StEELhead Discoveries Series - Part 18: July 2025
*This is Part 18 of an ongoing series on the campaign to Free the Eel and efforts to better understand and revive the iconic steelhead in the Pacific Northwest by Native Fish Society Fellow Samantha Kannry. View all parts of this series HERE. Additional parts and updates will be posted over the next several months. Stay tuned!
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Our field work for the summer steelhead distribution research is mostly complete. We have assembled an extensive collection of samples from the Mattole River in the south to the Rogue River in the north. We have been working to disseminate the information gathered via presentations, reports, and publications. Through this research, we have hiked, kayake,d and snorkeled through chert canyons and granite gorges. We have rejoiced in the easy netting of abundant juveniles and been awed by moonlit jumping adult steelhead. We have had a purpose on our visits to some of the multitude of remarkable nooks the greater Klamath-Siskiyou region contains.
As this phase of the research nears its conclusion, related questions have arisen regarding the half-pounder and fall-run life histories, and their relationship to summer-run and upper basin resident O. mykiss. These additional questions will add to the existing body of knowledge on O. mykiss diversity and the uniqueness of the half-pounder life-history (it only exists from the Eel to the Rogue and on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia).
While there is novelty in new research questions, I experience hesitancy to let go of the remaining unknown places. There are a few locations I intended but never made it to during the summer steelhead distribution research. Eliot Creek on the upper Middle Fork of the Applegate, the heart of the Wild and Scenic Illinois, a little deeper into Dillon and Blue Creeks in the mid-Klamath, up the Prescott Fork of the South Fork Smith, further into the Siskiyou Fork of the Smith, and a little gap on upper Redwood Creek. Some planned trips were canceled due to smoke or cut short by injury or just really difficult to access (three more days of potentially cliffed-out river hiking for one additional location?). There will always be another tributary we never made it to, and another waterfall barrier that could have an isolated population above.
This mentality is what drives us to continue our research. We want to understand another species’ habits and needs, as well as explore the landscape that sustains them. And with the desire to understand is the hope that the research aids in conservation. All we want is to be of use to O. mykiss and all their congeneric relatives. Maybe by slowing down enough to immerse ourselves in their freshwater realm we can help our human relatives to understand what we are losing.
And in other news, the Eel River Pikeminnow Derby is back on! From now through August 31st, if you catch invasive Pikeminnow in the Eel you can enter to win prizes. You can also just catch them, grind them, and fry them up into fish cakes.
More information on the Derby can be found at https://tribresearch.org/pikeminnow/
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About the Author:
Samantha Kannry has been monitoring, studying, and swimming with summer-run steelhead in the Eel River and other rivers of Northwestern California for the past thirteen years. She joined NFS as a volunteer in 2015, then became a fish genetics fellow in 2020.
While it has been clear to the native peoples of the region since time immemorial that summer-run steelhead and the congeneric spring Chinook are separate populations, not everyone else sees it so clearly. Her research has focused on using conservation genetic tools to elucidate the distinction between summer and winter-run steelhead.
When not minking (a combination of hiking, swimming, snorkeling, sliding, shimmying, and boulder jumping) down rivers, she is usually growing and eating fruit, moving manure at Caudal Fin Farm, or bike touring distances large and small. All working towards re-establishing the inherent continuity between rivers, land, and people.
Read StEELhead Discoveries Part 1 - 17 HERE.