Tuesday August 6, 2024
NOAA Fisheries via Maven’s Notebook —
The removal of four dams on the Klamath River will reopen more habitat to Pacific salmon than all previous dam removals in the West combined. Now it will have a monitoring program to match—designed by top salmon scientists to track when and how many fish of different species return and where they go.
“The world’s eyes are on the Klamath Basin right now,” said Damon Goodman, Mount Shasta-Klamath Regional Director of CalTrout, who helped develop the monitoring program with other fish scientists, tribes, and state and federal agencies. “It’s our responsibility to have credible, transparent, and solid data that tells us—how is this working for the fish?”
The monitoring program will employ the latest technology to answer three key questions:
- When and how many fish are returning? A SONAR station below the former Iron Gate Dam will use sound waves to detect and count the number of salmon and steelhead swimming upriver into new territory.
- What species are they? Crews will use nets that briefly entangle fish without injury to catch and identify the different species of fish heading upriver.
- Where are they going? Radio telemetry stations and mobile tracking teams across the basin will track signals from tagged salmon as they find their way back into their historical habitat.