Every year, juvenile coho salmon travel down the Russian River in hopes of reaching the ocean and reproducing. Running from March to July, this long “outmigration” season is essential to the long-term resilience of coho populations.
But shallow stream depths in the Russian River tributaries limit the outmigration season and obstruct fish movement out to the sea. And as droughts become more frequent and intense, human need results in further stream water diversions to aid communities. These conditions further bottleneck the recovery of this already endangered species.
Environmental Science, Policy, and Management graduate student Brian Kastl is helping to identify the impacts of droughts and determine the necessary water levels and streamflows for outmigration that may lead to new water conservation strategies that protect the species.
“I love contributing my little piece of the story to save this culturally significant species,” Kastl, a California Sea Grant Graduate Research Fellow, told Sea Grant California.
The California Sea Grant is one of 34 Sea Grant programs sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and is headquartered at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Kastl is one of three Berkeley students who received funding directly from Sea Grant in 2020, including Emily Chen, a grad student in the Carlson lab who received a Sea Grant Fellowship to explore if chinook salmon raised in a hatchery are suitable surrogates to estimate the movement and vitals of wild salmon populations.
Kastl’s work is a collaboration between salmon expert Mariska Obedzinski, a California Sea Grant Extension team member, and the Coho Partnership, a multi-disciplinary group of agricultural producers and private landowners concerned with the coho recovery. Conversations with local residents passionate about saving the salmon population have also helped guide the team’s work.
For more information about California Sea Grant, and an overview of Kastl’s work, read the full post at Sea Grant California.