Drought leads to more salmon trucking
30M young fish to be released in Delta
More than 30 million young salmon are being trucked toward the Pacific Ocean this spring as a way to protect them from the effects of drought, officials said.
The trucks began making trips this week between the Coleman National Fish Hatchery along the Sacramento River in Anderson to different locations in the Delta and San Pablo Bay.
On Tuesday, a convoy of three tanker trucks arrived near the U.S. Coast Guard station in Rio Vista.
State and federal wildlife officials hooked the trucks up to a pipe, opened a valve and released the 3-inch long fish into holding pens.
"Right now they're swimming well. They're looking well. There aren't any floating on top, so they made the journey very well and they're looking healthy," said fishery biologist Kari Burr, with the nonprofit Fishery Foundation of California.
Government biologists said shallow, warm water caused by the drought would likely have caused many of the salmon to become lost in the Delta and never find their way to the ocean where they grow into adults.
"Both the sport and commercial fisheries will have a much better chance of catching some fish, making some money. It's a great economic benefit to California," said John McManus of the Golden Gate Salmon Association.
McManus estimated the fishing industry is worth $1.4 billion and well worth the $430,000 the federal government is spending on the trucking operation.
The state government typically trucks at least some salmon each year, but this joint state-federal operation is happening on an unprecedented scale.
More than 30 million Chinook salmon will be released during the next three weeks.
The Chinook salmon is not listed as endangered or threatened, but it is considered one of the most commercially valuable species in California.
The trucking will interfere with the salmon's ability to retrace their route when they return from the ocean to spawn in two years.
Stafford Lehr, fisheries chief at the California Fish and Wildlife Department, said scientists are still not sure if the trucking process might affect the long-term survival of the species.
"The goal is to move away from this practice," Lehr said.
He said the state has begun experimenting with barges that transport the fish down river with a constantly changing water supply.
However, results from those experiments are still three years away.