According to wildlife experts at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, there is evidence that fish there are no longer breeding.
The Salton Sea is California’s largest lake. Though saltier than the ocean, the Sea has historically supported an abundance of fish. However, a report appearing on KPBS, a public service of San Diego State University, states that biologists observing the dead fish washing up on the shores of the Salton Sea this summer, noticed that there were no small ones. They were all full-grown. The biologists speculate that the salinity of the water has reached a point that prohibits breeding.
Meanwhile, Audubon California Policy Director Mike Lynes says that as the water evaporates, the salinity increases, and that the diminishing habitat is also hurting birds.
“Regardless of whether people think its an accident or not now, there’s not doubt that birds depend on it, and they have very few places left to go," Lynes told KPBS.
The Desert Sun, a Palm Springs-area newspaper, reports that bird species that usually arrive at the sea by the thousands to forage, like the Western grebe, are nowhere to be found. Others, such as the double-crested cormorant, are greatly diminished. Some birds have been found to be starving.
KPBS reports, “The salinity of the Salton Sea has probably always been high. It became an inland sea when the Colorado River broke through Imperial Valley irrigation canals around 1905, and it has no natural outlet. The marker that scientists believe denotes a scary level of salinity is 60 parts per 1,000, the tipping point into complete decline and the eventual sterilization of the sea. Over the last 110 years, the sea has been home to fish and invertebrates. It serves as a crucial refuge for migrating birds with fewer and fewer Southern California wetlands to rest in.”
Lynes told KPBS that restoration of the Salton Sea to health will need a major investment from the state of California and stakeholders such as water districts and agricultural interests. The cost will be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. The State of California has included $80 million dollars for Salton Sea Restoration in its most recent budget, per the request of Governor Jerry Brown, but KPBS reports that “widespread political will to fully restore the Salton Sea has not been evident.”
Sources at KPBS, here and here
Vicinity map of the Salton Sea. Map courtesy of California Natural Resources Agency.
