Post-doc opportunities:
Ceratonova shasta in the Klamath River and beyond: ecology and management of a parasite impacting salmon populations (coming soon). This project will recruit a post-doctoral research associate to help analyze approximately a decade’s worth of data regarding the impacts of water management decisions on C. shasta mortality risk. The work will include pulling data and knowledge from other systems hosting the parasite to best inform future Klamath River water managers. This project is in partnership with the Bureau of Reclamation, and will include frequent interactions with University, Tribal, NGO, and Federal And State collaborators.
Analysis of existing Central Valley datasets of juvenile sturgeon movement to inform key SIT sturgeon DSM unknowns and improve CVPIA decision making (coming soon). This project will recruit a post-doctoral research associate to help analyze a long-term telemetry dataset focusing on the movements of juvenile green and white sturgeon among the Sacramento River, the Delta, San Francisco Bay, and into the Pacific Ocean. The project will team heavily with collaborators from UC Davis and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Cal Poly Humboldt Master of Science Student opportunities
Optimized tagging strategies for population monitoring and management (coming soon). This projects focuses on evaluating various ways that parentage based tagging (PBT) can be used to most efficiently augment other salmon tagging strategies in California’s salmon producing systems. The position will use modeling and quantitative tools to evaluate the relative merits of combinations of PBT, visible hatchery marks (i.e., adipose fin clips), and coded wire tags (CWT). Over approximately the last two decades, PBT has been developed as a genetic monitoring technique that allows assignment of individual genetic samples to parental family groups and is increasingly being applied at salmon hatcheries on the North American west coast. In California, the collection of genetic samples from broodstock for specific hatchery release groups has occurred selectively since 2021, and the practice is currently expanding to enable wider use of PBT. Combined, PBT and CWT recovery data can be used toward information needs including survival of experimental hatchery release groups, stock assessment, ocean and freshwater fishery management, and proportion of the population comprised of hatchery vs. natural-origin fish. The COOP will support the development and evaluation of alternatives for marking, tagging, and sampling hatchery-produced Chinook Salmon (including fall-run, late-fall run, spring-run, and winter-run) for a PBT Technical Working Group that includes membership from CDFW, the California Department of Water Resources, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Where are the Sacramento perch, and why? (coming soon). This project will explore factors associated with the presence and persistence of Sacramento perch across the waterbodies of California. This project will include extensive collaboration with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and potentially other academic partners. This project will include extensive travel for field data collection, and statistical modelling to test hypotheses about the physical and biological drivers of Sac perch presence.
som-ecostat 