The PIT Tag Steering Committee (PTSC) conducted a conference call on February 13, 2019, to discuss a request from the department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to store PIT tag data from the Vancouver Island area in PTAGIS. Kevin Pellet, DFO, summarized the project for the PTSC, indicating that they have been using PIT tags in a marine survival study focusing on Cowichan River Chinook. DFO has been tagging in the Cowichan River and Cowichan Bay since 2014, with a total of about 65k tags out and are operating one in-river detection site on the Cowichan, with the possibility of adding another. DFO would like to submit both MRR and interrogation data to PTAGIS.
Representatives from Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) also participated in the call and indicated that BPA is supportive of including data from outside the Columbia Basin in PTAGIS as long as there are not any materially higher costs to the program. The PTSC approved the addition of the Cowichan PIT tag data to PTAGIS. For more information, you may view the conference call notes.