Delta smelt are tiny fish — most adults are less than 3 inches long — and nearly translucent, with a steely-blue sheen on their sides. As larvae, they start out eating microscopic food like ...

Larvae and juveniles need shallow, food-rich nursery habitat. Adequate flow and suitable water quality is required for adult access to spawning habitat and transport of juveniles to Bay rearing ...

or for larvae not to be pulled to the pumps and near certain death. Earlier this month, it was the Delta smelt that temporarily reduced pumping with a minimal loss of supply. Now it is the longfin ...

Probably the most controversial fish in this region, if not in California as a whole, is the Delta Smelt. The Delta smelt is the poster child of all that is wrong in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.