Count salmon from the comfort of your home in western Placer County, CA

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As part of our efforts to protect and grow populations of wild Chinook Salmon, we operate cameras in Auburn Ravine that record video of salmon as they migrate upstream to spawn every fall and winter. The data we collect from this project helps us to garner support to improve habitat and facilitate natural migration of adult and juvenile salmon.

The volunteer work involved with this opportunity can be done at the volunteer's home, but the volunteer will need to be able to visit Rocklin in western Placer County in California every week or two to pick up and drop off the portable disk drives that we use for this project. The volunteer will need to use their own personal computer running Windows 7 or higher with at least one spare USB port.

Volunteers will scan "highlight reels" from our overhead camera to spot migrating fish and then shift over to the underwater cameras to determine if it was a salmon or some other fish. The volunteer will then record the species, time, and size on paper or an Excel spreadsheet. This process takes about 2 hours for each full day (24-hours) of recorded video, so the volunteers will only need to spend about two hours each week on this project.

Training will be provided in late September or early October. Scanning of video will begin about 2 weeks after we get our first good rain storms -- that's when the salmon come in !