About a week before our trip Dan had spied a guy perched on the bow of a boat with a radio antenna pointed upriver. He had been wondering what that was all about. While we were waiting for our pizza at the Sweet Street Café in Klamath he wandered over to the bulletin board at the new grocery store and sure enough there was a poster telling about tagged fish in the Klamath river. So this was what the radio trackers were up to. A reward offered for return of the tags and a phone number was listed, so of course I had to know all the details.

Josh Strange is a fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribal Fisheries. He is a local man, growing up in Trinidad and Requa and his step-father is a Yurok tribal elder, so he has a special interest in the Klamath river drainage. He graduated from Humboldt State and received a full scholarship from the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Program to attend the University of Washington. The work he is doing on the Klamath study is part of his graduate research in Fisheries for Washington University and is being conducted by the Yurok Tribe with assistance and support from the Karuk Tribe, US Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, CA Dept. of Fish and Game, and the Center for Streamside Studies. The question this study hopes to answer is critical to the future of the fish - "How do high river temperatures affect adult salmon during their migration and spawn"?

The spring chinook run was historically the most abundant run in the Klamath basin and is especially important to tribal people due to its high subsistence and cultural value. These springer fish are especially vulnerable to elevated river temperatures, habitat degradation, and other pressures due to their life history patterns. Adults hold over in the river through the summer before spawning and juveniles spend more time in the river than fall chinook. The longer the fish are in the system the more it impacts their life cycle. The Klamath suffers from chronic high temperature problems during the summer months. In the past few years this problem has approached critical. In the summer of 2000 several hundred thousand juvenile salmon died due to a disease outbreak triggered by high river temperatures. In 2001, hundreds of adult spring Chinook died during migration before spawning, again due to disease triggered by high water temperatures. This year we have seen a huge fish kill on the Trinity River.

Spring Chinook are of special concern due to the precariously low numbers (less than 1000) of wild, non-hatchery influenced populations that remain. Reduced summer stream flow and increased water temperatures decrease available habitat, disease resistance, spawning success, and available food and oxygen.

What can be done to save the present population and restore the run to its previous numbers? In the process of conducting surveys on juvenile salmon, the research team observed adult Chinook were taking advantage of cold water pockets (thermal refugia) to cool down and escape from the hot river water. The present study was designed to explore the details of these refugia. A temperature sensitive radio transmitter is inserted into the stomach of each tagged fish and a temperature recording device is attached beneath the dorsal fin. This allows Josh to not only track each fish's location, but also the temperatures that it experiences. Here is where the fisherman can become a vital link in this study. A $20 reward is being offered for the return of both of these tags. Fishermen who catch one of these tagged fish can contact Josh Strange at 707-498-0563 or PO Box 1073, Hoopa, CA 95546. The information obtained from these tags can be invaluable to the completion of the study.

The remedies for the warm water are a more difficult matter. Increasing the flow could cause lower river temperatures but it also reduces the size of these colder pockets. Is the loss of the refugia worth the few degrees temperature drop in the river? Can we increase the refugia area by planting cover over them? What about restricting fishing in these areas of refuge? In a stressed environment, fish gather in groups where water conditions are most favorable, making them more vulnerable to anglers and predators. The intricacies of an ecological niche are a complicated puzzle. Each piece affects the whole picture. The fisherman can participate in two obvious ways. Return of both of the tags is critical. Anglers can also voluntarily stop fishing when in-stream temperatures reach a critical limit. Those who choose to fish can opt to fish in the morning or evenings, when water temperatures are cooler, or fish at a different location if water conditions are unfavorable at their usual site. Mortality levels increase drastically when water temps are over 74 degrees. Anglers can also help by using barbless hooks, keeping fish in the water as much as possible, limiting the handling time, wetting their hands before removing hooks, and avoiding touching the fish's gills. We all want to save our precious fish and we would all like to see the populations restored and vital. This study and our participation in it can move us closer to this goal.

Columnist Joan Carter co-owns, with her husband, Dan Carter's Guide Service.