in the summer in the fall so when the salmon arrive there's not enough water for them to swim up this causes problems for a few reasons one as salmon get ready to spawn they start to deteriorate because they spawn and die and if they can't spawn on time water seeps into the body cavity hardens the eggs and the eggs aren't any good secondly if the salmon show up and they're waiting to go up the river there are other things in the bay as well things like seals and sea lions which love to eat salmon normally that's fine because they just get a quick crack at them as they swim up the river but if they're stuck in the lower end of the river because they can't get up many of them get get killed some years the water is so low in the fall that the couch and tribes and partners have to catch the salmon in the estuary stick them in trucks and drive them up the river so that's a situation we do not want to see happening we have a term in calcium it's it's much stem oops and quite literally translated it means that everything is interconnected for us salmon healthy salmon in the system mean a healthy community for us being able to make sure that there's salmon for future generations that people will be able to continue to fish and sustain themselves mean that that community and and culture will be supported as well and and it's about all of our survival [Music] you