Description This project tracks the movement and survival of wild and hatchery juvenile Chinook salmon with a large acoustic receiver network (JSATS), including real-time receivers, and the development of real-time metrics and retrospective modeling of juvenile salmon migration data. Need There is a well-documented need for improved detection and associated modeling of salmon migration and survival in the Central Valley. Understanding salmon survival and movement dynamics in the Delta and its tributaries is critical to the operation of state and federal water projects, recovery of ESA-listed species, and sport and commercial fisheries management. Objectives: Maintain 20 real-time JSATS receivers: will provide information on migrating salmon smolt location and timing of Delta entry and exist, which is key for informing time-sensitive decisions; Deployment of autonomous JSATS receiver array: this will provide fine-scale reach-specific survival and movement rates; Development of new metrics for the real-time data: this will inform key management relevant questions, such how many fish are entrained at critical junctions; Development of real-time website to convey movement and survival rates of acoustic tagged juvenile salmonids at various real-time locations in the Sacramento River and Delta.
The Delta Juvenile Fish Monitoring Program (DJFMP) has monitored natural-origin and hatchery-origin juvenile Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and other fish species within the San Francisco Estuary (SFE) since 1976 using a combination of midwater trawls and beach seines. Since 2000, three trawl sites and at least 58 beach seine sites have been sampled weekly or biweekly within the SFE and lower Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. The main objectives of the DJFMP are: 1. Document the long-term abundance and distribution of juvenile Chinook Salmon in the Delta. 2. Comprehensively monitor throughout the year to document the presence of all races of juvenile Chinook Salmon. 3. Intensively monitor juvenile Chinook salmon during the fall and winter months for use in managing water project operations (Delta Cross Channel gates and water export levels) on a real-time basis. 4. Document the abundance and distribution of Steelhead. 5. Document the abundance and distribution of non-salmonid species.
SacPAS serves to provide information integration services to the Central Valley Project Improvement Act and practitioners working on matters related to ESA-listed fishes. The web-based services relate fish passage to environmental conditions and provide resources for evaluating the effects of river management and environmental conditions on salmon passage and survival.
The work performed as part of this agreement includes developing, maintaining, and making accessible query tools and decision support tools to access: historical, real-time and forecasted data; data summaries and visualizations; and hindcasts, forecasts, and scenario-derived predictions from statistical and mechanistic models. More specifically, the objectives are to:
1) Maintain and extend a secondary data repository of historical, real-time, and forecasted fish, environmental, and operational data from the Sacramento River and other river systems in the Central Valley, integrated from primary, public databases.
2) Maintain and improve the data query and visualization tools and services provided through the SacPAS website (https://www.cbr.washington.edu/sacramento/) for historical, real-time, and forecasted environmental and fish data.
3) Conduct research and provide access to modeling tools for fish survival and migration, through the SacPAS website, in support of Reclamation-funded and ESA-mandated activities, especially in efforts to predict, track, and evaluate the efficacy of proposed or actual actions.
Pesticide mixtures originating from both legacy and current-use chemicals are widely detected in Delta waters, sediments, and invertebrate prey, posing potential risks to juvenile Chinook Salmon during critical rearing periods. While pesticides have been measured in juvenile salmon and their prey, substantial uncertainty remains regarding how mixtures of contaminants affect fish behavior and physiology, and how these effects vary across space and time within the Delta. This science activity will apply a recently developed response spectrum modeling framework to evaluate spatial and temporal patterns of sublethal pesticide effects on juvenile Chinook Salmon rearing in the Delta. The model integrates pesticide concentrations measured in salmon tissues to predict behavioral and physiological impairment associated with complex pesticide mixtures. Juvenile fall-run Chinook Salmon collected through existing Delta monitoring programs, including archived specimens from prior years, will be analyzed alongside hatchery-origin juveniles deployed in cages at multiple Delta locations. This combined approach will allow assessment of how pesticide bioaccumulation and model-predicted effects vary across habitats, seasons, and hydrologic conditions. Results will provide a predictive assessment of where and when pesticide mixtures are most likely to impair juvenile salmon performance, with implications for growth, survival, and population-level outcomes. The activity will support management decisions related to pesticide regulation, TMDL development, and evaluation of habitat restoration actions, including reconnected floodplain rearing habitats. In addition, spatial patterns of pesticide bioaccumulation may help identify contaminant sources and inform targeted remediation strategies.
