We decided to check up on the status of the southern steelhead that Toby Shackelford discovered in February 1999. In August of 1999, Sierra Club staff members Bill Corcoran and Jim Blomquist recently accompanied California Department of Fish and Game biologist Alex Vejar on a survey of steelhead in San Mateo Creek on the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in north San Diego County. You can join them by viewing the short video on this page. Endangered southern steelhead trout were discovered in the stream this year, and Vejar has been monitoring this previously unknown population.
Estimates show only several hundred southern steelhead in Southern California.
On this trip six steelhead were found in pools along the streambed. Non-native bullhead fish and bullfrogs were removed from the pools because they eat endangered native species like steelhead and arroyo toads. Southern steelhead are genetically adapted to survive in warmer, less oxygen-rich water than other steelhead trout. The fish in San Mateo were spawned by steelhead which returned from the ocean during the winter of 1997-98. The young fish hunker down in the pools and wait for winter rains to flush them out to sea.