10-18-2017, 03:55 PM
Burley,
I think you may have seen the Idaho Power Co. fisheries crew collecting information on sturgeon. As part of their hydropower licensing, IPC is required to keep track of the sturgeon population around their dams on the Snake River.
That netting work was related to studying how this year's high river flows might have helped sturgeon spawning. Sturgeon only spawn in the CJ Strike to Bliss Dam area maybe every 5-10 years when there are high river flows. This was a very lucky year for high water, and it looks like sturgeon were successful at reproducing, which is great news!
Idaho Power survey was able to capture 148 baby sturgeon that were spawned this spring. They were tagged to keep track of their growth, migrations and survival over the next several years. It looks like a pretty healthy batch of new sturgeon that will come into the population, which is good news.
Most of the little sturgeon were already 10-12" long, since they grow really fast through the summer in their first 1-3 years of life. IPC and IDFG will be doing another round of joint surveys in the CJ Strike area of the Snake River this week looking for more baby sturgeon and keeping an eye on how many are out there and how they are doing.
I've included a photo from Idaho Power of one of the baby sturgeon collected and tagged this September. In another 10-15 years, this could be a really big fish!
[signature]
I think you may have seen the Idaho Power Co. fisheries crew collecting information on sturgeon. As part of their hydropower licensing, IPC is required to keep track of the sturgeon population around their dams on the Snake River.
That netting work was related to studying how this year's high river flows might have helped sturgeon spawning. Sturgeon only spawn in the CJ Strike to Bliss Dam area maybe every 5-10 years when there are high river flows. This was a very lucky year for high water, and it looks like sturgeon were successful at reproducing, which is great news!
Idaho Power survey was able to capture 148 baby sturgeon that were spawned this spring. They were tagged to keep track of their growth, migrations and survival over the next several years. It looks like a pretty healthy batch of new sturgeon that will come into the population, which is good news.
Most of the little sturgeon were already 10-12" long, since they grow really fast through the summer in their first 1-3 years of life. IPC and IDFG will be doing another round of joint surveys in the CJ Strike area of the Snake River this week looking for more baby sturgeon and keeping an eye on how many are out there and how they are doing.
I've included a photo from Idaho Power of one of the baby sturgeon collected and tagged this September. In another 10-15 years, this could be a really big fish!
[signature]