California's drought is so severe this year that there is not enough water for salmon to make their annual trip up the Sacramento River to spawn, forcing the state to truck them instead, officials said.
The extraordinary effort, however, will have the side effect that the freshly spawned fish will not know where to go when they are ready to make the trip up the river as adults in three years, experts said.
Steve Martarano of the California Fish & Wildlife Service it will take 22 days to carry out the large scale operation. The Chinook smolts, about 3 inches in length, will be transported in trucks carrying approximately 2,800 gallons of climate-controlled water. Each truck can hold about 130,000 smolts. The young fish will be taken to the Pacific Ocean, he said.
