By Susan Milius
There could be little difference in how young salmon survive their journey down a free-flowing river versus the heavily dammed Columbia River system, says a controversial new study.
A new system for tagging small fish allows biologists to monitor young salmon migration survival in a big, undammed river for the first time, David Welch of Kintama Research Corporation in Nanaimo, Canada, and colleagues report online October 28 in PLoS Biology.
The technique also opened the way for a comparison study to check the effects of the dams.