It’s a novel approach, the California Department of Fish and Game drove this year’s salmon smolts to San Pablo Bay bypassing their normal migration. It’s fitting, we take party boats and get seasick, it’s fair they get a little motion sickness compliments of stop and go traffic.

Research has shown that trucking hatchery salmon doubles or triples their odds of reaching the ocean by avoiding threats along the way, said Alice Low, an environmental scientist at the state Department of Fish and Game..

Some 8 million will have a microscopic tag imbedded in their nose. The tags are laser etched to determine where the fish was bred, and they’ll assist in determining how well hatchery fish survive and where they were eventually caught.

If and when salmon season is reopened they’ll ask anglers to remove the head and send it to a DFG laboratory for analysis.

I sure hope someone warns the guys in the mailroom…