In July of this year, a commercial salmon troller caught a 7-year-old Central Valley fall-run Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) near Bodega Bay that measured 36 inches long.
The occurrence of a 7-year-old Chinook salmon is an extremely unusual event in California waters. In examining over 240,000 tags over the last 38 years, California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) scientists have only confirmed two other 7-year-old Central Valley Chinook captured in California fisheries. This year’s finding was made by CDFW’s Ocean Salmon Project (OSP) as part of its annual ocean fishery monitoring and coded-wire tag (CWT) recovery efforts.
This fish was produced at the Coleman National Fish Hatchery on the upper Sacramento River, and is the offspring of adults that spawned in 2012. The normal lifespan of California Central Valley Chinook is between two and five years, with the majority of fish returning to spawn as 3-year-olds. Less than 10 percent of these fish return as 5-year-olds.
Each year, approximately 32 million fall-run Chinook salmon are produced at five hatcheries in the Central Valley. Since 1980, a portion of all hatchery fish are tagged with a CWT that is etched with a unique numeric code. Each salmon containing a CWT is also externally marked with a clipped adipose fin to allow for easy visual identification.
Full story and more photos: https://cdfwmarine.wordpress.com/2019/1 ... n-fishery/
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