This projects was selected under the Pacific Lamprey Conservation Initiative Umbrella Project CRB planning and project selection process for FY20 funding.  Originally proposed as two separate projects, they were combined for the ease of tracking and contracting. The two project goals are as follows:
1) Evaluate larval lamprey survival following common salvage techniques to provide guidance for future dewatering and salvage activities. Findings will be included in an updated version of the current Best Management Practices document.  There will be both a lab and field work portion to this study.  Larval lamprey habitat can be dewatered during in-water construction projects or when water diversions are seasonally closed. Salvage efforts are used to collect lamprey for relocation. Methods may include electrofishing, “dry” electrofishing, and/or sediment screening/sieving. There is little information on the efficacy of these techniques and whether lamprey survival after salvage.
2) Test and refine the approach needed for a monitoring array in the lower Columbia River that will have high detection probability of juvenile lamprey implanted with the new JLAT (Juvenile Lamprey Acoustic Transmitter).  Acoustic telemetry studies of juvenile salmon commonly produce 95-100% detection probabilities, but the new lamprey tag is less powerful and lamprey behavior is likely to be very different from juvenile salmon, so evaluations of monitoring arrays for lamprey are needed to guide future acoustic telemetry evaluations. This study will design, install, and evaluate an acoustic monitoring array in the lower Columbia River, which is a challenging environment for monitoring (river is wide and deep, active recreation and commercial boating), to inform and guide future monitoring arrays.