AGENCY COOPERATION AND FISHERY STUDIES 
IN SAN FRANCISCO BAY 
Perry L. Herrgesell 
California Department of Fish and Game 
Abstract 
The people of California have been divided on many environ¬ 
mental issues, but governmental cooperation and coordination at 
both state and Federal levels is beginning to mitigate the im¬ 
pacts of this division. Four agencies (California Department of 
Water Resources, California Department of Fish and Game, U.S. 
Bureau of Reclamation, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) have 
signed a Memorandum of Agreement that established the Inter¬ 
agency Ecological Study Program. This program has provided for 
the performance of studies necessary to obtain a thorough under¬ 
standing of the requirements of the fish and wildlife resources 
in the estuary and how these requirements relate to water pro¬ 
jects. This has helped bridge the gap between environmentalists 
and water developers. One of these interagency studies is 
documenting the importance of freshwater flows and water project 
activities to the Bay system downstream of the Delta. The Delta 
Outflow/San Francisco Bay Study has shown that fish and shrimp 
abundance and distributions appear to be related to freshwater 
inflows from the Delta. If divisive environmental issues are to 
be adequately resolved in California, continued studies as well 
as continued financial and political support are needed. Early 
results from the biological portion of the Delta Outflow Study 
must be quantified and related to results from the recently 
implemented hydrodynamic elements. Finally, a long standing 
controversy regarding the Federal Central Valley Project's role 
in protecting beneficial uses in the system has been resolved to 
the state's satisfaction in the Coordinated Operations Agreement 
(COA). 
The Bible describes how a group of people were led from 
Egypt and came to the waters of the Red Sea. The account re¬ 
lates that their leader raised his staff and divided the waters 
so that the people could pass through and escape destruction 
from their enemies. In California, this age-old story has been 
reversed. If one reviews the history of the state's water pol¬ 
icy development, he will find that water, through its unequal 
distribution in the state, has divided the people. Most of the 
population and, therefore, the political power resides in the 
relatively dry, southern part of the state, while most of the 
rainfall occurs in the northern part of the state and flows 
through the San Francisco Bay estuary to the Pacific Ocean. 
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