Tagging Caged Fish Prior to their Release – Rice Helping Salmon in the Sacramento Valley

Event Date: March 16-17, 2020

Purpose: To gather all the fish that were grown out in the rice fields within protective cages that were of taggable size and surgically insert the Juvenile Salmon Acoustic Telemetry (JSAT) tags into each one of them.

Video of Salmon tagging procedure

The caged salmon located within a rice field out at Knagg’s Ranch.

The caged salmon that were moved to a canal awaiting JSAT tagging after their growth in rice fields at River Garden Farms.

Transferring the salmon from the cages to an aerated cooler for transportation over to the surgery tent. — Jordan Colby and Amanda Agosta (UC Davis) transferring the salmon from the cages to an aerated cooler for transportation over to the surgery tent.

Jordan Colby of the UC Team literally “getting into his work” to retrieve the fish from within the cages.

Video of another load of fish being delivered to the surgery tent.

Getting ready to head out to collect another load of fish for the surgeons — Jordan Colby and Amanda Agosta (UC Davis) getting ready to head out to collect another load of fish for the surgeons to insert JSAT tags into.

UC Davis fish surgery team all ready to get to work tagging fish and recording all the data.

Rachelle Tallman (UC Davis) at work carefully tagging fish.

Video of Rachelle Tallman (UC Davis) performing fish-tagging surgery.

Video of the UC Davis team netting fish brought from the field to the surgery tent.

Video of Mike Thomas, another UC Davis fish surgeon, at work carefully tagging fish.

UC Davis Professor Andrew Rypel and Rachelle Tallman (UC Davis) confer about the day’s JSAT tagging activities out at River Garden Farms.

Video of Rachelle Tallman (UC Davis) describing how they select the fish for the day’s JSAT tagging surgeries.

Video of Rachelle Tallman (UC Davis) talking about the fish that were grown in protective cages for the JSAT tagging piece of the salmon project.

Video of Rachelle Tallman (UC Davis) talks about the minimum size requirements in order to perform the JSAT tagging surgeries on the young salmon.

Video of Rachelle Tallman (UC Davis) describing the types of field treatments that were tested during this season’s fieldwork.

Video of Rachelle Tallman (UC Davis) talks about the rate of survival in each of the plots tested as part of this season’s fieldwork.

Video of Rachelle Tallman (UC Davis) describing the process of marking, PIT tagging and periodically recapturing the fish that were swimming freely in the test plots.