Record spawning run possible in fifth wet spring

Tuesday, April 27, 1999 | 3:48 a.m.

"The limiting factor right now is how fast we can move them," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife fisheries complex manager Lisa Heki.

Along with the ample amount of Sierra snowmelt gushing along the Truckee River into Pyramid Lake, this year's migration will find it easier to get around Marble Bluff Dam, thanks to a $2 million fish passage.

The concrete device built by the Bureau of Reclamation uses a computer-controlled lock system that moves the cui-ui 24 hours a day without pulling them from the water.

"They swim in on their own, they are never handled. They never leave the water," Heki told the Lahontan Valley News.

While the cui-ui, pronounced KWEE-wee, were put on the endangered list in 1967 by nomination rather than scientific investigation, their numbers declined sharply during eight consecutive dry years that ended earlier this decade.

Along with increased upstream diversions for agricultural use in the 1980s, an exposed delta at the terminus of the Truckee virtually stopped upstream spawning runs.

Five wet winters have enabled the population to recover to a point that's expected to see as many as 700,000 of the sucker fish pass by the dam this year, Heki said. Last year's estimate was 500,000.

She said fish and wildlife employees logged a 45,000-fish day last Saturday alone.

The recovery of the fish is important to the Paiute tribe, who were known in antiquity as "cui-ui tuccutta," or cui-ui eaters. Pyramid Lake was "cui-ui pah."

Along with the improvement in the fish populations, the wet winters have helped reverse the decline in the lake's levels.

Heki said both the health of the lake and the status of the fish will be evaluated beginning next year and the fish could be upgraded at that time from endangered to threatened.