Tag: Chinook salmon
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Putah Creek Fishes: A Class Gyotaku Project
By Christopher M. Dewees . . . On a crisp and sunny November morning last fall, along the shores of Putah Creek, a group of students quickly dropped their beach seining net when it was suddenly filled with returning adult salmon (which were immediately released!). That moment would have been unimaginable in the 1990s. Putah…
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Life history differences between natural and hatchery-origin winter-run Chinook present opportunities and challenges for managing the endangered species
By Emily Chen, Katherine Lumahan, Rachel Johnson, Corey Phillis, George Whitman, Anna Sturrock, Will Satterthwaite, and Stephanie Carlson . . . Wild Pacific salmon and trout exhibit complex variation in completing their life cycle. Within a single population, some individuals leave their natal (birth) streams soon after they emerge from the nest to begin their…
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The truth is NOT in the eye of the beholder!
By Alexandra Chu and Danhong Ally Li . . . For those familiar with fish archival tissues, fish otoliths are likely one of the first things that come to mind. Otoliths are indeed remarkable tools, offering insights into the water chemistry and trace elements the fish encountered while they were alive. However, we want to…
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Day 2 – Fish Eye View
By Miranda Bell-Tilcock . . . That’s no moon. That is the lens of a fish eye. While it looms large in the photo, this lens is tiny, approximately 3-5mm in diameter, similar to a small bead on a friendship bracelet. How did we even capture such a zoomed in photo of a small lens?…
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Build it, and they will come: Early evidence for establishment of Chinook salmon in Putah Creek, CA
By Lauren G. Hitt, Malte Willmes, Mackenzie C. Miner, Max Stevenson, Carson A. Jeffres, Robert A. Lusardi, Nann A. Fangue, and Andrew L. Rypel For the third year in a row, regulators have canceled California’s commercial Chinook salmon fishing season.Poor spawning salmon returns in 2024 and low predicted numbers of salmon in the ocean during 2025…
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Sό Semente – Only a Seed
By Carson Jeffres, Gislene Torrente Vilara, Jansen Zuanon Seeds are often thought of as a start that will eventually grow into something larger than it originally started. In this case, the seed was a seed grant from UC Davis Global Affairs to develop a collaborative project with international partners working with a migratory fish along the…
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Watching native fishes vanish
By Andrew L. Rypel and Peter B. Moyle It’s an odd, disturbing feeling – watching populations of native fish species collapse and then disappear. Sometimes it happens quickly, other times it’s a series of slowstep change events. The end result is the same though – smaller populations, extinctions, less biodiversity. We put up a little…
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Schooling Fish: Behind the Scenes of Putah Creek Fish Sampling
By Christine A. Parisek, Peter B. Moyle, Joshua Porter, and Andrew L. Rypel It’s a curious thing, teaching a classroom of future fish conservationists about revitalizing degraded ecosystems. Putah Creek was an unconventional place to teach ecology. After the creek turned bad, it stayed that way for decades – deteriorated habitat, nonexistent flow, garbage, rusted cars,…
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Unlocking how juvenile Chinook salmon swim in California rivers
By Rusty C. Holleman, Nann A. Fangue, Edward S. Gross, Michael J. Thomas, and Andrew L. Rypel Despite years of study and thousands of research projects, some aspects of the biology of Chinook salmon remain altogether mysterious. One enduring question is how outmigrating salmon smolts behave and swim through our waterways to somehow find their…
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The Putah Creek Fish Kill: Learning from a Local Disaster
By Alex Rabidoux, Max Stevenson, Peter B. Moyle, Mackenzie C. Miner, Lauren G. Hitt, Dennis E. Cocherell, Nann A. Fangue, and Andrew L. Rypel Putah Creek is a small stream located in the Central Valley that has been extensively modified to suit urban and agricultural water needs. Following ratification of the Putah Creek Accord in…
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Rice & salmon, what a match!
By: Andrew L. Rypel, Derrick J. Alcott, Paul Buttner, Alex Wampler, Jordan Colby, Parsa Saffarinia, Nann Fangue and Carson A. Jeffres Long-time followers of this blog may have tracked the evolution of our salmon-rice work for some time. The work originated most strongly with the “The Nigiri Project” in the early 2000s, building from important…
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Science of an underdog: the improbable comeback of spring-run Chinook salmon in the San Joaquin River
By Andrew L. Rypel, Gabriel Singer, and Nann A. Fangue “You can’t design a worse evolutionary strategy for the Anthropocene” There are many variants on this quote, and we’ve heard them often in reference to the status of native fishes in California and other freshwater organisms worldwide. Indeed, the statement rings true for Pacific salmon,…
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New insights into Putah Creek salmon
by Malte Willmes, Anna Steel, Levi Lewis, Peter B. Moyle, and Andrew L. Rypel It’s November 2016, and we’re out in canoes on Putah Creek as part of the annual salmon survey. Just as we navigate our watercraft through a narrow river section using push poles, thorny blackberry bushes and trees begin to close in…
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Fish are born free, but are everywhere in cages this spring
by Carson Jeffres, Eric Holmes, and Andrew Rypel State, federal, and local governments, water users, and the public are all concerned with the survival of salmon. Over decades, and especially recent years, most salmon runs have severely declined in California. Part of sustaining salmon populations is improving the survival and fitness of young salmon as…
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A salmon success story during the California drought
Looking back on 2014, it’s hard not to feel despair for California salmon. With drought-stricken rivers running dangerously warm and slow for spring migration, the government was giving millions of young hatchery salmon a lift to the Pacific by truck and barge. Come August, several streams in the Central Valley were drying up. Native fish…
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Yurok stewardship of Klamath’s Blue Creek bodes well for fish
By Peter Moyle Last summer I had the privilege of camping overnight with members of the Yurok Tribe and Western Rivers Conservancy on Blue Creek, one of California’s loveliest streams and an important cold-water refuge for migrating salmon and steelhead. The creek tumbles down the misty Siskiyou Mountains not far from Redwood National Park. I…
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When Good Fish Make Bad Decisions
Carson Jeffres, Staff Research Associate, Center for Watershed Sciences Restoration of degraded habitat is generally considered to be a no-brainer. But, what if by “restoring” the habitat, you inadvertently create a habitat that causes either the target species or other important non-target species to spiral towards extinction—that is, a place that looks good on the…
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Wanted: An integrated strategy for recovery of Central Valley salmon
Jacob Katz, Ph.D. Candidate, Center for Watershed Sciences Peter Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, University of California – Davis Historically, the rivers of the Central Valley had seasonally variable stream flows and diverse habitats. Rivers tended to flood in winter, with low flows in summer. Salmon used in-channel gravel beds for spawning, deep in-channel pools…
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Have our salmon and eat them too: Re-thinking Central Valley salmon hatcheries
By Jacob Katz and Peter Moyle In the previous blog, Jay Lund argued that wide-scale, integrated management of California’s water system will better balance water needs of the environment and water demands by humans. Here we expand on the need for fundamental shifts in policy to recover populations of Central Valley salmon using integrated management…
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Sex, lies and videotape: Premature maturation of Chinook salmon on Shasta River
Carson Jeffres, Senior Research Associate, Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California – Davis Migration to and from the sea (anadromy) is the iconic pattern we associate with Pacific salmon. They spend most of their life in the ocean, taking advantage of its productivity to grow and mature. These adults return upstream to spawn in…