New and Improved Website
Welcome to the San Joaquin Basin website, a website designed to share fisheries and environmental information. When completed, this site will contain quick links to environmental information, such as flow, temperature, and dissolved oxygen for the San Joaquin River and its tributaries.
This website will include bi-weekly summaries of research in the basin, such as adult Chinook weir and carcass counts, juvenile outmigration results, as well as other fisheries related activities.
This website will also include information about restoration activities and will provide links to documents related to each of the rivers.
If you would like to contribute information to be posted on the website, please send an e-mail to Chrissy Sonke.
Latest News
Fall-run salmon are returning to the Sacramento and San Joaquin River systems. However, it is still too early to tell if returns will be significantly greater this year compared to the past couple of years when escapement was at a record low since the drought that occurred from 1988 to 1992
A biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Coleman National Fish Hatchery, Kurt Brown, says there appears to be more jack salmon in the Sacramento River (fully mature males that spawn, they are just smaller than the other males, as they have only been at sea for 2 years as opposed to 3 or 4 for the larger males ), which is used to predict the next year's return. A large number of jacks equates to a more productive return the following year. The Columbia River has seen four times the 10-year average number of jacks, which could mean a huge return to the Columbia River in 2010.
It is believed that poor ocean conditions contributed, at least in part, to the decline in the number of salmon returning to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Basin during the past few years. This year conditions appear to have improved with cooler water temperatures, more upwelling and an increase in food supply (e.g. krill). Forecasters are predicting that 122,000 salmon will make it back to the Sacramento River system (view entire articles: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/08/SPD91A2IKA.DTL; http://www.cbbulletin.com/356408.aspx).