Tuesday April 25, 2023
NOAA Fisheries —
Researchers from NOAA Fisheries and University of California Santa Cruz will tag several groups of juvenile salmon in the Sacramento River system. The tags will help us measure the benefits from the river’s first “pulse flow.” A pulse flow is a rapid increase and decrease in dam released water designed to resemble natural spring runoff.
The researchers want to know if the pulse flow increases the survival of juvenile salmon and improves their chances of returning to the river as an adult to spawn. They plan on measuring this by implanting tags into juvenile salmon migrating downriver before, during, and after the pulse. They will compare their speed and survival on the way to the ocean.
“We want to maximize our opportunity to learn from this,” said Cyril Michel, a research scientist with NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center based at University of California Santa Cruz. “This doesn’t happen often so we are measuring it from every angle.”