Out West student blog

Fish. Water. People.

By
Lauren Taylor

 

A woman measures the depth of a creek with several instruments while standing ankle-deep in the water
Lauren Taylor checks the water depth as she measures the flow of several springs in Mount Shasta City Park in Mount Shasta, CA. Photo by Tyanna Blaschak.

 

Lauren Taylor (she/her)
Hometown: Cold Spring, KY
Major: Biology, '25
Internship: California Trout

Lauren Taylor reflects on California Trout's motto as she recounts two days in her life as an intern at the California Trout Shasta/Klamath regional office

A woman stands thigh-deep in a creek measuring its flow with several instruments
Lauren Taylor measures the flow of Burney Creek, a spring-fed creek in Burney, CA. Photo by Damon Goodman.

California Trout’s motto is 'Fish. Water. People.' This motto is displayed on posters, baseball caps, t-shirts, mugs, websites, publications, and signs at project sites for the public to see. CalTrout recognizes the interconnectedness of fish, water, and people, and the people of CalTrout and all of the organizations they have partnered with have worked for over 50 years to protect fish, water, and people. While I understood this connection conceptually, I got to see it in a whole new light when I experienced it firsthand over the course of a few days this summer. 

The first day was a typical office day. I was working on a project that I chose to work on this summer: using climate and stream condition data to try to predict how many winter-run chinook salmon will complete the long and difficult journey from Golden Gate Bridge to their spawning grounds, the cold waters below Shasta Reservoir on the Sacramento River. This project is pretty fish-focused, but with good reason; winter-run chinook salmon have struggled to survive since the construction of Shasta and Keswick dams cut them off from most of their historical spawning grounds. I was looking forward to the following day when my boss and I were going to Burney Creek to help researchers from CSU East Bay collect water samples. The samples were going to be analyzed for elements that would help to determine things like how long the water was in the ground before emerging as spring water, and at what elevation the water first entered the ground. 

This project seems to just focus on water, but it also has implications for the fish. Many fish rely on the springs of this region for year-round cold water. Characterizing these spring systems so that we can gain a better understanding of how climate change will affect them is essential to protecting those fish. 

That evening, everyone at the CalTrout Shasta/Klamath and Mt. Lassen regional offices, researchers from CSU East Bay, researchers from UC San Diego, and other CalTrout partners came together to cook and eat dinner at a Cal Trout property near the Upper Sacramento River called Trout Camp. There were biologists, hydrologists, geologists, fly fishermen, lawyers, accountants, and others (many people fell under more than one of those categories). I got to hear about the different career trajectories that brought all of these people together. That is where I really saw the people aspect of what CalTrout does. All of us had ended up together in that beautiful spot by the Sacramento River because we wanted to help protect the waterways and the fish that inhabit them for other people -- now and for generations to come. And that is what CalTrout is all about.

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