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 …
Last Chance to Support the John Day Steelhead Project
We’ve seen unbelievable support from the Wild Steelheaders United community for our John Day Steelhead Project fundraiser over the past three weeks. We blew past our $10,000 goal in the first two weeks of the campaign and we’re well on our way to $15,000. All funds raised above our $10,000 goal will help our research partners purchase more acoustic tags, …
Science Friday: The value of new technology: eDNA and O. mykiss
By Natalie Stauffer-Olsen It is always exciting when new technology becomes available that can help us understand, manage and protect wild steelhead, the mavericks of the Pacific salmonids. Steelhead and rainbow trout populations can be difficult to predict, model and understand because of their very plastic (scientific term for highly variable) life histories, from juveniles to adults. What’s …
Not too hot, not too cold, the ocean must be just right
Two weeks ago we were on the Dean. This week we go even further north, to Auke Bay near Juneau, Alaska, for our next Science Friday post. The greater Juneau are is home to several rivers that host wild steelhead runs. Auke Creek is perhaps the most important of these feeder streams, as scientists at the Auke Bay Marine …
Science Friday: Big fish, big streams; little fish, little streams
A holiday weekend deserves a new Science Friday post. So here we go. This week we focus on summer steelhead in the John Day River, a large tributary that drains into the middle Columbia River on the Oregon side. The John Day is a big watershed, covering 8,000 square miles, although the river itself is not that large. To …