El Nino - Now With 30% More Guac

Forecasters expect the 2026–27 El Niño to be the strongest ever measured, well past the 1997–98 and 2015–16 records, and for wild steelhead it is more than a weather story. It is the ocean they are about to swim into. In this episode of The Adipose, Wild Steelhead Coalition Science Advisor and former NOAA Fisheries scientist Guy Fleischer walks through what a "super" El Niño does to the fish on both sides of their life cycle. At sea, it means suppressed upwelling, a thinner food web, and predators moving into new waters just as smolts arrive in the ocean. In the rivers, it means a thin snowpack and warm, low summer flows in the Pacific Northwest, while scouring floods hit the southern end of the range. We talk about why this event's real cost won't show up until returns in the early 2030s, whether steelhead's bet-hedging life history can absorb a blow this big, and how a record El Niño on top of a steadily warming ocean changes the stakes. We also cover what managers, advocates, and anglers can do now to give these fish enough cold water and enough margin to get through it.