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ern are the main food of <br />Mures confine the trout <br />water with the trout is <br />~tomdwelling habits, is <br />entirely maintained by <br />p Pine Creek, the lake's <br />the flows of the creek <br />~f trout eggs and fry in <br />In California, each with <br />~, and the Owens River. <br />it recently. <br />Mojave tui chub, now <br />introduced warmwater <br />rings that drain into it, <br />Creek is home to Salt <br />alt into which the creek <br />l all its subspecies that <br />tce. The pupfish live in <br />we in the outflows of a <br />2pfish, Owens sucker, <br />'uh fauna of the three <br />y disrupted to supply <br />tdy the native fishes in <br />at. Dace seem to have <br />ie lower reaches, while <br />Quito larvae and other <br />law-elevation sections <br />vertebrates, and the tui <br />tes. <br />which supports a good <br />It also contains large <br />o be hybrids between <br />Lake Basin, originally <br />qty of fishes have been <br />h•ahitude lakes in the <br />of species native to a <br />-stern United States), <br />rystem), golden trout <br />ECOLOGY 43 <br />(upper Kern River), tui chubs (Lahontan system), Owens sucker (Owens system), and <br />threespine stickleback (coastal California). <br />COLORADO RIVER <br />The short section of the Colorado River that borders California bears little <br />resemblance to the great river of a hundred years ago. The flows have been reduced <br />and confined behind dams, forming large reservoirs like Lake Havasu. The formerly <br />heavy silt load has been reduced, the reservoirs acting as settling basins, but in its place <br />are salts, fertilizers, and other products of irrigation agriculture. Not surprisingly, the <br />fish fauna has changed drastically, more so than in any other river system in California. <br />The original fauna was simple, since the California portion of the river was an <br />ecologically uniform deep, muddy, sluggish channel with fluctuating flows and no <br />large tributary streams. In the main channel were bottom-feeding humpback sucker <br />and omnivorous bonytail, both species with bizarre body shapes adapted for moving <br />about in strong currents. Preying on these two species, as well as on their own young, <br />were giant Colorado squawfish. Desert pupfish may have been found in the shallow <br />marshes on the river's edge. The only other fishes present were rare stragglers from <br />upstream, such as speckled dace and flannelmouth sucker, and euryhaline wanderers <br />from the Gulf of California, such as machete and spotted sleeper. Mullet, although <br />abundant in the saline lower river now, were apparently originally uncommon migrants <br />from the gulf. <br />Today, with the exception of mullet, the native fishes are extinct or rare in the <br />California portion of the river. The river and reservoirs contain instead a conglomera- <br />tion of introduced species: carp, red shiner, threadfin shad, several species of catfish, <br />largemouth bass, striped bass, bluegill, green sunfish, mosquitofish, Mozambique <br />mouthbrooder, etc. Obviously this is an unstable, artificial assemblage of fishes that <br />will keep changing as long as man keeps changing the nature of the river and <br />introducing new species into it. <br />SALTON SEA <br />The Salton Sea is the largest inland body of water within California, with a surface <br />area of about 548 km2. It fills the bottom of the Salton sink in the Imperial Valley, at <br />an elevation of 71 m below sea level. The sea is shallow (maximum depth, 12 m), <br />warm (summer tempeatures, 26 to 33°C; winter temperatures, 10 to 17°C), and saline <br />(1971 salinity, 37 ppt). Although overflows from the Colorado River have filled the <br />sink many times in the past, the bodies of water so created have usually dried up in a <br />few years. The present sea was created in the summer of 1905 when, during a flood, <br />the entire Colorado River started flowing through and enlarging the Alamo Channel, a <br />canal dug to bring irrigation water to the Imperial Valley. The river wntinued to <br />empty into the sink until February, 1907, when its flow was finally diverted back into <br />its former channel through a massive earth-moving effort. The level of the sea is <br />presently maintained through the inflow of irrigation water from the Imperial Valley. <br />Unfortunately, the high salt content of the irrigation water combined with rapid <br /> <br />