HomeScience Institute * News

Science Spotlight

Science Institute News

rss

Recent accomplishments of CDFW's scientific community


Iron Gate Hatchery

February 1, 2019 in General
Short-haired woman in yellow rain jacket and black gloves holding fish on side of metal basin along side man in yellow rain jacket, black gloves, and camo hat holding fish over metal basin as dark orange liquid streams out of fish into metal basin.

Concrete fish ladder along hillside and river. Hills in background.

Blue sign with red spray-painted text reading 'house spawning'

Fish splashing in water between gate and metal examination chute.

Two people in yellow rain jackets in hatchery facility alongside fish chute filled with fish.

At Iron Gate Hatchery in Hornbrook, the fall 2018 spawning operation has just concluded. Iron Gate spawns both Fall-Run Chinook Salmon and Coho Salmon from the Klamath River. For Chinook, the hatchery staff manually collect the eggs and mix it with the milt immediately after the fish come into the facility. CDFW environmental scientists also collect heads from adipose fin clipped salmon, in order to retrieve implanted tags in the snout. The retrieved tags tell the biologists which hatchery the fish is from, and when it was released. They also collect scales, which enable them to determine the age of the fish.

For Coho Salmon, the process is a little more involved. The Coho are measured and samples taken, but the samples are sent off to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laboratory in Santa Cruz for analysis. While the samples are processing, the fish are kept in individually-numbered holding tubes at the hatchery. They will be spawned after the tissue analysis determines which fish are the best genetic match.

CDFW Photos

For more information about Iron Gate Hatchery, please visit: www.wildlife.ca.gov/Fishing/Hatcheries/Iron-Gate.

Media Contact:
Kirsten Macintyre, CDFW Communications, (916) 322-8988


Related Posts

  • Stacking the Odds to Stock California’s Waters

    Specify Alternate Text
    The beginning of trout fishing season in Southern California is just around the corner, and CDFW biologists and hatchery staff are striving to maximize hatchery trout availability for the many anglers who will cast lines in coming weeks. Trout angling in lower-elevation waters of Southern California generally begins in November and continues through April, to correspond with colder water temperatures that can sustain stocked trout.

  • New Issue of CDFW’s Scientific Journal Reviews Environmental Impacts of Cannabis Cultivation

    cover of the scientific journal of cannabis plants
    The fall 2020 issue of California Fish and Wildlife (PDF), CDFW’s quarterly scientific journal, features a series of scientific articles on the environmental impacts associated with legal and unpermitted commercial cannabis cultivation. Once primarily hidden deep in the forests of the Emerald Triangle, cannabis cultivation activities are now occurring all over California.

  • CDFW Drone Program Provides a Bird’s Eye View for Environmental Scientists

    two scientist and a drone flying in the air with the ocean and blue skies in the background
    In March 2019, there was late winter flooding at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area in Yolo County near Davis. Wildlife area supervisor Joe Hobbs wanted to check a series of old railroad trestle mounds to make sure there was no wildlife stranded there. In previous years when there had been flooding, staff went out on a boat to check the trestle mounds. But that approach had downsides: From a boat, it could be difficult to see exactly what was on the mounds, and the sound of the boat’s motor could potentially spook the animals.

  • Fish Tags Identify Spring-Run Chinook Salmon Broodstock

    Feather River Fish Hatchery staffer inserts two fish tags on either side of a Chinook salmon's dorsal fin identifying the fish as a spring-run Chinook salmon before returning in to the Feather River
    The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Feather River Fish Hatchery in Butte County recently completed the tagging of 2,746 spring-run Chinook salmon in May and June.

  • New Heritage Trout Production Program for Inland Fisheries

    Specify Alternate Text
    For more than a century, CDFW’s Trout Hatchery and Stocking Program has been providing recreational fishing opportunities to anglers throughout California. Today, the trout hatchery program is composed of 13 hatcheries, which oversee 20 distinct fish production programs to produce 17 strains, species and subspecies of trout.

  • Saving Endangered Coho Salmon in Central California

    wide view of a fish hatchery building with a river trees mountain and sky in distance
    Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), also known as silver salmon, have lived in California’s coastal watersheds for thousands of years. Today their populations have declined to just a fraction of historical levels, endangered by a wide range of factors. In Central California in particular, the situation is dire, with the species listed as endangered under both the state and federal Endangered Species Acts. Many populations are in danger of declining to the point of local extinction.
Tagged With: biologist, chinook, coho, environmental scientist, hatchery, iron gate, klamath, klamath river, salmon, scientist

Subscribe to receive Science Institute news by email.

    CDFW Science Institute logo