About a million tiny Chinook salmon smolts went shooting out of a pipe into the Sacramento River Wednesday on the second stage of their journey to the Pacific Ocean.
The first stage was in a tanker truck, courtesy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which had fostered the tiny smolts (the stage of development when a baby salmon becomes silvery and is ready to survive in seawater) at the Feather River Hatchery.
Fish and Wildlife is releasing about two million more Chinook salmon than normal this year, to make up for losses attributed to last year's flooding, said Harry Morse, a department spokesman.
Half of those were released into the Sacramento River at the Elkhorn Boat Launch and the other half will be released into the San Pablo Bay, Morse said, explaining that normally the department releases about nine million, but this year it will send 11 million on their arduous journey.
About that -- the smolts were released at Elkhorn, rather than directly from the hatchery to save them from becoming lunch for spawning striped bass that would snack on them "like crackers," Morse said.
"It is very difficult for young fish to survive this downward migration and then the whole open ocean to come back two to three years later," he said.
Besides avoiding becoming a snack for a larger animal, they must find food and make their way back to their spawning grounds to complete their life cycle.
Typically only a small percent of the fish released will return, Morse said.
"If we get from one to 10 percent, we never know, we're extremely happy to get higher numbers back but some years it's not in the cards," he said.
Ocean conditions were poor after many years of drought, but have improved considerably, which increases chances for higher percentages of return fish.
