California Coastal Monitoring Plan Goals:
The Department of Fish and Game and NOAA Fisheries have been developing a plan to initiate monitoring of coastal populations of anadromous fish species from San Diego to Del Norte counties. The result would be a statewide program, co-managed by the two fisheries agencies and done in collaboration with other organizations and parties, such as water districts, State and National parks, large land owners, tribal nations, U.S. Forest Service, and conservation and fisheries organizations, to gather fish population and habitat information to better conserve coastal coho and Chinook salmon and steelhead.

Monitoring Plan:
A draft program plan has been developed along with a scientific paper, in-draft, describing the technical foundation of the program, which is based in part on similar programs in other Pacific States. The first iteration of the program is to conduct status and trend monitoring of fish populations, which will focus on monitoring adults returned to spawn and out-migrating juveniles.

The coastal program will apply the most appropriate fish sampling methodologies consistently across watersheds and over time to compile data on adult and juvenile fishes, as well as key habitat elements, which can then be used in analyzing the status and trend of various populations of salmon and steelhead. A statistically robust sampling framework, which will divide streams into sampling segments and create a sampling matrix for many years of monitoring, is being developed, and in some watersheds already validated on the ground.

Some of the initial focal areas include the Marin Coast, the Russian River, the Mendocino Coast, Humboldt Bay, Redwood Creek, and the Scott and Shasta rivers. The Department intends to increase efforts to include Santa Ynez, and Carmel rivers, the Santa Cruz coast, the Smith River, and the South Fork of the Eel River.  Ultimately, the Coastal Monitoring Program will expand beyond status and trend monitoring to include monitoring of coastal restoration efforts, watershed health, hatcheries, and fisheries management activities.

For more information contact:
Kevin Shaffer
Environmental Program Manager
CDFG Fisheries Branch
kshaffer@dfg.ca.gov
(916) 327-8841

As the program develops, check back to this site for local and regional CDFG and NOAA Fisheries contacts.