ABSTRACT
A power plant withdraws its cooling water from nearshore marine waters along the Southern California Bight. This area is inhabited by a typical complement of nearshore marine fish species, including queenfish, a small member of the drum family. Queenfish are a popular target of pier fishermen along the coast of Southern California. Entrainment and impingement sampling at the power plant results in annual estimates of queenfish lost as follows:
Eggs 300,000,000 Yolk-sac larvae 100,000,000 Post yolk-sac larvae 50,000,000 Age 0 24,000 Age 1 10,000
Queenfish typically mature at the end of their second year of life and this age was used to define the adult stage for purposes of equivalent adult estimation. Based on the EAM, the estimates of entrainment and impingement loss at this hypothetical power plant are equivalent to slightly more than 68,000 adults (Table 1). The regulatory agency was concerned that this level of could not be easily dismissed and required additional assessment at a population level before they could make a determination as to the potential for AEI for queenfish at this power plant.
