In 1984, Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) entered into an agreement with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to research and develop a passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag for use in the Columbia River Basin (CRB) Fish and Wildlife (F&W) Program. The PIT tag system enables large amounts of data to be produced using relatively few tags, compared to traditional tagging and marking systems.
In 1988 and 1989, NMFS contracted with PSMFC to develop and operate a prototype database system to help NMFS meet, in a timely manner, its contractual and verbal agreements involving PIT tag data.  The database was designed to meet immediate needs as well as provide a framework for a formalized database system for the Columbia River Basin PIT tag program.
In April 1989, NMFS announced its intention to phase out of the operation, maintenance and management of the PIT tag systems in the Columbia River Basin. Subsequently, BPA contracted with PSMFC because it was the only agency experienced in data management with no vested interest in the interpretation of data generated from PIT tags, while being independent of water or fish and wildlife management responsibilities. The actions that PSMFC was directed to implement under the PTAGIS contract include:
1.          Management of a long term Columbia River Basin-wide database system accessible to all entities;
2.          Maintenance and documentation of fish tagging and interrogation systems;
3.          Operation and maintenance of equipment at the remote sites;
4.          Provision of technical support for the software and hardware;
5.          Provision of training to users; and
6.          Purchase and distribution of PIT tags and associated equipment.

2005 CHANGES
·          PTAGIS will perform final installation work for Full Flow Bypass PIT Tag detection at Lower Monumental and John Day Dams in 2005/06 (TLA).
·          PTAGIS will perform final installation work for vertical slot / counting window detectors at McNary, Washington Shore fish ladder (TLA).
·          PTAGIS will perform final installation work for vertical slot detectors at Bonneville Bradford Island fish ladders.
·          PTAGIS will perform final installation work in support of Bureau of Reclamation / Yakama Nation counting window detectors at Prosser Dam.
·          PTAGIS will install separator adult exit monitors at three juvenile sites selected by PIT Tag Steering Committee (LGR, LGO, and LMO).
·          PTAGIS will provide support for Bureau of Reclamation and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to install adult detectors at Three Mile Dam on the Umatilla River.
·          PTAGIS will continue to provide support for Digital Angel Corporation for development of the Hi-Q PIT tag prototype. The Hi-Q project is funded via FWP 198331900.
·          PTAGIS will continue efforts to develop and implement data models that can represent PTAGIS user activities in a more consistent way, and to associate these activities with latitude and longitude location information.
·          PTAGIS will deploy version 1 of its new web interface and develop value added refinements to provide better data extraction tools based upon our new data models.


The PIT Tag Operation Center (PTOC) has been established at the PSMFC office in Portland, OR to house PTAGIS and to utilize the PSMFC data facilities.
LOCATION:
The long-term PIT tag database system is located at PTOC headquarters, in the office of PSMFC in Portland, OR.
The PTOC field office in Kennewick, WA is primarily responsible for equipment maintenance of 20 key PIT Tag interrogation sites, with a total of 321 PIT tag detection transceivers located throughout the BPA service area.
PSMFC provides operations and maintenance (O&M) support for the electronic data collection portion of the PIT tag interrogation systems at the Corps operated facilities, under a "Memorandum of Agreement" between BPA and the Corps. PSMFC maintains PIT Tag actuated separation (diversion) gates at various fish facilities. PSMFC also installs and maintains the programmable logic controllers (PLC's) used by smolt monitoring and facility personnel to collect daily sub-samples. Information related to the sub-sample is incorporated into the PIT tag interrogation files.
Remote interrogation sites are owned and operated by other entities, such as the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) or Yakama Nation (YN). The major interrogation sites include: