Wednesday April 12, 2023
Herald and News —
Where will fingerling-sized spring Chinook salmon go and how many will survive after they’re released in tributaries to Upper Klamath Lake?
It’s hoped that answers to those and others questions will be found by placing pebble-sized acoustic tags in Chinook fingerlings. Under the coordination of Mark Hereford, the Klamath Falls-based fisheries reintroduction biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, a team of fishery biologists installed hundreds of pebble-sized acoustic receivers at the Klamath Fish Hatchery near Fort Klamath earlier this week.
“We’re going to learn a lot about how juvenile Chinook migrate through the Klamath Basin,” Hereford said as tiny transmitters no larger than a grain of rice were precisely placed in the year-old juvenile Chinook. “The objective is to answer a lot of questions we have regarding juvenile Chinook downstream movement.”
ODFW biologists and their partners recently completed a plan for reintroducing salmon and steelhead into historic habitat following the removal of the four Klamath River Hydroelectric Dams which have blocked passage of salmon since 1912. The plan recommends a “hands-off” approach to reintroduction of most fish species.