Created by Sarah Nossaman, Mariska Obedzinski, Nick Bauer, Henning Fett, Andrew Bartshire, Amelia Johnson, and Paul Olin. The Russian River Coho Salmon Captive Broodstock Program (Coho Program), a broad partnership of public and private organizations, is working to restore self-sustaining populations of coho salmon to multiple historic coho streams within the Russian River watershed. Since 2001, the Coho Program has been breeding coho salmon from local genetic stock at Warm Springs Hatchery, just below Lake Sonoma, and releasing their offspring as juveniles into Russian River tributaries.UC Cooperative Extension and Sea Grant's role in the Coho Program is to monitor coho populations in program streams at all life stages to evaluate the efficacy of the program. Monitoring activities take place year-round, and include downstream migrant smolt trapping, snorkel surveys, spawner surveys, and adult trapping. New technology allows channel-spanning antennas and portable wands to detect Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags implanted within many of the program fish. This low-impact sampling method eliminates the need for handling fish and reduces stress, while yielding more reliable data with greater efficiency than many of the more traditional methods. In addition to monitoring population trends, recent program studies have focused on the growth and survival of different genetic cross-types, as well as correlating instream flows and habitat with over-summer survival. Monitoring has shown a significant increase in the number of coho salmon returning to the Russian River Basin, which correlates to stocking rates. The increasing numbers of returning adults also correlate to an increase in the number of wild juveniles observed. Although the Coho Program is far from reaching recovery targets, the increasing number of adult returns suggest that captive breeding may be a useful tool for preventing extinction of remnant coho populations.
