Supporting and maintaining self-sustaining native fish populations.

From declining native fish populations to competing claims for water, water issues affect everyone. Stillwater Sciences specifically tackles issues related to river, estuary, and watershed ecology; most of our projects have the overall objective of restoring and maintaining healthy, sustainable, native fish populations and aquatic ecosystems. This includes:

• Fish distribution and abundance surveys (snorkel, seine, electrofish, radio tracking, acoustic tracking, trawl)
• Production estimates (rotary screw trap, fyke net, mark-recapture)
• Limiting Factors Analyses
• Habitat use (direct observation, telemetry)
• Egg and smolt survival (PIT tags, acoustic tagging, artificial redds)
• Aquatic food web (gut content analysis, stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis)
• Multi-stage stock-production models
• Habitat/life-stage based models
• Rapid bioassessment protocols (EPA-EMAP, SWAMP, CSBP)
• Instream flow/habitat assessment (IFIM, PHABSIM)
• Criteria-based instream habitat mapping using Low Elevation Aerial Photography (LEAP)

In addition to our comprehensive understanding of fish ecology, we also focus on how aquatic organisms interact with their physical environment by examining the linkages between habitat structure and the physical processes shaping this habitat. This approach allows us to provide sound solutions to complicated aquatic management problems, including challenges related to climate change, and to develop effective management strategies at scales ranging from small urban streams to large valley watersheds and deltas.

Stillwater Sciences holds a NMFS Section 10(a)(1)(A) authorizing take of ESA-listed Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast coho salmon, Central  California Coast coho salmon, California Coastal Chinook salmon, Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon, Northern California steelhead, Central California Coast steelhead, Central Valley steelhead, South-central California Coast steelhead, and Southern California steelhead associated with various Bay Area, Central Valley, and southern California coastal watersheds.
 

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Our work includes field-based sampling of aquatic habitats and the species found there, as well as fish population modeling, diet tracking, and food web analysis.