Traditional field research combined with new technology has revealed a secret to the survival of juvenile salmon as they form in their eggs, especially in low-water years when many do not survive, new research from NOAA Fisheries and the University of California, Davis shows.
Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon are California’s most endangered salmon, with a single surviving population and an average of a few thousand returning fish in recent decades. Shasta Dam blocks their original habitat in cold mountain rivers draining Mount Shasta, leaving them to spawn in the low-lying Sacramento River heated by the summer sun.

Snake River fisheries managers are seeking to renew their sockeye salmon hatchery broodstock program designed to support the recovery of the Endangered Species Act-listed fish. NOAA Fisheries is seeking comments on the applications that include a hatchery and genetic management plan and an environmental assessment until Aug. 17. The HGMP describes a hatchery brood stock...

Researchers have documented tenacibaculosis – a bacterial disease that causes skin and fin ulcers and mortality in fish – in wild Chinook salmon for the first time, according to a new study published in Scientific Reports.

A new abundance estimate of the gray whale population that migrates along the West Coast suggests their numbers have increased since last year.
Researchers at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center estimate that the Eastern North Pacific gray whale population is between 15,930 to 20,530, or an average of about 17,750 gray whales. That is a jump from last year’s estimate—one of the lowest since counting began in the late 1960s—which numbered between 11,690 to 13,190, or about 12,890 whales.

In response to petitions from the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has found that protections may be warranted for the Cascade red fox and three struggling fish that only live in Oregon and California’s Goose Lake — the Goose Lake lamprey, Goose Lake sucker and Goose Lake tui chub. Whether...