I have thought for a few years it would be a really cool experiment to net a bunch of Salmon out in the Strait of Juan De Fuca, attach small micor radio transmitters to each fish, then release the whole school of fish and track their migratory routes through the sound on their way to their river of origination. This could be accomplished by setting up an array of receiver bouy's at key points throughout the sound.

Imagine owning a PS map that had colored lines which represented the routes that that majority of salmon take to each river system, maybe even by species.

Probably would yield some great information for both Conservationalists and Anglers!

I have thought the same thing. When you get the info let me know and we can't wait in ambush.....

ya that would be reel cool to have a map like that so when will get started on this project? you might even make alot of money off that.

I think I will need a sponsor or two, I am a typically tapped out boat owner!

Thanks for the info Jonbull, good stuff.

I would like to see a similar study performed an a large group of adults returning to their native waters though. That is where, from and angling perspective, we could learn the most about their habits. Feeding areas, holding areas, which areas they tend to run, etc.

Another good study would be on resident Blackmouth. You could watch their feeding and traveling patterns throughout their entire lifespan.

I think that it is a great idea. Blackmouth would be harder as they tend to travel deep and not in large groups.

This was done in the 60's on the mid-columbia for steelhead and I believe salmon also. It was before my time, but I remember the "old timers" talking about the study over several years on the adult upstream migration and year after year, the mass majority of steelhead followed the same patterns. They would change which side of the Columbia they were miswimming on at the same places and they would "sniff" the same creeks (but not all creeks!). Cool stuff!!!

Sign me up, but prepare to pony up. We conducted an acoustic tagging study on bull trout (dollies) in the Snohomish River and Central Puget Sound nearshore over the past couple of years. The hardware costs are high--the acoustic tags we used cost any where from $300 to $800 a piece and the acoustic hydrophones cost about $1,000 each. For adult salmon at the beginning of their spawning runs as they enter Puget Sound you probably would have to go with the larger pricier tags as well, since you can detect them at greater depths.

For short term studies (like spawners), you could get away with stuffing them down their gullets, but for longer term studies, such as for blackmouth, you would have to surgically implant them. Thats what we did with the bull trout; post surgery survival was very very high.

Another, possibly cheaper way to track fish would be to collect creel survey data from past/present fishing seasons and map them using GIS. Don't know what kind of historical creel survey data is out there, but it may have been done from time to time over the years--enough to provide some info if its all mapped.

Like all electronic stuff, the costs are coming down with better tech and demand. Folks are tracking tuna migrations using sattelites now. Biologists are hitching rides with the charter boats and tagging fish that are released. With a fish the size of a tuna, its possible to put a large, high output tag that can be tracked via sattelite. Its my hope within the next 10-20 years or so we can track salmon stocks in the open ocean using sattelites. Then we can begin to get a handle on that elusive variable called "ocean conditions."

Reminds me of a cool book I picked up awhile back titled King- its from the prespective of this Large King and his life in the Puget Sound area and his memory of where he began and his interactions with Fisherman on his journey "home". I dont recall the Author, but I believe he was from Port Townsend-PT

I wonder if any grants could be obtained to fund this type of study?
I have been tossing the idea around in my head for a while, maybe I will start looking into it a little more. Sounds like I could leverage the knowledge gained from similar studies performed in the past.

If this is eventually done on a wider basis is there a concern that commercials might also be able to track them and bee line right to them? Or maybe that would turn out to be a good thing allowing specific targeting of fish runs?