Years in their ears: What can fish earbones tell us about spring-run Chinook salmon success in an increasingly volatile climate?
Dr. Flora Cordoleani is a project scientist with UC Santa Cruz and NOAA fisheries, where she conducts research to understand better the dynamics of threatened populations of spring-run chinook salmon in the Central Valley’s highly modified environment, with the objective of providing management recommendations for the recovery of the species. At the 2022 Bay-Delta Science Conference, Dr. Cordoleani discussed research done in collaboration with Dr. Corey Phillis, Dr. Anna Sturrock, Dr. Rachel Johnson, and George Whitman that studied fish ear bones, also called otoliths, to look at the life history strategies of the spring-run Chinook salmon population in the Central Valley.