PROTECTING
WILD CALIFORNIA
Just-released fall Chinook fry swim in the Sacramento River. While transporting such small hatchery fish to the stream was something of an unknown, some 2 million of the young salmon are now part of an experiment to help increase declining wild Chinook numbers in Central California and bolster the fishery. (LAURA MAHONEY/USFWS)
SMALL FRY YIELD BIG SUCCESS (SO FAR) IN RUN-BUILDING BID By John Heil
S
uccess on the first try. That’s what transpired this past December and January, when the Coleman National Fish Hatchery transported smaller fry for release into the Sacramento River.
A total of 2 million juvenile fall-run Chinook salmon to be exact. “Nobody here at Coleman has ever transported that small of fry before, despite staff having a lot of experience transporting fish,” said Brett Galyean, hatchery manager and project leader
with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “When you do something new, you’re always just a little bit leery of the outcome, so we started off with really small loads, and then as we gained confidence in our technique and watched what the fish were showing us during
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