Delta smelt: the tiny fish caught in California's war with Trump

Harbingers of a diminishing ecosystem, the smelt are almost extinct. Now, forces within the Trump administration could usher them into oblivion

On a warm November morning, John Durand squints over the stern of a small research boat, and gestures toward gray-blue water, and the chaotic tangles of tube-like tule reeds.

"Cache Slough right here had been known as a hotspot for delta smelt," he says. But it's been four years since Durand and his team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, have found the finger-length fish that gleam golden and "smell kind of like cucumber" in the brackish streams and sloughs of northern California's bay delta.