The salmon are 3-6 inches long now, but could be 20 inches by next year and full grown by 2023.
The Golden Gate Salmon Association has been pushing for Tuesday’s release because the salmon were never going to make it to the bay by themselves.
“They’re real lousy swimmers,” said John McManus, president of the Golden State Salmon Association. “They can’t swim out to the ocean from the Central Valley; they get carried by a river that functions like a conveyor belt but in drought the conveyor belt is broken.”
That delivery system is also broken by a much longer term problem climate change.
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California Senate proposes to spend $3.4 billion on drought
Apr. 30, 2021 at 6:00 am
Mired in yet another drought that threatens drinking water, endangered species of fish and the state’s massive agriculture industry, Democrats in the California Senate on Thursday detailed a $3.4 billion proposal designed to gird the state for a new crisis on the heels of a deadly and disruptive pandemic.
The proposal would equal all of the state’s combined spending during the previous drought, which lasted from 2012 to 2016, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. That drought occurred after the Great Recession, when California routinely battled multibillion-dollar budget deficits and struggled to pay for state services.
“Trucking young salmon to downstream release sites has proven to be one of the best ways to increase survival to the ocean during dry conditions,” Jason Julienne, supervisor of the north central region hatchery, said in a statement.
California is now in its second year of drought after a winter with little precipitation and it is the state’s fourth-driest year on record, especially in the northern two-thirds of the state, according to the California department of water resources.
Illustrating the state’s risk of drought, record low reservoir levels led the governor, Gavin Newsom, to proclaim a regional drought emergency for the Russian River watershed in Sonoma and Mendocino counties last week.