Science Friday this week comes from our own John McMillan’s Barbless Co. Olympic Peninsula Podcast, with guest Ian Tattam, Supervisory Fish and Wildlife Biologist and one of the researchers being funded by our John Day Steelhead Project. Click on over to John’s podcast and give those quarantine-wary eyes a relief from screen time. John and Ian cover a lot of ground in the podcast, everything from carp that look like steelhead to Ian’s recent research on how barging of hatchery steelhead smolts from the Snake River has contributed to really high stray rates into the John Day River.
If you haven’t already, please consider a donation to the John Day Steelhead Project to help Ian and a team of researchers tag more fish to study migration patterns and gain better understanding of steelhead that “overshoot,” or swim past the mouth of the John Day and migrate up the Columbia before returning to their natal river to spawn.
John’s podcast with Ian is an excellent segway into how the lower four Snake River dams are impacting not only Idaho-bound steelhead, but other populations of fish, including those in the John Day. Stay tuned next week as we move from a focus on the John Day River and turn our attention to the Snake River and the lower four Snake River dams.
Click here to listen to John’s podcast with Ian and we’ll see you next week!