California Trout announced plans to publish a new edition of its State of Salmonids (SOS) at last week’s quarterly meeting of the California Advisory Committee on Salmon and Steelhead Trout (CAC).

SOS III will follow in the footsteps of the organization’s 2017 landmark study, commissioned by California Trout and authored by salmonid experts Peter Moyle, Robert Lusardi, Patrick Samuel and Jacob Katz. The SOS III study, led by Lusardi this time, will take place over the next two years and is expected to be published in 2027.

Darren Mierau, North Coast director for California Trout, called the SOS II a “tremendously important piece of work” at the CAC’s meeting. Mierau described the previous iteration of the white paper as providing “comprehensive information in one place, a kind of one-stop-shop for all 32 species (or dependent population segments) of salmon (and) trout in California, … establishing a methodology that can be consistent through time, so that we can have an apples to apples comparison … of trends in status.”

One way the SOS accomplishes that consistent methodology is by assigning a scoring rubric to each species.

“We do know that (salmonid populations are) in decline, and so the purpose of the SOS effort is to periodically … collect as much information as we can, and then we have this scoring rubric for assessing their status on a scale of one through five,” Mierau told the Times-Standard by phone last Thursday, “and it allows us to objectively measure, over time, from decade to decade, how this status is changing.”

Mierau said that embarking on the SOS III is a particularly auspicious moment for CalTrout.

“If you think about two points connecting a line, this will be the third time where we’ll see an inflection in that trend from the past,” Mierau said. “So, maybe, between SOS I and II, there was a decline, and maybe, for SOS III, for some of those species (and) DPS units,  there’s an inflection upward because we’re getting some kind of recovery … or maybe there’s a downward inflection that causes us to look at those changes in status and think about what to do about it.

“Whether it’s learn from successes and translate those successes into other places or sound the alarms for something that’s going wrong and try to stop any further decline, it’s a process to inform what we do as management agencies, whether it’s (California Department of Fish and Wildlife) or the National Marine Fisheries Service, and it’s a process that informs us restoration and conservation folks on what to do with those changes.”

Mierau said that, in the past, SOS data has been used to make recommendations to regulatory agencies on ways in which commercial and recreational fisheries can be better managed. It’s also used by CalTrout in efforts to lobby for bond funding to facilitate restoration efforts in salmonid fisheries — efforts that include supporting Proposition 4, which passed last year and will provide millions of dollars to restoration efforts. He also said that SOS data is also used to inform priorities in the disbursement of funds via state grant programs through organizations like the Coastal Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Board and CDFW.

SOS II has also been used to create a coffee table book for a lay audience that allows readers easy access to the status of the state’s 32 major salmonid populations.

More information on California Trout’s State of Salmonids study can be found at: https://caltrout.org/sos.

Robert Schaulis can be reached at 707-441-0585.