The scientists will be in Old Sacramento this morning…releasing the first of 6,000 tagged fish into the Sacramento River.

Jim Wilde is a senior engineer with the state Department of Water Resources. He says they’ll be tracking the salmon’s migration through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for three months using unmanned robotic boats and electronic gear.  

“And hopefully what we’re going to get out of this is a lot of good information about how the salmon migrate through the delta and what pathways they select, why they select them. And also we want to look for survival estimates for each channel in the delta.”  

He says the information they collect will help gauge the harm from dams, pumps, canals and other projects. Last fall, there were near-record low numbers of salmon returning to spawn in the Sacramento River.