RIO VISTA, Calif. — April 18, 2014 — As the Merva W puttered down the Sacramento River, it looked like any other dowdy fishing vessel headed toward the Golden Gate Bridge. But no other boat had as surprising a cargo or as unusual a mission: The Merva W was giving 100,000 young salmon a lift to the Pacific in the hope of keeping them alive.
In an act that is equal parts despair and hope, the government is transporting the salmon by truck and barge, trying to imitate nature so that in three years some fully grown fish will find their way back upstream. For some salmon, “this is a way of sustaining the fishery,” said Peter B. Moyle, a senior biologist at the University of California, Davis. “For an endangered species, it’s a desperation measure.”
This spring, some 30 million salmon will go to sea. In three years, the hope is that tens of thousands will return.
The six-hour, 40-mile boat trip — along with the ride from a hatchery in a tanker truck that transports the small salmon to the boat — takes the place of at least five days of swimming 150 miles, a telescoping of their natural lives. The river’s water is pumped over them during the ride so they can “imprint” on their native water and increase the chances of finding their way back when the time comes.