Dataset to accompany the manuscript titled 'Comparison of three in situ egg incubators for salmonid research applications'

In situ egg incubators house salmon embryos in gravel substrates and many designs have been used in salmonid research. This study assessed how three different incubator designs affect embryo recovery, hatch, and survival rates of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) embryos in three outdoor experimental river mesocosms with a factorial experimental design. Factors included incubator type (A, B and C), redd position (three redds per mesocosm, each redd contained one of the incubator types in triplicate), and timing of fish sampling (sampled during hatch, after hatch and 1 month post-hatch). The three types of incubators were: A, a modified Whitlock-Vibert box; B, a cylindrical “egg tube”; and C, an inverted dome-shaped kitchen strainer on a perforated tray with gravel. Newly-fertilized Chinook salmon eggs were loaded into in situ incubators and buried in gravels of artificial redds in the mesocosms. Each mesocosm was supplied with a continuous flow of water from the Quesnel River. This dataset also includes water temperature data logged hourly by in situ HOBO loggers and Bams’ condition factor data to compare the developmental stage of the surviving fish. This experiment was conducted at the Quesnel River Research Centre (British Columbia, Canada) and is a pilot study in the Pacific Salmon River Oil Experiment (ROE).