Coho Salmon Monitoring
The Partnership is one of many collaborative efforts that worked to restore a viable, self-sustaining population of coho salmon to the Russian River watershed. Insufficient streamflow was identified as a bottleneck to the recovery of local coho salmon and we attempted to address this by improving flow for coho smolts migrating to the ocean in the spring and coho young-of-year (yoy) rearing in the streams through the summer months. In order to evaluate whether Partnership projects were improving conditions for fish, and to help establish meaningful objectives for streamflow improvements, CA Sea Grant (CSG) monitored the over summer survival of coho yoy in selected study reaches since 2010.
This study compared survival to flow and environmental conditions, which helps us better understand how much water this vulnerable endangered species needs to survive the dry summer months.
As it turns out, even a little water can make a big difference.
Our initial research found that coho were able to survive at flows of just a few liters per second, as long as pools remained connected. Of course, we’ll need more water than that to fully recover a thriving coho population, but it’s encouraging to know that even a small amount of water returned to the stream can have a big impact.
Please visit CA Sea Grant’s website to learn more about our work with the Partnership and other salmon and steelhead monitoring efforts throughout the Russian River watershed.
The Coho Partnership sincerely thanks the many private landowners whose support made this research possible.
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© 2009-2019 Russian River Coho Water Resources Partnership