California Sea Grant College Program

This project employed otolith geochemistry to study the recruit- ment patterns and growth rates of delta smelt before and during the Pelagic Organism Decline (POD) in the San Francisco Bay-Delta. The delta smelt was selected as the target species for the analysis because of its imperiled status (it is on both state and federal endangered species lists) and because it is one of several pelagic species in the Bay-Delta whose numbers have plummeted since the 2002–04 period, during which time water exports rose by 30 percent. The delta smelt, in many ways, can be thought of as the proverbial canary in the coal mine — a species whose status mirrors the ecological health of its surroundings.