Thursday January 15, 2026
Daily Kos —
For the eighth year in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has found no Delta Smelt in their annual Fall Midwater Trawl survey in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta in September, October and November of 2025. The results for December haven’t been compiled yet.
The smelt, once the most abundant fish in the entire Delta, is an indicator species found only in the Delta. It’s decline to virtual extinction in the wild is a symptom of a larger decline, the Pelagic Organism Decline (POD), of the once robust open water fish populations of the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary.