We sure do love this beautiful weather! It’s almost the first day of June. Summer is officially within sight. This week’s Science Friday goes back in time over 20-years to 1997. We review a study conducted by Brett Harvey and Rodney Nakamoto. We have reviewed some of their work previously, which focused on habitat usage by adult steelhead. Today …
Science Friday: When fish grow and die in California
Soquel Creek is a small stream flowing into Monterey Bay about 70 miles south of San Francisco and is home to a population of winter steelhead. A group of scientists published a paper in 2009 that looked into seasonal patterns of growth, survival and movement of age-0 and age-1+ juvenile steelhead within this small California watershed. Age-0 fish are …
Science Friday: Restoring the River Salmon: The Coho Return
Today we are re-publishing an excellent article by Dan Bottom on the remarkable against all odds recovery of Salmon River Coho. This article was originally written for and published by the Reflections program at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology near Otis on Oregon’s Salmon River. This article was submitted by Dan Bottom, a current Howard L. McKee …
Stock Recruit Curves And Wild Steelhead, A Good Match?
In several recent posts we have discussed the concept of density dependence and how it is used in fisheries management. Today we dive in deeper and talk about the stock-recruitment relationship, density dependence, and how the results of such models are applied to managing steelhead. First, let’s define some terms. Stock refers to, in this context, a population of …
Science Friday: Why do juvenile steelhead move at the onset of winter?
By John McMillan We are going old school today, Science Friday style. No, we’re not talking about shooting ourselves with a tranquilizer gun, going streaking, or starting a fraternity to compensate for a mid-life crisis. We’ll leave that to Will Ferrell. But we are going back in time, to 1971. Today we revisit one of the foundational pieces of …
Science Friday: Space, time, and maximizing habitat capacity
All steelhead, all the time, here at Wild Steelheaders United. Over the past few weeks we have examined the scientific concepts and tools used to evaluate how productive a given stream can be for wild steelhead. Such assessments are an important component of managing a steelhead fishery — especially if the run in that watershed is ESA-listed (in the Lower …
Science Friday: The importance of both space and time in managing wild steelhead
This is the third of four posts on the nuts and bolts of estimating wild steelhead populations, spawning success, and other key management variables. First, we covered the concepts of carrying capacity and density dependence and how habitat can be used to estimate carrying capacity. Last week’s post shifted gears to review studies that found the spatial distribution …
Science Friday: Juvenile Density, Distribution and Habitat Capacity
By John McMillan New Year, new Science Friday! Last week we looked at the concept of carrying capacity, how it is estimated, and the most important habitat factors used to come up with those estimations. This week we shift gears a bit and review studies that illuminate how patterns in fish distribution can affect assumptions about carrying capacity. Recall …
Science Friday: The habitat that steelhead prefer, and how we use it to estimate capacity of rivers
By John McMillan How many steelhead can you fit into a given watershed? Put another way, what is the carrying capacity of a given watershed for steelhead? This question, and its answer, are important for steelhead fishery managers, and anglers, as we collectively try to rebuild wild fish runs up and down the West Coast. To be clear, we …
How many steelhead can you fit into a school?
It depends on how old and big they are. Over the past year we have talked extensively about the value of life history diversity in steelhead, and in particular, that a broader range in spawn timing – which results in a broader range of emergence for juveniles – can help ameliorate density-related impacts by spreading steelhead of various ages …