October 31, 2025 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) plans to inject 350,000 Chinook salmon eggs into the North Yuba River this fall as the state government looks for new ways to help struggling salmon populations recover.
This is the second year CDFW has taken this approach, collecting eggs fertilized at the Feather River Fish Hatchery in Oroville and then hydraulically injecting them into the river’s gravel substrate in November.
October 16, 2025 — Fisheries researchers have concluded that Chinook salmon in shallow streams in western Canada will be impacted in the coming years by the frequency, duration, and intensity of heatwaves.
When salmonids encounter high water temperatures, it may increase their susceptibility to infectious disease, according to the research published by the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, and Yellow Island Aquaculture Ltd. on Quadra Island, British Columbia, in the online journal Elsevier.
Their research has found that the disproportionate changes in temperature for three consecutive days or longer have risen in recent years and are expected to continue increasing globally in the coming decades.
Heatwaves result in several downstream consequences, including increased water temperatures in shallow streams and rivers, and there is a strong positive correlation between daily water and air temperature. Shallow rivers are particularly susceptible to temperature fluctuations. For every 1 °C increase in air temperature, stream temperature correspondingly rises approximately 0.4–0.6°C.
September 30, 2025 — Bristol Bay sockeye salmon harvests of 41.5 million fish for 2025 exceeded the forecast by 18 percent, and with catches of Chinook, chum, and coho salmon, put the season’s exvessel harvest value at $215.3 million.
That total was 7 percent above the 20-year average of $200.7 million, and those prices may not include incentives for icing, bleeding, floating, or production bonuses, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said in the annual Bristol Bay season summary released on Sept. 25.
Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association officials, who are already planning their 2026 marketing campaign, said that the average weight of the drift gillnet caught red salmon was 5.1 pounds.
The overall nationwide demand for all Alaska salmon has been upbeat.
September 29, 2025 — A new study has found that restoration in the Skagit River delta has successfully affected its population of Chinook salmon.
Puget Sound Chinook are federally listed as endangered. It’s a species that is limited by habitat, particularly by a lack of rearing areas for juveniles.
Many restoration projects both large and small have been undertaken throughout the delta in the past few decades, totaling an area of about 630 acres. They have met with varying degrees of success. Those include restoration in areas such as Fir Island Farms, Milltown and Wiley Slough.
August 21, 2025 — The Nez Perce Tribe and its collaborators will try to eke out a few more years’ survival for Tucannon River Chinook.
“But,” Jay Hesse says, “we also had to ask: What about all the other populations? So in 2021, we started modeling quasi-extinction for all the Snake River spring/summer Chinook and steelhead populations listed under the Endangered Species Act. The results are giving us a better picture of real conditions, and a stronger case for the urgency of action.”
Mr. Hesse is the director of Biological Services for the Nez Perce Department of Fisheries Resources Management.
Some years ago, federal scientists at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries developed the “quasi-extinction threshold,” which the NOAA uses in planning.
For Snake River Chinook salmon and steelhead, the threshold is fewer than 50 adult fish in a population returning from the ocean for four consecutive years. Below that floor, the population’s continued existence can no longer be scientifically assumed or predicted. It is an emergency signal, flashing red and near black.
The Nez Perce Tribe is applying this science to management of populations below or near the extinction threshold, as well as to public education and long-term science.
Nez Perce Fisheries provided me two maps from its upcoming extinction threshold report for Snake River spring/summer Chinook, and steelhead, updated through 2024 fish returns. These maps show some of the findings, but much else in it will deserve attention.
August 15, 2025 — Alaska’s 2025 commercial salmon harvest reached over 129 million fish through Aug. 12, with sockeye, keta and coho catches appearing on pace to reach total annual projections.
Those projected 2025 harvests would add up to 214.6 million salmon, including over 138 million pink, 52.9 million sockeye, 20.8 million keta, 2.3 million coho and 144,000 kings.
Data compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game showed the statewide pink harvest at 62.3 million fish, followed by 51.3 million sockeyes, 14.5 million chum, 888,000 coho and 150,000 king salmon.
August 5, 2025 — Tribes should be allowed to harvest the same number of Yukon River chinook salmon that trawlers scoop up in the Bering Sea as bycatch, and an independent review is needed to better manage the salmon crisis on Alaska’s longest river. These are just two of the recommendations outlined in a recent policy brief that looks at near-term strategies for addressing the crisis on the Yukon.
Doug DeMaster, a retired biologist who spent nearly two decades with the top federal fisheries agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), co-authored the brief published in the journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research (AAAR).
“What we tried to do in this brief is put together a document that identifies what’s needed, what’s wanted, and tries to do it in a way that’s easily amenable to Congress, and politicians, and both state and federal agencies,” DeMaster said.
The two-page document was assembled by a mix of tribal leaders, scientists, and policy makers. It boils down potential factors driving crashes for both chinook and chum salmon on the Yukon River. Among them: bycatch and ecosystem changes in the Bering Sea driven by the pollock fishery, warmer water temperatures, competition with hatchery salmon, the Area M intercept fishery, and increasing rates of parasitic infection in Yukon River chinook.
July 30, 2025 — An endangered species has returned to its Northern California river habitat for the first time in almost a century, wildlife officials said.
Winter-run chinook salmon — one of nine species considered to be most at risk of extinction by NOAA — have been listed under the Endangered Species Act since 1994. But new concerns for the species came to light after California’s historic statewide drought between 2012 and 2016, when the fish all but vanished from the McCloud River, which flows through Siskiyou and Shasta counties.
The construction of Shasta Dam above the 77-mile-long waterway had already been causing problems for the species since the late 1930s, cutting them off from the mountain streams kept cool by melting snow where they like to spawn. But when the dam lost its own cold water pool during the drought, increasing water temperatures and reduced oxygen rates led to the deaths of 95 to 98% of eggs and recently hatched salmon incubating in their nests, according to NOAA.
So it came as a surprise when, earlier this month, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed reports of adult Chinook salmon in the river near Ash Camp. Officials saw one female exhibiting spawning behavior and “guarding her nest,” while multiple smaller males were observed nearby, competing to spawn themselves, the agency wrote of the July 15 sighting.
July 14, 2025 — A group of Democratic Oregon lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to release $7 million in authorized funding meant to address Oregon’s “catastrophic” fishery disaster.
In a June 11 letter, led by Senator Jeff Merkley, lawmakers urged Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to review and approve a spending plan that’s been resubmitted by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission.
Lawmakers said the funding is “critical,” to help Oregon’s ocean fishermen recoup lost funds amid declining salmon populations after a fishery disaster was declared for Oregon Chinook salmon for 2018, 2019 and 2020.
July 1, 2025 — The National Marine Fisheries Service, or NOAA Fisheries, will determine whether spring-run Chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act beginning in the fall.
Under a stipulated settlement agreement filed June 26 in U.S. District Court’s Portland division, the agency has until Nov. 3 to determine whether listing Oregon and California coastal salmon as threatened or endangered is warranted, and Jan. 2 for Washington coastal salmon.
“We are unable to comment on matters of litigation,” NOAA Fisheries spokesman James Miller told the Capital Press.