Tidewater Goby by JacobaCharles
The man from Channel 7 news kept asking the biologist why anyone should care about the survival of a small fish called the tidewater goby.
He was one of several dozen news media and government scientists standing on a springy field of marsh plants on a late October morning. The occasion was the release of the endangered goby into a long-unused habitat, and there was much clicking of cameras and offering of microphones. It was unusual to see such an unsexy little animal getting so much attention.
In truth, there are few good answers to Channel 7’s question. Gobies are at risk of extinction because of humans, and yet - like so many other plants and animals – offer nothing that most people value. They are not attractive or tasty; they are not a source of medicine or fuel. All gobies do is live a short, quiet life in the lightly salty waters where fresh streams meets the sea. They nibble on algae and get devoured by larger fish. Each male digs a nesting burrow in the gravel for his lady, who will lay several hundred eggs and then leave him to tend them. Newly hatched gobies live for about a year, and then they die. And no person picnicking on the bank is any the wiser.
Unlike the biologist, a spokesman for the US Fish and Wildlife service was happy to tell reporters why people should care, citing one of the basic principals of ecology. Every species is like a single thread in the fabric of our ecosystem, spokesman Al Donner said. With each thread that vanishes, the fabric becomes weaker. If you lose too many, the very thing that provides all our goods and services – the environment that allows us to thrive – will weaken and collapse. We need to save even the seemingly insignificant, Donner concluded, because this system isn’t designed to be a monoculture with just a few plants and animals.
The thread we call the tidewater goby lives in small, scattered patches all up and down the California coast, from San Diego to Del Norte County. The patches are scattered because this fish’s habitat needs are specific: the water can’t be too deep, or too salty, or too fresh. This keeps each population separate from the others – most of the time. Genetic evidence shows that occasionally, by some method we may never understand, fishy romance can occur between gobies from different lagoons.
By the mid 1990s, coastal development and other problems had caused goby populations to dwindle statewide, and the fish was added to the endangered species list. The goby’s problems were many, and worst in the southern part of the state. Wetlands had been dredged, diked, drained and developed; streambanks were hardened with rocks and cement; dams were erected. Tide gates and levees blocked occasional flow between separate lagoons. Habitats that had once been naturally fragmented became artificially fragmented. And, according to a recent study by a Humboldt State University student, gobies’ genetic diversity declined correspondingly. In other words, no more romance across borders. Tidewater Romeo never even got to meet Tidewater Juliet. Isolation led (as it will) to inbreeding.
No one knows exactly why the goby vanished from Tomales Bay in particular. Development is minimal, but the area does have a long history of agriculture. The records say the fish was here, and then it wasn’t. Until a few years ago it hadn’t been seen in the Tomales Bay area since 1953. Then, biologists doing preliminary surveys for a wetland restoration project discovered that a few of the fish were still living in a brackish slough that drained into the bay. Now the restoration project is complete, and the gobies have expanded their range to include the newly created wetland.
Last week, some fish from the slough were captured and driven to another brackish lagoon ten miles up the bay. As the cameras rolled, a woman knelt by the muddy water, scooping gobies out of a five-gallon bucket with a bright blue aquarium net. They were immediately invisible among the reeds of their new home, where they just might settle in, snack on some algae, and stay for good.
