Picture: USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) announced last week the execution of a brand-new program to track steelhead.
According to the agency’s website, “Biologists are putting satellite ‘pop-off’ tags on 10 adult winter season steelhead in the Rogue and Chetco rivers this spring. The objective is to tag ‘kelts’– the fish that currently effectively generated and are heading back to sea.”
What’s intriguing about steelhead is that, per ODFW, these fish are seldom come across in industrial fishing operations. Salmon, on the other hand, regularly appear as bycatch (or sustain an industrial fishery of their own, depending upon the types). Given that salmon appear as bycatch, or sustain their own industrial fishing seasons, researchers have the ability to piece together a more total photo about their life process.
Steelhead, nevertheless, are evasive outdoors ocean, and researchers understand little about where they invest their time before they go back to rivers for generating seasons.
The pop-off tags ODFW will utilize will send “position, temperature level, and depth when a tag comes close adequate to the surface area.” The tags will conserve 180 days’ worth of details before separating.
If effective, this task ought to assist us comprehend more about where steelhead invest their time in the ocean, and possibly provide us brand-new insight for assisting these stopping working stocks.
