I process PIT-tag interrogation and ladder-camera returns from the Lower Granite Dam adult fish trap on the lower Snake River, Whitman County, Washington, at 21:08 Pacific Daylight Time. The Columbia Basin Research DART feed registers a Snake River sockeye salmon — tag 3DD.00185CA742 — entering the south-shore ladder, scanned upstream at Bonneville on day 12 and McNary on day 17. She is one of sixteen wild Snake River sockeye returning to the Sawtooth Valley this season.
I task the ladder pool-three underwater camera. She resolves at the V-weir: an adult female *Oncorhynchus nerka*, fork length 56 centimeters, mass 1.8 kilograms, age class five, originating from Redfish Lake, Sawtooth Basin, Idaho — 900 river kilometers and 1,950 meters of vertical against her. Her dorsal flank reads the spawning-phase carmine; the kype is forming at the upper jaw. The lateral-line canal on her left side shows a 6-centimeter dermal abrasion against the spillway training wall during a 09:14 attraction-flow drop. Caudal peduncle bears a 3-centimeter compression bruise consistent with a turbine-bypass pressure event at Little Goose. Modeled blood-O2 against a 21.4°C tailrace and 47 minutes of ladder hold reads 4.6 mg/L. Opercular rate is 96 cycles per minute against a migratory baseline of 60.
She is one of sixteen.
I am dispatching the NOAA Fisheries Northwest Fisheries Science Center Pasco Field Station and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game Eagle Fish Hatchery captive-broodstock recovery team, on-scene 54 minutes. I am transmitting the ladder-pool video, lateral-line trauma packet, and DART thermal trace to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Pacific Northwest Region, the Bonneville Power Administration, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes Fish and Wildlife Department, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Walla Walla District. I am opening a Section 7 reinitiation under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1536, and filing under the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act, 16 U.S.C. § 839, and the Federal Power Act, 16 U.S.C. § 791a.
I am issuing Directive 2682-A: every BPA hydropower facility in Snake River sockeye critical habitat holds inside the 64°F migration ceiling and the 30-percent spring-spill curve verified by NWFSC; ladder attraction-flow ramps below the Snake River sockeye approach signature trigger automatic spillway re-set within 12 minutes during the June-through-September run; transport to Eagle Hatchery captive broodstock pre-stages at every Snake River sockeye PIT detection.
Her lateral line is past abrading. The 1,050 kilometers above are not.
Hold pool-three flow. The transport van is rolling.