On Sat. Feb 16th at Van Assen Park where we met Joe Merz of S.P. Cramer Fish Sciences to do a tree planting outing along Murphy’s Creek that feeds into the Mokelumne River at the west end of the park. Joe had obtained permission from EBMUD to plant these trees and enlisted 8 of us to help with his project. We first cut the saplings down in the overflow channel of Comanche Dam, placed them in a couple of trucks and drove them around to Murphy’s Creek on the north side of the Mokelumne River. Joe has been doing some studies along the stream and has found small salmon smolt in the stream. He had previously persuaded a local farmer who had dammed up the stream to take out his dam so the water would flow back into the river. He suspects the water is actually coming from seepage from the reservoir. His tree project is to put enough trees along the stream that the shade they afford after they grow will cool down the stream so the fish can remain in the stream longer. He’s done studies on another part of the stream where he’s planted trees and found the water temperature in those areas has dropped as much as five degrees. It was a tremendous learning process for all of us and we are looking forward to helping Joe again perhaps in helping catch the smolt so he can implant small metal tracking devices that record on other tracking devices he’s planted in the river to record the route and time these smolts move downstream and into the ocean.