With two new locations in the county, small business has taken off Two years ago, Monica Berriz-Ocon opened her first Perfectly Pressed Juice in Salinas, and now she’s on the cusp of opening her sixth location, which will be in Watsonville in January. She just opened a Santa Cruz location a few months ago, and like her other locations, it’s been a hit. She doesn’t run a typical Jamba Juice-style juice/smoothie bar, but bottles all of her juices every morning and delivers them to the different locations. How did you get into the juice business?
MONICA BERRIZ-OCON: My goal was always to spread health. The business came as a result of that passion. I was making juice for my husband, who’s a chiropractor. I was making it for his patients. His orders grew to the point where I needed a place to put produce and my equipment. That’s what caused the first store to open. Since then it’s just taken off. What’s so great about juice?
It’s critical for our survival and wellness. Processed foods will kill you. There is a huge turn in education now and people are starting to become more aware of how to better feed themselves. The juice is critical, just because you get so many servings of vegetables that you would not otherwise receive—raw vegetables. What is your juicing technique?
We use a cold-press system because there’s no heat involved in the process. This system keeps all the nutrients and enzymes alive. What you have is raw, live nutrients. Any other type of bottling system will add heat to it and kill everything. You have to be careful about where you’re consuming your juice. Do you recommend specific juices for people with different health concerns?
Yes. We educate on the health benefits of these juices and what type of produce you can have to help certain ailments. If you’re looking for a cleansing or a detoxing juice, we’ve got Green Dream—it’s our most popular. If you’re looking for a boost of energy in the afternoon, there’s great sustainable energy in the EnerGee. If you’re pregnant, a great juice to have is the Carrot Apple Lemon. The beta-carotene it offers is good for growth of the fetus. If you have a cold, I suggest the Rad Booster. The combination of the ginger and the lemon is incredible for your sinuses and lungs and will get you through allergies and colds. Will you sell your juice in other stores in the future?
I think for now we’re going to stick to our business model. We don’t want to grow too big—the quality is more important to me. To handle more orders, we would have to change our process and I’m not interested in sacrificing the quality to do that.
3617B Portola Drive, Santa Cruz, 331-4041.
MEET THE PRESSER Monica Berriz-Ocon has opened a Perfectly Pressed Juice in Santa Cruz, and will soon do the same in Watsonville. PHOTO: CHIP SCHEUER
A luscious Chardonnay to pair with Seascape’s new menu Eight of us gathered in the casual bar area of Seascape Beach Resort to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Drinks all round were ordered, including a bottle of Martin Ranch Winery’s Chardonnay 2013—a luscious wine made in the traditional Burgundian style.
Grapes for this Chardonnay are harvested from the Griva Vineyard in the Arroyo Seco region of Central California. On the nose it shows bright green apple with hints of grapefruit and a touch of pear. With a solid acidic middle and a fresh, yet long and lingering finish, it pairs well with seafood and chicken dishes.
Seascape Beach Resort is now offering a brand new menu called “the Restless Palate,” and we sampled several dishes from it, including Pad Thai seared scallops (called “Mad Thai”); grilled chicken satay lettuce cups (with ginger and coconut-milk-marinated chicken); Tiki fish tacos (with crispy Alaskan cod); Mongolian-style pork belly sliders (in a steamed bun); and Calitnamese spring rolls (an amalgam of California/Vietnamese cuisine). We have executive chef Mario Garcia to thank for this imaginative new menu—and next time we gather in the bar, we’ll try the “Not So Secret” burger, the grilled cheese sandwich, and the el Banh-Mi sandwich with pork carnitas, chorizo jam, jalapeños, cucumber, pickled carrots, daikon radish, cilantro, and sriracha aioli.
A wine as flexible as Martin Ranch’s Chardonnay is an excellent pairing with most items on this menu, and at $35 it’s worth ordering a bottle to share.
Martin Ranch wines are available at an abundance of local markets and restaurants, and their tasting room is a fun place to visit. They’re open on the first and third weekend of every month, and owners Dan and Thérèse Martin are always there to welcome you. Martin Ranch Winery, 6675 Redwood Retreat Road, Gilroy, 408-842-9197. martinranchwinery.com. Fall/winter hours are noon to 4 p.m.
GRAPE ESCAPE Martin Ranch Winery’s lower vineyard gets a little sunshine after a winter rain shower. PHOTO: MARTIN RANCH WINERY
Hot Water Music frontman Chuck Ragan speeds up his personal life and slows down his sound Chuck Ragan is neck deep in the best job he’s ever had. Six months ago, the Americana singer-songwriter, who also fronts post-hardcore band Hot Water Music, became father to a baby boy. When GT catches up with Ragan, he’s out running errands in his hometown of Grass Valley, juggling baby duties with his wife Jill, and doing his best to keep up with the demands of being a new parent.
“The whole time management thing is kind of crazy,” he says. “Your time is just cut in half and then some.”
For Ragan, being a new dad means that life has changed—he’s booking performances closer to home, and he has taken a break from long tours. But he and Jill love their new life as parents. The two planned to have kids for years, but there was always another tour or another record cycle, and parenthood kept getting bumped to the back burner. Once they both hit 40, they knew it was now or never. They made a plan to settle down for a bit and embrace the quiet—something for which Ragan is not especially known.
As frontman for Hot Water Music, Ragan established himself as a charismatic performer, a gifted songwriter, and a powerful vocalist with a strong, resonant voice that easily filled venues and mosh pits. The band became a staple of the ’90s underground music scene, and Ragan held down lead duties with energy and passion.
When Hot Water Music went on hiatus in 2005, Ragan began focusing on the roots music he was raised on. From the outside, switching from post-hardcore to Americana troubadour may seem like a big jump, but it was really a return to the music he was raised on.
Born and raised in the Southeastern U.S., Ragan grew up listening to Cajun music, classic country, bluegrass and old-time gospel. His embrace of punk and hardcore came later.
“I was playing acoustic music before I was ever in a band playing electric music,” he says. “Then I found skateboarding, and rock ’n’ roll, and a more aggressive approach to music. It was exciting. It scared the hell out of me. It was kind of angry and rebellious and that’s how I felt at that age.”
Even through his aggressive phase, Ragan never abandoned his acoustic roots. In the early days of Hot Water Music, the band would write everything on acoustic instruments because they lived in apartment buildings and couldn’t plug in their amps and let loose. The shift to playing roots music was just the next step in Ragan’s musical journey—a journey he counts himself lucky to be on with the many talented artists he shares stages and highways with.
“Where I get the most inspiration nowadays,” he says, “are the singer-songwriters that I actually know. There’s a lot of people that I love, there’s a lot of music that I really get into, but I’m one of the lucky ones that is not only able to know and admire all this great music around us, but to know and admire the people behind it. That’s what really drives me and really inspires.”
Ragan lists Cory Branan, Rocky Votolato, Jenny Owen Young, and Tim Barry as a few of his favorites.
“I’m not only inspired by their music, but I’ve sat down and had coffee with them, broke bread with them, and know what’s truly behind that music,” he says.
A man of many talents, Ragan put together The Road Most Traveled, a collection of artists’ tour stories; he spearheaded the acoustic Revival Tour; he recorded the score for the forthcoming video game The Flame in the Flood; and he is cofounder of a sauce company. He’s also a fly fishing guide who “drifts folks down the river.”
These things all contribute to a songwriter and human who is as real-deal as they come—a humble, salt-of-the-earth artist embracing the beauty of this new chapter in his life.
“I don’t know if happy is the right word,” he says. “I feel so much more than that. Sometimes it’s not all super-positive. Sometimes it’s overwhelming—just wanting to guide this little fella in the right direction. But it is definitely the most whole I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Chuck Ragan will perform at 9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 19 at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $20/adv, $25/door. 479-1854.
INFO: Chuck Ragan plays at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 19 at Moe’s Alley.
Santa Cruz fighter takes UFC middleweight title Luke Rockhold, a mixed martial artist out of Santa Cruz, has managed to get one of the greatest fighters in the world trapped between his legs, as he relentlessly pounds his opponent’s face with vicious blows. It’s the Ultimate Fighting Championship Middleweight Title in Las Vegas on Saturday, Dec. 12, and Rockhold’s opponent is Chris Weidman, the reigning champion—though not for much longer.
As Rockhold buries his fists and elbows in Weidman’s nose, eyes and forehead, blood splatters into the ring and even onto Rockhold’s face. Weidman is helplessly holding both hands up in front of him, wincing and rolling from side to side, with absolutely nowhere to go. Finally, the referee calls the fight with a technical knockout, or TKO, making Rockhold the new champion. Rockhold tumbles off Weidman and rolls to the side, lying face down in the ring with his head resting on his forearm, overcome with emotion.
The fight went three and a half rounds, with Rockhold winning each of them. By the end of the third round, many were surprised the referee hadn’t already called a fight that was growing increasingly one-sided. Even Rockhold would later say he thought the fight should have been over in the third, as would UFC president Dana White.
Rockhold has recently established himself as one of the UFC’s more entertaining fighters, not only for his dominance inside the ring—called “the Octagon” in ultimate fighting—but also for the man he is outside of it.
Before each major event, UFC follows its leading fighters with camera crews and posts installments of a video series called “Embedded.” The most recent edition features Rockhold, Weidman and two other mixed martial artists who fought this past Saturday.
Episode 2, posted on UFC.com, opens with a lesson in marijuana 101 from Rockhold himself. In it, Rockhold recalls his ceramics class at Santa Cruz High School and the days his teacher would scour the firing shelf looking for project bongs and then shatter them in front of the whole class. “My goal was to make the most intricate, disguised bong [so] that he would never know,” he says, holding up his grotesque, weed-smoking creation.
So Rockhold began his project by sculpting an alien head, he says. An arm comes out from the alien’s crown, extending through the body of a helpless victim and holds up the head of an old man. The alien head, Rockhold explains to the camera, is the bubbler, which holds the water. Ta-da: a secret bong.
“The smoke comes up the chamber,” he says, “and then you have to take a toke out of the old guy’s mouth. The shit you come up with—Santa Cruz High School days. Won the high school county art show with a bong.”
The next episode shows Rockhold getting a simple haircut, because he doesn’t want to be a pretty boy with some fancy ’do. After that, he promptly leaves to get a pedicure, because, he’s a nice guy, and, as he puts it, “If I’m going to kick Weidman in the face, I’m going to kick him with clean feet. Nice clean, sparkling toes, right in the face.” Then he blows a kiss.
After getting his new belt on Dec. 12, Rockhold looked more distracted than jubilant about his big feat. Maybe the gore of a strangely drawn-out fight had gotten to him, or perhaps he was just tired and overwhelmed. Backstage, a UFC television reporter called him “subdued,” and in the profanity-laced interview, Rockhold tried to explain to her that the whole experience was difficult to take in.
He said he had been suffering from cellulitis in his foot and that the antibiotics had affected his stamina. He had also worried that if the fight had gone on much longer, his foot would have swelled up. Additionally, he had been taking a bunch of anti-inflammatories for pain in his knee, he said. “My body’s calling for a little time off right now,” he told the reporter, but that didn’t stop him from calling for his next opponent immediately after. Rockhold said he wants to fight Vitor Belfort, a mixed martial artist who beat him in 2013.
As impressive as Rockhold’s skill in the Octagon was, it was overshadowed by that night’s main event, a fight featuring Conor McGregor, who knocked out his opponent, Jose Aldo, in a UFC-record of 13 seconds. It could be said that some of the appeal of the sport lies in unexpected moments like these—as well as underdog stories, a theme Rockhold feels comfortable with.
In the first episode of “Embedded” previewing Saturday’s fight, Rockhold explained that much of what he is trying to do is overcome people’s expectations of him. “People underestimate me. They look at me, and they see this surfer kid. It’s fun. I do all these things. This isn’t a game for me,” Rockhold says. “This is what I fucking do for a living. This is what I love to do, and I don’t fuck around.”
The underdog “surfer kid” factor may be a great motivator for Rockhold, but that doesn’t mean it reflects the way Ultimate Fighter fans actually see him. “Nobody sees a surfer kid when they look at Luke Rockhold,” one viewer wrote in the comments below the video.
“Surfer Kid?” wrote another. “I see a kook!”
SPAR AWAY Luke Rockhold, out of Santa Cruz, took the UFC Middleweight title over the weekend, despite suffering from cellulitis in his foot, as he explained after the match.
Teen Kitchen Project is teaching young people how to make an impact, one meal at a time Imagine the mountains that could be moved if teenage idealism never faded. It’s an ambitious goal, but local nonprofit Teen Kitchen Project is harnessing teenage zeal to connect young people to their community by showing them firsthand how their passion can make a difference in people’s lives.
“Some people have a [negative image of] young people, [but] a lot of them are very compassionate individuals who want to share with the world their good qualities,” says Angela Farley, founder of the Teen Kitchen Project. “We’re giving young people an opportunity not only to serve and show they’re compassionate people and have value in our community—we also show them a new career.”
Teen Kitchen Project teaches teenagers how to cook healthy sustainable meals that they then deliver to people in crisis—those in temporary situations where they cannot cook for themselves, often due to illness. Last week alone, Teen Kitchen served 390 meals, and last year they served 15,400 meals in total.
Farley knows all too well how difficult it can be to put food on the table in times of unimaginable stress; when her son was 4 years old, he was undergoing chemotherapy and major surgery for cancer.
“In the beginning there was a lot of meal delivery from friends and family, and after a few months of that people stopped signing up,” says Farley. “Around the same time I received a one-year donation of blue plate specials from Gayle’s and I went ‘I know so many people who could benefit from that.’”
Gayle’s Bakery’s ready-made pick-up meals inspired Farley, and when she heard about an organization in Sebastopol called Ceres Community Project which teaches teenagers how to cook meals to deliver to people in similar situations, she decided Santa Cruz needed the same thing. In 2012, she started Teen Kitchen Project in a friend’s commercial kitchen as a Ceres affiliate.
“We found out very soon that we wouldn’t be able to serve everyone,” says Farley. “For people with chronic conditions, we refer them to other organizations like Meals on Wheels.”
All meals are cooked and prepared by the 200 or so teens who volunteer with the Project. With the guidance of two chaperoning chefs (trained as nutritionists), they first learn knife skills and food safety and then prepare meals that are organic, locally sourced, and healthy. “Delivery angels” deliver three main dishes for each person in a family twice a week; meals typically consist of a protein like chicken or fish, soup, salad, and dessert, with recipes one-and-a-half the USDA’s portion guidelines so that they can last several days.
“We kind of get people in two times when they’re open to seeing the world in a different way. Teens are at the cusp of going into the world and creating their own life, and suffering from illness, people want to make changes in their lives to recover,” says Farley.
All ingredients are organic, sustainably caught and farmed, limit dairy input with no white flour or sugar, says Farley, and adhere to the American Cancer Society’s recommended diet.
For teens like Kelly Kirchener, a senior at Pacific Collegiate School, putting in the 200-odd hours has never felt like a chore. She finds herself checking nutrition labels far more than her peers, she says, and she’s learned many tricks of the trade—like that beets can really, really stain.
“It’s helped me to be a better person,” Kirchener says. “In writing the cards that go with the meals, something like ‘We’re here for you’—just a few words—can go a long way.”
Farley says that her plans for Teen Kitchen are to expand it to Watsonville to better reach the community in South County and collaborate with Cabrillo College’s culinary program.
“We’re showing them a way of eating that they can use in their lives to move forward, be more healthy and connected to their environment,” says Farley. “The face of a teen when a client says ‘You helped save my life’—what teen hears that? To hear that from somebody is a big deal, it changes your perception of yourself and your values.”
KITCHEN WITH A CAUSE From left to right: Colby Sturgill, Chloe Chipman and Austin Sturgill of Teen Kitchen Project. PHOTO: SUSANNAH GILL
Jerry Brown, the frontman/band leader of Shady Groove, has a business card that says “funky, jazzy rock and space exploration.” This expansive description only just begins to explain the variety of the music his group plays.
“We play funk, jazz, blues. We play reggae, we play some New Orleans style. It’s primarily a dance band,” Brown says.
The five-piece, which has been around for 15 years, gets the “jam band” label in part because of all of the different styles they play, but also because of their penchant for improvisation. They, of course, play fully improvised solos in their songs, but the part that Brown feels really strongly about is what happens at the end of the tunes.
“We’ll continue out on whatever the prevailing mood is at the end. By the end, it’s kind of just phasing out on that primary vibe and we will take that and just go with it, take off into an improvisation jam based on the key and whatever else has gone into that tune that night,” Brown says. “That’s a very open-ended time. It can go anywhere. Frequently it’s not recognizable as having anything to do with the song. That, to me, is really improvisational, as opposed to noodling over the changes.”
During their set, they will play both covers and originals (roughly 65 percent covers, 35 percent originals). Even with their covers, the diversity doesn’t stop.
“We do everything from Delta Blues to Motown to classic rock, any kind of good song whether it’s gospel, reggae, anything at all. It’s all over the map,” Brown says.
Seven ways to beat the all-too-real Seasonal Affective Disorder Barring landslides and flooding, winter in California is a cookie bake compared to other places. In Antarctica, the sun sets in March and doesn’t rise again until September—and all anyone wants is an avocado, according to winter dwellers in the documentary Antarctica: A Year On Ice.
Here in avocado-filled California, I feel bad blaming any sort of unease on the weather. But it’s true: the 6 o’clock news may not be the sole culprit for recent feelings of hopeless despair. The physical darkness of the days could be a factor, too.
Locally, darkness fell at its earliest last week, at 4:51 p.m., as we creep toward the shortest day of the year—9 hours and 37 minutes in length—on Dec. 21. (Compare to 4:07 hours in Reykjavik, Iceland, and 5:41 hours in Helsinki.)
On top of the estimated 14.8 million Americans living with depression, another 10 million are estimated to experience Seasonal Affective Disorder, a physiologically rooted depression associated with lower light levels and appropriately acronymed SAD. Most common among adults ages 18-30, and affecting women more than men, SAD’s varying symptoms include fatigue, irritability, difficulty concentrating, weight gain, and social isolation.
Here’s a crowd-sourced list of ideas for staying healthy and happy during the year’s darkest days: 1. Eat Like It’s Summer: Sweets and carbs are everywhere during the winter months, especially during the holidays. While that sugar cookie will supply a temporary rush of dopamine, it will also weaken your immune system (and virtually every system in your body) and leave you craving more. In the long term, sugar depletes dopamine levels, as well as vitamins and minerals. Feed your body with high-vibration foods—fruits, vegetables and complete proteins—and consider a vitamin D supplement as well as an omega-3 fatty acid supplement for optimum brain health. 2. Get Your Vitamin D: “I believe the main cause of SAD is not directly lack of light but the lack of vitamin D that occurs due to the sun being lower in the sky,” says Dr. Randy Baker of Soquel. Vitamin D supplements work for many people, as do high-vitamin-D foods like bone-in fish, cod liver oil, eggs, Greek yogurt, and many plant-based milks. That’s only half of the equation though: Health professionals recommend 10 to 15 minutes of unblocked sun on the hands, feet or back at least twice a week for prime vitamin D absorption—and longer for those with a darker complexion. 3. Get Out: Have you ever been hiking in the rain? Add it to this winter’s bucket list—you should have lots of opportunities. Storm watching also looks like a promising activity this winter, as does mushroom hunting—because, “when it rains, it spores,” according to the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz. Look for mushrooms about 48 hours after rain, and visit their awesome website, ffsc.us, for info, local workshops and events. 4. Get a Helper’s High: The research is in: prosocial behavior—voluntary acts intended to benefit another person—boosts happiness. Volunteer work is associated with less depression and greater happiness, according to a 2001 study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, among other studies, and doing five random acts of kindness a day for six weeks, can have the same positive effect on mental state, according to the American Psychological Association. 5. Freeze Facebook: Time spent on Facebook has been linked with negative emotions, according to a 2014 Austrian behavioral research study. Replace screen time with real-life social interaction or a good book. 6. Light Therapy: “Happy Lights” are now relatively inexpensive. The full-spectrum light is said to affect brain chemicals, including the hormone melatonin, which regulates the body’s mood, sleep, and appetite cycles. Several friends say light boxes have made a notable difference in their energy levels and mood during the winter months. 7. Shake your Booty: A no-brainer, really. The exercise-mental health connection is well-documented, especially in reducing depression and anxiety. So, even if all of the cells in your body want to curl up with a good book, give yourself at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. Dance, do yoga while watching clips from SNL’s golden years, or get out for a walk—even if it’s dark. For the ultimate introduction to Santa Cruz’s exercise opportunities, sign up for the Santa Cruz Challenge, which starts Jan. 23, and incorporates some 22 local fitness studios and counting. Go to santacruzchallenge.com for more info.
HELLO DARKNESS Decreased levels of sunlight during the winter is the likely culprit for Seasonal Affective Disorder. But at least you don’t live in Antarctica.
Best new cookbook for holiday giving, plus a to-die-for tea cake and Ramen pop-up by Back Porch Based upon his popular New York Times series, the concept of Mark Bittman’s new Kitchen Matrix cookbook is great. The clever and generously illustrated text gives us 700 simple recipes and techniques to create, mix and match, and combine a galaxy of customized recipes. Here’s the strategy: a central ingredient forms the nexus of a bevy of variations, e.g. Burgers +9 ways, or Spinach +12 ways. I love the pages devoted to Gazpacho +12 ways. Bittman provides a brief introduction to the classic dish—the chilled soup based on avocados, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and broth. Then Bittman provides variations—inviting color photographs pepper the entire text—each with its own short and seductive set of guidelines. For “gazpacho” we get a classic version, a Thai melon version, a kale and olive version, a tomatillo, avocado and orange version, a grilled one—you see how this works. Bittman’s easy-to-use and easy-to-like new cookbook covers all the tricky territory from appetizers and picnics, to soups, salads, pastas, seafood, meats, condiments, and desserts. There’s one important section on the “stress-free dinner party” that begins with a dozen lively cocktails, continues into dips, a dozen chicken wing specialties, finger foods and ends with desserts such as ginger-poached pears and coconut sorbet. I wanted to make everything in this mouthwatering unpretentious cookbook. At roughly $20 this is the cookbook for the home chef on your gift list. Love it, love it, love it. At Bookshop Santa Cruz.
Tea Cake of the Week
That would be the fresh-from-the-oven lemon basil cake from Lulu Carpenter’s (Town Clock). I happened to be at the old-school coffeehouse last week ordering a double macchiato when there in front of me appeared a thick slab of fragrant lemon basil cake. I am a fool for tea cakes of just about any flavor, size or shape. A few minutes later I was deep into the subtext of this wonderful, moist creation whose basil inflection added a novel and delightful counterpoint to the mighty lemon flavor. This is a two-session tea cake. You feast on half of it in a single seating. You wrap up the remaining half in a napkin, and retrieve it at around 3 in the afternoon. You then finish it off, ideally with a cup of green tea. It will revive you for the rest of the day. $3.75.
Pop-Up of the Week
Who among us hasn’t feasted on ramen? Often the spartan, out-of-a-package kind. But this week, you can savor a much more authentic and aromatic version at the Back Porch Ramen Pop Up Part 2, from 5:30-8:30 p.m., Friday, Dec. 18, in Soquel at the corner of Soquel and Daubenbiss. The second installment of the popular November Ramen Pop Up invites you to wrap your mouth around such tasty exotica as ramen noodle soup with egg, pork belly and mushrooms, and Miso Scallop Chazuke with mushrooms and green onions (both $10). There will be seaweed salad ($5), chicken skewers ($6), azuki bean rice ball ($4) and tofu skewer with miso and sesame ($3). You supply the appetite, beer, wine, and what have you. OMG! I just found out there will also be a complimentary Fernet tasting! I am a major, serious, unrepentant Fernet head, and if you’ve never sampled any version of the primal Italian bitters drink, then you best make plans for this pop-up experience. No reservations—dishes will be available until they’re gone. Check backporchsc.com for any other intel you require. And don’t forget to thank your savvy hosts, Austin and Alicia Kaye for their swift woks and good ideas.
PERSONALIZED CHEF Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Matrix takes a new approach to the common cookbook. PHOTO: CHIP SCHEUER
Endangered coho salmon rebound in Scott Creek
A few miles north of Davenport, Scott Creek winds through steep coastal mountains that time forgot, past old farmhouses, redwoods and pines.
A rare Bay Area watershed spared from development, the creek has become the front lines of the fight to save the endangered Central California Coast coho salmon, where the federal government, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and a nonprofit fish hatchery have partnered to pull the fish from the brink of extinction.
If these coho salmon were to stage a comeback anywhere south of the Golden Gate Bridge, it would be in Scott Creek, says Erick Sturm, research fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency.
Hundreds of thousands of coho once swarmed the waters between Humboldt County and Santa Cruz, enough to be fished with pitchforks, according to the NOAA website. But development, logging, overfishing, climate change, water diversion, and other factors led to their decline, from around 99,000 statewide in the 1960s to 6,000 in the 1990s, Sturm says. The fish was federally listed as threatened in 1996, then as endangered in 2005.
In 2009, fewer than 500 Central Coast coho lived in the wild, and this past May, NOAA listed it as one of eight ocean species most at risk of extinction.
Scott Creek is at the southern border of the coho’s range, where the species is vulnerable, says Sturm.
“They’re living life on the very edge, so that’s somewhat difficult for them,” Sturm says. “And historically, because you’re on the southern edge of their run the disturbances in their natural habitat, be it natural or manmade, can really have a greater effect on their life cycle.”
Turning Tide
In lower Scott Creek, a NOAA fish monitoring station counts the coho each rainy season.
The fish follow a three-year cycle. Eggs are laid in the creek in winter and hatch in the spring. Juveniles spend a year in freshwater, then swim to the ocean, spending a year or two there before returning to the creek to spawn and die.
In 2002, 400 spawning adult coho returned to Scott Creek, a figure that dropped to 330 in 2005 and 11 in 2008. In 2011, only three adults were counted.
But thanks to a breeding program led by NOAA, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and local hatchery nonprofit Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project, the fish are making a resurgence.
Last winter, around 150 spawning adults returned to the creek, the highest number in a decade.
What’s more, this fall NOAA divers counted around 7,000 juvenile coho in the creek, a high number considering this summer was the fourth summer in a drought.
“We hope we’ve turned the corner and we’re on the upward trajectory on the species, but we need another two or three years to tell,” Sturm says. “As far as delisting, we’re nowhere near that.”
To be considered no longer endangered, not only does Scott Creek need a 12-year average of more than 500 spawning adults each winter, but 27 other watersheds farther north to Humboldt County need similar gains.
Scale of a Tale
Six miles north of Davenport, along a wooded tributary of Scott Creek sits the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project’s Kingfisher Flat Hatchery, where around a dozen tanks hold thousands of young coho raised on-site.
Since 2002, the volunteer-run hatchery has led a coho breeding program supported in part by NOAA and state fish and wildlife. In the last two years the hatchery has released around 40,000 juvenile coho in Scott Creek.
Mark Galloway, the hatchery’s manager, points to an incubator which will house around 130,000 fertilized eggs this winter.
“It’s like a fridge,” he says. “The eggs like it cool and it uses very little water.”
When the eggs hatch and develop eyes, they are moved to water trays covered with screens. Over the following weeks, the tiny fish slowly digest the yolk sack bulging from their abdomens until they start nosing the screen, hungry for real food.
As the fish grow, hatchery staff and volunteers move them to larger tanks, until eventually at one year old, they are tagged and released in Scott Creek.
Outside, Galloway flung food pellets into the hatchery’s two largest tanks, each holding 10,000 fish destined for a carefully timed release this spring. As the fish head to the ocean, it’s crucial that their food source—seasonal krill fueled by wind-driven ocean upwelling—is there to meet them.
“If that upwelling current is not generated and their food source crashes, the population will crash,” Galloway says.
In 2017, the hatchery hopes to increase its release numbers by 10,000 fish, thanks to a new system completed recently, built mostly by volunteers and funded by the state, that allows it to return water to the creek. Until now, the drought levels in the creek have been the hatchery’s biggest limitation, since creekwater is used for all the tanks.
Another key part of the program is the captive broodstock—around 400 fish culled from each year’s batch, genetically selected to remain at the hatchery and artificially spawn the next generation.
To check for sexual maturity, each of these 400 fish is individually anesthetized and scanned with ultrasound, similar to a pregnant woman in an obstetrician’s office.
Without the hatchery program and biologists’ devotion, the coho would be extinct, says Galloway. Only the Russian River in Sonoma County has similar resources devoted to the coho.
The record numbers of spawning adults returning to Scott Creek last winter were all tagged and released by the hatchery two years prior.
“The key is that they were able to spawn voluntarily,” says Galloway. “They didn’t need our help to find a habitat or choose a mate. The drought conditions probably did affect their survival somewhat. The creek dried up, but it didn’t prevent the significant production that federal survey crews found.”
From the Banks of Scott Creek
Unlike the San Lorenzo River, which has thousands of private landowners along its banks, Scott Creek is sparsely populated, making it some of the best coho habitat south of the Golden Gate Bridge.
But the creek isn’t exactly untouched, and more can be done to improve the coho’s chances, says Jon Ambrose, salmon reintroduction coordinator at NOAA.
At the creek’s mouth, a Highway 1 bridge built in 1939 straightened the creek, damaging an important estuary where coho once fed. Talk of replacing the bridge and restoring the lagoon began more than a decade ago, but funds are still being sought.
Also, in recent yearsCalifornia Polytechnic State University, which owns and manages the lower section of Scott Creek, led important restoration projects.
Levees built in the 1940s and 1950s meant to prevent flooding only prevented fish from accessing floodplains during winter storms. To improve coho winter survival, the campus breached the levees.
In the last 35 years all large trees were removed from lower Scott Creek, which halted the formation of deep pools next to fallen logs—key for maintaining large coho populations.
The university anchored large logs in the stream, directly making fish habitat and further keying the coho’s survival.
Ambrose says it’s not just one thing, but many interacting factors upstream that impact the coho.
What’s important for people to know, he says, is that there’s hope.
“That little hatchery, a little bit of habitat restoration, a little bit of oversight by the county, and the regulatory agencies are making a difference,” he says. “If we really put our backs into it, we can really bring this fish back.”
ALL GROWN UP Erick Sturm, NOAA research fisheries biologist who helps to scan fish with ultrasound, holds a large Central California Coast coho salmon. PHOTO: MARK GALLOWAY
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