Taxonomy
Rarity
Abundance rates how many are in suitable habitat. Find difficulty rates how hard it is to locate one on a daylight snorkel or freedive through 50 ft. A higher find score means a harder search. The rarity category also reflects the kind of encounter; it is not an average of the 2 scores.
Seasonality
Location
FishBase gives the range as Vancouver Island to San Francisco, at depths of about 3 to 340 feet. It describes the fish as abundant in bays. The 2001 report gives a more cautious picture: the fish favors productive inshore water and bays, yet is only rarely caught in estuaries or coastal water, and turns up sporadically in San Francisco and San Pablo bays, mostly in winter and spring. Only young to adult fish have been collected in the Sacramento-San Joaquin estuary, so the report concludes that the estuary is not a spawning area.
Deep Dive
The whitebait smelt is a true smelt, a relative of the surf smelt and night smelt rather than of silversides such as jacksmelt and topsmelt. FishBase describes it as pale greenish and almost colorless, with a sharply marked silvery stripe along each side and a small adipose fin, the fleshy fin on the back near the tail.
The 2001 report describes it as a schooling fish and a voracious feeder on zooplankton, and FishBase adds that it is an important food for larger fish. It is thought to spawn over sandy bottom below the low-tide line. The young stay nearly transparent until they are almost 3 inches long, and the report treats them as post-larval until then. The fish lives 1 to 3 years and reaches about 7 inches, although FishBase lists a maximum of about 9 inches. The report notes that the age groups found in San Francisco Bay hint that the fish may mature at 2 years.
California counts it with the surf smelt and night smelt in a limit of 25 pounds of true smelts a day.
Where to Find Them
Researched habitat and range candidates
Cape Flattery · 1 beach
These locations have suitable habitat within the species range. An assignment is a possible encounter, not a confirmed sighting at every beach. Season, depth, and local conditions still matter. Historical habitat without present-day evidence is excluded.