The Escondido Creek Concervancy

TECC is partnering with the producers of this film to raise awareness and funds for the Southern Steelhead Rescue Hatchery Project on The Escondido Creek. Admission is free to this event but any donation will assist TECC in making this dream a reality.

The Southern Steelhead is a rainbow trout that has adapted to live in the ocean. Like other salmonids, they spawn in fresh water rivers, streams, and creeks. Some of the off-spring will live out their lives in fresh water, and we know these as Rainbow Trout. Others will migrate back to the ocean between the age of one and three years, growing larger and faster than their fresh water relatives. Southern Steelhead genetically differ from their northern cousins and are able to tolerate warmer waters and lower oxygen levels typical of Southern California creek and streams. Steelhead usually return to the ocean after a spawn cycle and often return two or three times into fresh waters to repeatedly spawn over their life span.

  Southern Steelhead may be the oldest genetic example of Rainbow Trout. It is believed this fish first appeared in streams and creeks in Baja and Southern California during the last ice age. As the cold and wet climate retreated to the north, these fish adapted over thousands of years to still survive in our semi-arid climate. In the last several decades our development and lack of care of our watersheds have reduced these natives to critical levels. Until the discovery of Southern Steelhead in the late 1990’s in creeks on Camp Pendleton, they were thought to be extinct south of Ventura County. Since then there have been intermittent sitings of Southern Steelhead in San Diego County creeks and rivers.