Baby salmon in California will make trip to ocean -- by truck
RIO VISTA, Calif. - California's been dry for going on three years.
And that's interfering with one of nature's wonders - the annual migration of salmon from streams and rivers to the Pacific.
But it turns out, the fish won't have to make the journey alone.At the Coleman fish hatchery on the upper Sacramento River, the first of 12 million baby salmon were loaded into trucks this morning.
California's long drought has left the river so low that for the first time in two decades the hatchery can't release the fish raised right at the hatchery.
They'll be carried more than 200 miles downriver where they'll have an easier time reaching the ocean.
"Survival will be much, much higher than if those fish were released into the drought-stricken river where the hatchery is," McManus said. "In fact some estimates suggest that the survival will be up to 18 times higher than if the fish were released at the hatchery."
How will McManus know whether the effort has been a success?
"These fish actually have coded wire tags implanted in them," he said. "When they come back as adults those tags will be recovered, and we will know what the survival is, as a result of recovering these tags."
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Over the next three weeks dozens of truckloads will make the same journey. It's seen as essential to the $1.4 billion fishing industry in California. Captain John Atkinson runs a charter fishing boat out of San Francisco Bay.
"Salmon is our bread and butter," Atkinson said. "That's our main money maker."
"They know," Atkinson said. "They know. They're a lot smarter than we are."
Sometimes nature just needs a lift.