Helping recovery of threatened steelhead populations in the Carmel River and beyond

Carmel River Steelhead Association - Steelhead Life-Cycle Monitoring

Facing a range of environmental threats, the South-Central California Coast steelhead population has been dwindling and the species was designated as threatened in 1997. The Carmel River Steelhead Association (CRSA) is a small non-profit group of fish enthusiasts with a mission to help the species’ population recover. They have ambitious goals—and limited means—for steelhead recovery in the Carmel River. That’s where we come in.

Since 2021, our biologists have worked with CRSA on several initiatives to help make their ideas reality. Our partnership began with a joint electrofishing and steelhead rescue workshop, during which volunteers received electrofishing training in support of their steelhead rescue program. We followed this with a juvenile steelhead population survey in the Carmel River Lagoon to better estimate the population in the lagoon.

We also trained CRSA volunteers on use of passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags to track fish and installed a PIT tag monitoring station. The effort yielded important information on steelhead growth, population data, and movement as several of the PIT-tagged steelhead were detected over the next two years. CRSA, along with local water district and state and federal regulators, were heartened by the success of the new monitoring station and asked our biologists to develop a PIT tagging program for use during steelhead rescues. We developed protocols, trained more volunteers, and managed the first year of this program. CRSA has tagged more than 2,300 steelhead since 2024. The tag readers have been operating for more than three years and have detected over 40 individual steelhead passing over the antenna with PIT tags, including around a dozen fish rescued by CRSA.

The information gained from the PIT tag data will help CRSA and regulators determine how best to increase spawning abundance using rescues and move the species closer to a self-sustaining, viable population.