Determine movement patterns and survival rates of Central Valley Chinook salmon, steelhead and their predators using acoustic tags.

The project’s objective is to document movement patterns and survival rates of Chinook salmon, steelhead, green sturgeon, and other fish from several sources in the Central Valley of California. Juvenile salmonids from hatcheries or wild caught are implanted with small acoustic transmitters and the location of the fish are recorded on receivers that are placed throughout the watershed from Redding to the Golden Gate. Over 70 receiver locations with over 150 receivers monitor the movement of these fish. These receivers record the date, time, and unique identification number of transmitters that pass within listening range of the receivers. The first acoustic tagging studies began in 2006 and continue today.

The data on movement and survival are important in several ways. First these data contribute to the knowledge base on the basic biology of these fishes. Second, these data can identify areas of the migration which have relatively higher mortality rates, and ways to ameliorate the mortality can be developed. Third information on movement and survival can be used to inform models of the fishes life history. Finally knowing where fish are and when can be very helpful to fisheries managers trying to protect fish.

Anyone may use this data

Contact Arnold Ammann for downloads or access to the database via ODBC connections.

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Database resides on SQL Server 2008

Detections are processed and filtered from raw receiver data but a very small percentage of detections are not valid (i.e. false detections). The end user is responsible for evaluation and validation of detections.

Raw receiver data was filtered for only known tag IDs and must be within the expected time frame of occurrence (after tag ID was released and before expected tag failure date). For Vemco 69khz system single detections of a TagID at a single receiver were removed. For JSATS system each receivers detection records were filtered independently, multipath detections were removed, and valid detections of a specific TagID must have at least 4 detections within 16 times the pulse rate invterval and the time between successive detections must be a multiple of the expected pulse rate interval.

Raw files are converted from electronic format and combined with latitude/longitude. Detections are filtered to remove false positives.

Awaiting guidance from headquarters

Data are backed up weekly and the backups are stored in a secure location.

Data are collected electronically and then converted to text files. Location data of each detection is added to the files. Data is inspected and false positive detections are removed. The data is uploaded into the database.