pagedesign – Rice Helping Salmon in the Sacramento Valley

During the 2019-20 winter flooding season, the California Rice Commission’s Pilot Salmon Project acquired approximately 12,000 baby salmon from the Coleman National Fish Hatchery with the objective of testing out four different rice field management practices for their potential to maximize salmon rearing habitat and then releasing these fish into the Sacramento River, including approximately…

releasing the rice field-reared salmon into the Sacramento River

Event Date: March 20, 2020 Purpose: Celebratory release of the rice field-reared salmon into the Sacramento River.

performing tagging surgery on young salmon

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.

Recording data while fish pass out of the field into canal

Event Date: March 5, 2020 Purpose: Drainage of one of the salmon project field plots during nightfall, monitoring their exit through the water control structures and collecting the fish for later release into the Sacramento River.

Event Date: February 25, 2020Purpose: To monitor, tag and assess the growth of the salmon in the rice fields.

Radio show hosts Armstrong and Getty observe fish being tagged

Event Dates: Various Dates between Feb 25, 2019 and Mar 17, 2020 Purpose: Various site visits to learn about the project by radio and print media professionals as well and a few representatives from our group of valued major donors.

UC Davis team checking on the caged fish

Event Date: Mid-February 2020 Purpose: Maintenance of flooded fish habitat and related scientific work (all shot from a drone).

Transporting baby salmon to protective cages

Event Date: February 5, 2020 Purpose: Efforts on this day were largely to place about 1,000 salmon into the protective cages to enable them to safely grow to a minimum size thus allowing them to be fitted with a “telemetry tag” which is surgically inserted into each fish prior to their release into the Sacramento…