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I'm Carl Schrek
and I'm the leader of the
Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.
And that's actually a partnership between
the U.S. Geological Survey, the state of Oregon,
and Oregon State University
where I am also a professor in Fisheries and Wildlife.
Basically my research is trying to understand
how the fish respond to the environment.
And that's basically to understand also
when we do something to the environment,
what effect that's going to have on the fish.
And then also to use the fish as a barometer
of how good the environment is
and that could be the environment as well for people.
I have a Japanese collaborator
who comes over here once or twice a year and works with me.
And basically what we've shown is
that a very minute decrease in temperature,
like one degree or even less,
can cause downstream orientation in salmon.
In a number of species of salmon,
American also Japanese salmon.
And then if you think about the impact
of global climate change on that
and having an understanding of that is
very important because systems like on
this side of the Cascades are driven more by rain in the winter.
So there very often in the winter you get increases in temperature.
Whereas if you have a rain event on snow
on the east side of the Cascades then the temperature actually decreases.
So maybe how the fish respond to the
same environmental change can be very different.
Well I think the big implications here relate
to questions, for example,
what's the temperature that fish can tolerate.
And very often when environments are impacted
we get changes in water temperature.
We also get changes in when the temperature changes.
In other words, the daily fluctuations
in temperature can change.
And so a lot of work that we've done is trying to establish
what are the levels that are tolerable for fish,
because that's a very important management question because
when, like I said, when habitat is altered
for a variety of reasons often temperature
is also effected.
So it's important to know exactly where
those critical thresholds are.
So what I've been talking about
really, up until now, relates to
the effects of what people do on fish,
but since fish have to survive in water
our notion basically is that if we take
good care of water you'll automatically
take good care of fish. And the kind
of water that fish need is the exact same
kind of water that agriculture and urban environments need.
So I think we can solve both problems at the same time
by being good stewards to the fish
therefore then we're also good stewards
to the water and vice versa.