Scientists achieve first tracking of salmon from headwaters in Rockies through Pacific... (es survived a 2500 km trip that took mor...)

Scientists achieve first tracking of salmon from headwaters in Rockies through Pacific to Alaska

Date:10/27/2008

es survived a 2,500 km trip that took more than three months - from the upper reaches of the Snake River (a tributary of the Columbia River) in Idaho, out to sea then north along the continental shelf to Alaska.

The two swam about the same distance as from London to Istanbul or Moscow, from Auckland to Melbourne, from Beijing to Hanoi, or from New York City to Austin, Texas.

An animation illustrating the migrations is online at www.postcoml.org/page.php?section=community&page=PLoSembargo

The 1,000 tagged juvenile salmon were followed via an extensive network of POST acoustic receivers in the Columbia and Fraser Rivers and along the Pacific continental shelf. The system helps scientists, resource managers and the public to better understand our oceans and the animals that live there, something the Census of Marine Life is accomplishing on a global scale through POST and 16 other projects.

Some other Census projects and all research about animal migration can profit from the technology that POST has now tested.

The underwater array of detectors in the rivers and ocean capture signals when a tagged fish passes by, akin to an electronic toll booth that records a passing vehicle equipped with a transponder.

A new paper, published today by the Public Library of Science in the prestigious peer-reviewed open access online journal PLoS Biology, describes one of the first important applications of this technology - comparing the survival of young salmon in dammed and un-dammed rivers. And the finding that survival is comparable is both surprising and controversial.

Two species of juvenile salmon migrating through the Columbia River's eight dams survived the freshwater and early marine portions of their journey to the ocean as well as those in the un-dammed Fraser River, challenging widely-held notions about factors
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Contact: Terry Collins
terrycollins@rogers.com
416-538-8712
Census of Marine Life
Source:Eurekalert

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Scientists achieve first tracking of salmon from headwaters in Rockies through Pacific...(es survived a 2500 km trip that took mor...)