They only had one shot to save the fish.
Ash from the Palisades fire had blown into a stream housing the last population of steelhead trout in the Santa Monica Mountains, degrading the water quality.
The first rain following the inferno was closing in, bringing threats of debris flows that could choke Topanga Creek. Mud was already clogging the lower reaches, swept in by water used to douse the fire.
Four teams primarily comprised of biologists fanned out along a stretch of the waterway Jan. 23 and set to work stunning the trout with an electric current applied to the water and ferrying them in buckets to trucks outfitted with large tanks. Moving swiftly was key to minimize stressing the endangered fish.
It paid off. That night, 271 Southern California steelhead trout were transported to a hatchery in Fillmore for safe keeping. With 530 of the rare fish counted in the creek in November, it represented a large chunk of the population.
“I was so amazed and grateful that we had such success,” said Rosi Dagit, principal conservation biologist for the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, who participated in the rescue.
The escape was narrow: the first storm of the season arrived within two days, likely burying the remaining fish in a muddy slurry.
“Any fish that had been left in there are gone,” she said. “We dodged a bullet on that one.”
It was the second triumphant fish rescue in January. Less than a week before the trout were evacuated, 760 northern tidewater gobies — tiny endangered fish — were scooped out of the same watershed and transported to aquariums.
While the missions were a success, some scientists involved acknowledged that such emergency rescues aren’t ideal — or necessarily viable for the long run.
Suitable habitat has plummeted over the last century, with increasingly frequent wildfires adding stress to a system affected by human land and water use. Scorched watersheds can take years to recover, leaving fewer places to move fish in an emergency in the meanwhile. Some want to see new tactics used to tackle the challenges.
Topanga Creek — a biodiversity hot spot that drains into the Santa Monica Bay — could take five to 10 years to fully recover, according to Kyle Evans, an environmental program manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Palisades fire, which has chewed through more than 23,000 acres, burned down to the water in places, destroying trees and riparian canopy right along the edges.
Conducting rescues “is not something that is sustainable for the population or for the department,” Evans said. “It’s a lot of time and effort and resources. These fish rescues are an absolute emergency, last-ditch effort to save these populations so that they can persist.”
He said the state agency, which led the trout rescue, is focused on habitat restoration, calling it “the long-term solution for giving these fish somewhere where they can live and thrive.”
That entails taking down the Rindge Dam in Malibu Creek and the Matilija Dam located in the Ventura River watershed, as well as removing invasive species, improving the quality of the habitat and boosting the amount of water in the stream, he said.
Steelhead migrate to the ocean and return to natal freshwater streams to spawn, a cycle that can be impeded by dams and other man-made barriers. Once abundant in Southern California, the steelhead’s numbers plummeted amid coastal development and overfishing. A distinct Southern California population is listed as endangered at the state and federal level.
Several government agencies and other partners assisted in the recent fish rescues.
Dagit, ringleader of the goby rescue, said habitat restoration is critical but insufficient on its own — for both the steelhead and gobies.
Tidewater gobies are a hardy fish, able to withstand extreme changes in temperature and salinity. But their numbers similarly crashed as their coastal habitat was destroyed, prompting their listing under the federal Endangered Species Act.
“The idea of just waiting for habitat restoration isn’t going to do it. We don’t have the time and we’ll lose these fish totally,” Dagit said, referring to the steelhead.
Instead, she advocated for a proactive approach, including moving steelhead so they can recolonize areas where they’ve been extirpated due to fires, floods or other catastrophes.
A 2024 report prepared for the resource conservation district highlighted other possible interventions, including moving the fish around barriers and using what’s known as streamside incubators, a form of captive breeding where gametes from wild fish are fertilized and incubated at the release site.
The point, Dagit said, is to boost the number of fish on the landscape to increase redundancy and resiliency for the population.
“We’re not quite to the [California] condor moment, but we’re very close,” Dagit said, referencing the large, endangered birds that dwindled to a population of just 22 in the 1980s. She described the steelhead population as “extremely fragile at this moment.”
Evans, of the state wildlife agency, stressed that more fish require more habitat. That can be hard to come by in highly urbanized areas.
“At the end of the day, I can grow a million fish, but if there’s nowhere for them to go, then I’m just putting them out there to die,” he said. “I could grow fish now, throw them in the L.A. River. They’re not going to make it, right? It’s just a concrete channel.”
While the long-term approach is worked out, hundreds of gobies and trout in captivity pose a here-and-now quandary. It’s likely that neither population will imminently return to the badly charred watershed they hailed from.
Once the fire settles down, Dagit said her agency hopes to add water to a currently dry lagoon in Ventura County as needed and plant the diminutive gobies there.
In the meantime, the gobies are shacking up at Santa Monica’s Heal the Bay Aquarium and the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.
There are plans to create an exhibit the public can visit at Heal the Bay to “elevate their important story,” according to Laura Rink, associate director of operations for the aquarium.
The steelhead’s fate is firmer. They’ll be heading to another suitable stream in Santa Barbara County within two weeks, Evans said.
Early this week, the trout were still adjusting to their new digs. To make them feel at home, large chunks of PVC pipe and other material were plunked into the water to provide hiding places. Plywood was installed over much of the top to provide cover and prevent them from jumping out. (Netting over the openings serves as another safeguard against escape.)
As Los Angeles and surrounding areas grapple with a long recovery from the Palisades and other destructive fires that broke out last month, Evans said his agency is trying to do its part — attending to habitats and species that are woven into the community.
“We’re a big state, and we can help people and fish at the same time,” he said.
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