A Freezer Full of Eyeballs (and Other Oddities) Animate the Quest to Save California’s Salmon

A Freezer Full of Eyeballs (and Other Oddities) Animate the Quest to Save California’s Salmon

Source: ppic

1/18/2022

Carson Jeffres is a senior researcher and lab director at UC Davis’s Center for Watershed Sciences. For over 20 years, he’s studied how native fish utilize and benefit from restored habitats in both Brazil and California. His current research focuses on the recovery of salmon populations in California. We asked him to update us about the effort to save this iconic, embattled fish.

Could you summarize what people should know about fish and floodplains, and what this means for California salmon?

When river water leaves the channel and spreads out across the floodplain, it slows down, clears up, and becomes productive, making lots of great insect food for fish. Many fish evolved to take advantage of this, whether they’re spawning on floodplains or using that food during their migration upstream or downstream. But dams and levees prevent water from getting out onto floodplains, disconnecting fish from this important resource.