100,000 Steelhead Trout Found Dead at Hatchery
About 100,000 young steelhead trout have been found dead at a fish-breeding facility, setting back efforts to restore the threatened species.
Hatchery workers discovered about 100 adult and 100,000 yearlings floating Friday in the Coyote Valley Dam fish imprinting facility at Lake Mendocino, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Biologists believe that the fish, which were part of a federal restoration program, were asphyxiated when an electrical vault was flooded and a pump used to oxygenate the water shorted out.
The hatchery program was set up six years ago to restore populations of steelhead trout and coho salmon that were depleted by the construction of the Coyote Valley Dam in 1959 and the Warm Springs Dam in 1983. The corps now runs hatcheries to spawn both types of fish.
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