Monday February 24, 2025
The Mercury News —
Every spring Cory Hamilton and his team wade into the Carmel River armed with nets. Up to their ankles in water, they scan the surface for steelhead trout.
Some of those fish are in distress, stranded as the river dries up. The team nets them and then trucks the rescued fish to a rearing facility or to a safer section of the river.
“It feels good,” says Hamilton, who has been rescuing steelhead in the Carmel River for 22 years, “to help save something.”
Since 1989, nearly 500,000 fish have been rescued, many of them having been threatened by overpumping of the river for potable water to supply the Monterey Peninsula.
The overpumping has stopped, yet the river still dries up in places during the summer. Looming is a new presidential administration that vows to put “people over fish.”