UC Davis Ocean Striped Bass migration study

The purpose of this project was to track the within-estuary and coastal migrations of large, primarily female, Sacramento-San Joaquin striped bass. Our tagging cutoff was set at 30 inches total length to primarily select for female fish and to increase our odds of detecting coastal migrations. In addition to tagging, two acoustic receiver arrays were installed in the Pacific Ocean – one 11 receiver array at Point Reyes and one 11 receiver array at Point San Pedro.

Receivers were deployed every 500m from shore on a due West heading to act as gates for migrating fish. Receivers were first deployed in February 2020 and retrieved by November 2021. Some receivers were lost during deployment and only one striped bass was tagged due to COVID and other logistical constraints.