Wine Country Times

California state Sen. Mike McGuire (D-North Coast) said he is grateful for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) for taking action in helping save young salmon and helping to boost the future state's economy. 

A CDFW News release said the CDFW is "trucking millions of hatchery-raised juvenile Central Valley fall-run chinook salmon" to San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay and other seaside nets as a means to protect the salmon from drought conditions being experienced in the Central Valley area. 

"Grateful to the team at @CaliforniaDFW for mobilizing to save millions of juvenile salmon this year. The California drought has dramatically reduced stream flows across the state, meaning millions of hatchery-raised salmon would never make it to the Pacific," McGuire said in a May 1 tweet. 

Millions of salmon will be transported to help prevent the kind of significant salmon loss there has been in the past during dry years, the release said. 

“CDFW is utilizing lessons learned from the past 15 or more years of salmon releases and the last drought to maximize release success,” Jason Julienne, North Central Region Hatchery supervisor, said in the release. “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.”

According to the release, more than 16.8 million young salmon will be trucked by approximately 146 individual truck loads that will travel more than 30,000 miles from mid-April through June. 

"The adaptive management strategy was triggered by CDFW biologists’ and salmon hatchery managers’ evaluation of current and projected river conditions, anticipating historically low flows and elevated temperatures. Part of the strategy involves selection of new release sites and rotating between release sites to minimize learned behaviors from predators," the release said.

Releases will be at night and during the day to utilize direct release and "net pen acclimation techniques." This will help maximize the survival rates of the salmon. 

Ocean salmon caught recreationally and commercially generate more than $900 million annually for California, the release said. 

Revenue from the salmon goes back into the local economy through the purchases of boats, fishing equipment, travel and transportation, making the impact of the industry significant for California.