Thursday Top of the Scroll: Drought-depleted rivers force salmon hatcheries to truck fish to the Pacific
Millions of young salmon raised at fish hatcheries in the Central Valley will be trucked to San Francisco Bay and other coastal sites for release, because the rivers they’d normally travel to get to the ocean are drying up, state and federal officials said Wednesday. The ambitious trucking program, a response to the state’s escalating drought, is intended to maximize survival of the hatchery fish that prop up California’s fall-run of chinook — the mainstay of the state’s commercial and recreational salmon industries. Officials in charge of the five major inland hatcheries that rear the fish say convoys of tanker trucks are the only way to ensure the 3-inch smolts make it to sea.
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