Small Fish, Grand Hope

Rarely does one fish cause quite so much fuss. But last week’s announcement that an endangered steelhead trout was found in a pool along Topanga Canyon Creek has biologists and wildlife lovers optimistic that the once common fish may be staging a small comeback in Southern California.

It’s too early to tell, of course, whether the single 5-inch-long steelhead spotted July 31 by a National Marine Fisheries Service biologist is a positive portent or merely a fluke. But it’s been 18 years since steelhead were last documented in the creek--which lies six miles south of Malibu Creek, officially considered the trout’s southernmost run.

That’s reason to hope.

Once common from Russia to Baja California, the Southern California steelhead landed last year on the federal Endangered Species List, nearly doomed by decades of over-fishing and over-development. Of the 55,000 fish that once migrated up mountain creeks from the ocean to spawn, just 500 make the trip today by way of the Santa Clara River, Ventura River and Sespe Creek, among other routes. More than 23 steelhead stocks have died out and 43 along the West Coast run that risk.

Against that grim backdrop, a single fish may not seem like much. But as the conservation director of CalTrout said last week, the steelhead enjoy a “certain magic resiliency . . . If given the slightest opportunity to multiply and to create a future generation, they do.”

So here’s to that lone little fish and the hope that it is the first of many to call Topanga Canyon home once more.