Department of Fish and Game delivered two tanker truckloads of Chinook salmon smolts to Pillar Point Harbor on May 31, 2012. This is the second of two shipments. 120,000 smolts arrived from the Feather River Hatchery in Oroville and were poured into a net pen at the harbor. The first delivery on May 10th included about 60,000 smolts.
The plan is to acclimate the fish in the holding pen for about two weeks, then let them go with the tide.
Coastside Fishing Club has been working on the project since last fall after receiving state funding. Fishing club contributed $38,000 to construct the 54-by-30-foot pen that included solar panels to run a navigation light and a camera that streams information to director Marc Gorelnik's laptop.
The smolts are fed every two hours by an automated feeder. They will be released after two weeks in the pen. Tags in their head identify them. When the fish is caught a wire tag will reveal that it came from the fishing club's pen.
Similar efforts have been made recently. Mike McHenry's commercial fishing vessel the Merva W dropped 100,000 fish at Fort Baker off the coast of San Francisco last week.