Sacramento River green sturgeon acoustic telemetry detections

Abstract for publication titled: Intraspecific variation in migration timing of green sturgeon in the Sacramento River system
Understanding movement patterns of anadromous fishes is critical to conservation management of declining wild populations and preservation of habitats. Yet, the duration of observations for individual animals can constrain accurate descriptions of movements. In this study, we synthesized over a decade (2006-2018) of acoustic telemetry tracking observations of green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris) in the Sacramento River system to describe major anadromous movement patterns. We observed that green sturgeon exhibited a unimodal in-migration during the spring months but had a bimodal distribution of out-migration timing, split between an ‘early’ out-migration (32%) group during May - June, or alternatively, holding in the river until a ‘late’ out-migration (68%), November - January. Focusing on these out-migration groups, we found that river discharge, but not wate...