Jose “Moke” Simon III recalls as a child in the ‘70s watching the creeks that flow into Clear Lake in Northern California turn black with fish — a fish found only in these waters — as they made their springtime run.

Someone would call from the neighboring reservation with the news: “The hitch are running!” Everybody would grab their ice chests and pile into cars.

“They ran so thick in the rivers, you didn’t even need a pole,” said Simon, now chair of the Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians. “You’d just get in there and splash them out of the river, or catch them in your shirt.”

But those days are gone. As Clear Lake, which sits in Lake County, north of Napa, faces mercury contamination, toxic algal blooms and predatory invasive fish, the Clear Lake hitch — known by local tribes as the chi — are in serious trouble. Another fish unique to the watershed, the Clear Lake splittail, is already extinct.

After years of advocacy and on-the-ground work to save the fish, the seven tribes around the lake signed an agreement with state agencies and local governments Friday to formally co-manage the troubled body of water. Nearly two centuries after Europeans took over these lands, it’s a literal watershed: the first agreement governing a watershed since the state launched an initiative to bring 7% of California’s lands and waters under the care of tribes.

The tribes hope it will turn their ad hoc emergency work — which has coincided with an increase of chi in the lake — into a lasting strategy to protect the fish.

“I really hope it’s going to solidify the long-term success and vitality of this fish for the next seven generations,” Simon said, who described the signing as the most government agencies he’s ever seen come together in the region.

As far back as stories go, the chi have been vital for the region’s Indigenous people. Every year, Pomo nations would gather at the south end of the lake to catch and dry the fish that would sustain them throughout the year, Simon said.

But nearly two centuries ago, European settlers started fracturing this relationship.

Settlers began arriving by the 1840s. A pair of particularly brutal white ranchers enslaved and starved Pomo villagers, murdered men on a whim and raped women and children. Eventually, the Indigenous locals rose up and killed them. In response, on May 15, 1850, armed vigilantes and the U.S. Army slaughtered hundreds of tribal members.

The following year, the U.S. government promised the tribes reservations but failed to create them. What they got instead, decades later, were much smaller “rancheria” reservations that the government again terminated in 1950s. Without oversight of the land, protecting the chi has been an upstream battle.

“We don’t own the land, but we certainly feel like we have an immense responsibility to be good stewards and caretakers of the land,” said Danielle Cirelli, chair of the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake.

As for fish, settlers had begun introducing nonnative species by the late 1800s for sport fishing. They proved to be invasive. Today there are more than 20 introduced species still in the lake that kick up sediment, destroy the plants the chi live among and eat their eggs.

A view of milky way during a meteor shower at Clear Lake in 2024.

(Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Images)

In the 1920s, a modest mercury mine grew into a large open-pit operation, contaminating the watershed with the toxic metal. The mercury made its way into the fish, posing a risk to tribal members who relied on the chi for food.

To make matters worse, Clear Lake has struggled with dramatic blooms of toxic algae, spurred by stretches of hot summer days with little wind. As the warm water sits still at the top, oxygen no longer circulates to the bottom. This sets off a chemical reaction freeing phosphorus, a primary nutrient for the algae, from the lake floor. The heat, low oxygen and toxic algae all harm the chi.

Globally, these kinds of blooms are increasingly common as human-caused emissions continue to warm the Earth.

It’s “death by a thousand cuts,” said Steve Sadro, UC Davis environmental science and policy department chair who works on Clear Lake rehabilitation.

In 2017, Clear Lake’s dire condition led the state to establish a blue ribbon commission, with tribal participation, focused on cleaning up the lake to bolster the local boating and fishing economy. But drought struck the region in the early 2020s — shrinking the streams where the chi spawn. The tribes began sounding the alarm and the state set up a Clear Lake Hitch Task Force with the tribes.

The result has been a surge of activity in recent years, much of it spearheaded by the tribes.

UC Davis developed a device that pumps oxygen from a tank onshore to the bottom of the lake to combat the algae problem. The Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians monitors water quality for algal blooms and cleans up spawning creeks that get clogged with sediment and trash.

The Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians tracks and removes invasive fish like carp and goldfish and now plans to start setting fire to tule — a giant grass-like plant that the chi rely on for shelter — to help it grow better. The Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake catch and tag the chi to better understand their behavior.

The tribes also have worked together after rains to orchestrate rescue missions for chi that are trapped in puddles, offshoots and agricultural ditches.

“This co-management agreement is really putting pen to paper on what is already happening on the ground,” said Geneva E.B. Thompson, deputy secretary for tribal affairs at the California Natural Resources Agency. It’s “a beautiful example of what shared decision-making can look like for a watershed, for a fish species.”

Simon hopes it moves the tribes one step closer to freely catching the chi again, like he did as a child.

“That would be something to see,” he said, “before I’m back in the earth.”

Astronaut Victor Glover, a Southern California native who piloted NASA’s Artemis II mission around the moon this year, is stepping back from the space agency.

He began a full-time leadership position at his alma mater, Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, on Sept. 1, according to a news release from the university.

As the only pilot to have flown NASA’s moon-faring Orion capsule, Glover will continue supporting astronaut training for lunar missions under the agency’s emeritus program, according to a NASA news release.

Glover’s crewmate, Artemis II cmdr. Reid Wiseman is also retreating from astronaut duties to join the emeritus program, the agency said. Artemis II mission specialist Jeremy Hansen announced in July he would step back from the Canadian Space Agency this month.

Out of the crew of four, that leaves only mission specialist Christina Koch as a full-time astronaut.

In June, Glover visited Cal Poly to speak to an audience of nearly 1,300 about his experience flying around the moon. In August, he made a surprise appearance on campus around the start of fall classes at a welcome event for students and families at the university’s stadium.

In his new role, the astronaut will work closely will Cal Poly’s president to position the university as a “global leader in polytechnic education, research innovation and workforce production,” the news release said. He will also work on initiatives to “inspire the next generation of students to pursue STEM-related disciplines.” (STEM stands for “science, technology, engineering and math.”)

Cal Poly has always held a special place in Glover’s heart. He met his wife, Dionna, on campus while both were students. All four of his daughters have either graduated or are attending the university.

Glover was born in Pomona and graduated from Ontario High School. During his upbringing, he lived “all over” Southern California’s urban sprawl, including Baldwin Village. He graduated Cal Poly in 1999 with a degree in engineering.

After serving in the military for 15 years — including as a Navy test pilot — he was selected by NASA for its 21st class of astronauts in 2013.

At the space agency, he piloted the first operational mission of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station in 2020. In April, he piloted NASA’s first mission to return humans to the moon in more than 50 years.

While the Artemis II crew did not land on the lunar surface, the astronauts’ expressions of awe for the lunar surface and profound love for Earth captured the public’s attention.

“Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we’re doing is special,” Glover said on Easter while on his way to the moon. “But we’re the same distance from you, and — I’m trying to tell you, just trust me — you are special. In all of this emptiness — this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe — you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist, together.”