Scientific observations of fishes in tidal wetlands of the upper Sacramento San Joaquin Delta using imaging sonar devices, derived from 2018 field data

Major tidal wetland habitat restoration efforts are planned to benefit Delta Smelt and other imperiled species in the Sacramento-San-Joaquin Delta. However, successful implementation of habitat restoration is constrained by a paucity of information on the services and functions tidal wetlands provide for fishes. This knowledge gap is largely due to the difficulties of collecting ecological data in these challenging environments. For example, the dynamic nature of tidally influenced habitats requires high frequency sampling in order to accurately characterize environmental conditions and how fishes' responses to them. The study associated with this data used an interdisciplinary approach to understand how tidal wetlands function as fish habitat. More specifically this study was designed to monitor fish movement into and out of two tidal wetland habitats and elucidate the environmental drivers of these habitat use patterns.The CAWSC Hydrodyanmics group collected water quality and flow information and this data was processed and stored in Aquarius.The CAWSC Aquatic Ecology group collected observational footage of fishes at a commensurate frequency with hydrodynamics data using imaging sonar devices. This data release contains information about the fishes observed during a portion of this study.