For Immediate Release: February 25, 2025
Contacts: John McManus, Golden State Salmon Association, 650.218.8650, johnmcmanus103@gmail.com
Scott Artis, Golden State Salmon Association, 925.550.9208, scott@goldenstatesalmon.org
New Trucking Release Strategy Boosts Salmon Returns Up To 15 Times in Drought Years
Santa Rosa, CA – New information from Chinook salmon that returned to the Sacramento River to spawn in 2024 show that hatchery salmon survival can be dramatically increased up to 15 times by engaging a short-haul trucking release strategy.
The new strategy, championed by Golden State Salmon Association (GSSA), trucks salmon from the Coleman National Fish Hatchery, the biggest in the state, about 107 miles downstream to a release site in the Sacramento River. In low water or drought years, this avoids forcing baby hatchery salmon from swimming through the most treacherous stretch of the upper Sacramento River where many are lost to predators. Recently collected US Fish and Wildlife Service data indicated trucked salmon survive and return to spawn at 3 to 15 times higher rates than hatchery fish released at the hatchery, which is the standard practice. Hatchery managers had worried that the short-haul trucked salmon would lose their ability to find their way back to the hatchery as adults and deprive the hatchery of needed eggs and milt. However, the new data shows that enough survive and return to the hatchery to alleviate these concerns and consider modifying existing practices in dry years. A crash of salmon numbers in the historically productive upper Sacramento River basin largely contributed to the total shutdown of salmon fishing in California in 2023 and 2024.
“The river is managed primarily to serve agricultural operations which makes it deadly to salmon in all but the wettest years,” said John McManus, Board Member and Senior Policy Director of GSSA who spearheaded the pilot project in 2018. “Trucking the hatchery salmon a short distance downstream in dry years shows great promise to solve some of the key problems salmon face and offers real hope to restore the salmon fishery.”
The news comes as state and federal fishery managers review salmon counts with an eye on whether to shut down the fishery for an unprecedented third year in a row. The 2024 fall-run Chinook salmon returns to the Sacramento River were very low at 99,274 fish, primarily due to low water levels and excessive industrial agricultural diversions in spring 2022, when juvenile salmon were migrating to the ocean. While many fertilized eggs failed to hatch because of high water temperatures created by dam operations, the few young salmon that year mostly failed to survive out-migration in the deadly low, warm river conditions. The bad water conditions were greatly exacerbated by water policies created under the first Trump administration and embraced by Governor Gavin Newsom that favored ag-water deliveries over all else.
“Newsom has the authority to save California’s salmon and fishing communities up and down the coast, but he’s consistently thrown salmon families under the bus in order to appease the large ag water users in the state,” said Scott Artis, executive director of GSSA.
The short-haul trucking of Coleman National Fish Hatchery salmon was the brainchild of GSSA, which won the support of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency that runs the hatchery. The Norcal Guides Association supported the trucking and identified the release location at the Butte City Bridge that has generated the encouraging results. This study provides strong evidence that trucking Coleman fish to Butte City Bridge is crucial for survival during drought years. With 15 times more fish returning, this strategy also helps maintain critical broodstock, reducing the risk of hatchery shortages like the one in 2023. They could also be key to recolonizing the upper river.
State and federal fishery experts will release a forecast of how many adult salmon they believe are swimming off the California coast this Wednesday, February 26, during the scheduled CDFW Salmon Information Meeting. There is hope that this forecast will be higher than those of recent past years and allow a salmon fishery but the picture is clouded by a number of factors including dwindling stocks of non-target salmon that could be caught incidentally and a recognition that models and science used to manage the fishery haven’t been performing as accurately as desired. Follow-up statements will be provided as updated numbers and information become available.
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Golden State Salmon Association (www.goldenstatesalmon.org) is a coalition of salmon advocates that includes commercial and recreational salmon fishermen and women, businesses, restaurants, a native tribe, environmentalists, elected officials, families and communities that rely on salmon. GSSA’s mission is to restore California salmon for their economic, recreational, commercial, environmental, cultural and health values.