California Coastal Monitoring Program

What is the Coastal Monitoring Program (CMP)?

The California Coastal Monitoring Program (CMP) is the most comprehensive program to date that provides a complete understanding of California’s salmon and steelhead populations, utilizing statistically-rigorous modeling in combination with a variety of in-river sampling and survey methods. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and NOAA Fisheries are leading the implementation of this Program in coastal watersheds from California’s border with Mexico north to the Oregon border, including San Francisco and Humboldt Bay tributaries.

Implementation

The first iteration of CMP will provide directions on how to conduct status and trend monitoring on California’s coastal salmonid populations, which will focus on monitoring adults that have returned from the ocean, and juveniles migrating out of the streams into the ocean.

CMP is applying the newest and most appropriate fish sampling methodologies across California’s coastal watersheds – ensuring that all researchers have access to these protocols in order to conduct surveys in the same way, so we can compare within and across watersheds. Over time these data will be compiled into datasets on adult and juvenile fishes and key habitat elements. Additionally, these data will be analyzed for status and trend of California’s coastal salmonid species.

Sample frameworks are being established in order to sample, in a statistically robust manner, from California’s streams using Generalized Random Tessallation Stratification (GRTS). In many watersheds these sample frames have already been validated.

CMP is currently updating its program of status and trend monitoring to include monitoring of coastal restoration efforts, watershed health, hatcheries, fisheries management, and climate change. Furthermore, the following essential aspects of CMP are being established: web-based database, southern steelhead boundaries, habitat evaluation methods, metrics, and classification systems, and estimators based on redds for number and species of salmonid.