Blog: Don’t put all your (fish) eggs in one basket: enhancing diversity to promote steelhead resilience
Steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) exhibit some of the most diverse life history traits among all Pacific salmonid species and play major cultural, economic, and recreational roles throughout the Pacific Coast. Steelhead are unique from their resident rainbow trout counterparts in that they follow an anadromous life-history, meaning they migrate to the ocean as juveniles and return to spawn in freshwater streams and rivers as adults. Rainbow trout, on the other hand, remain in freshwater streams for their entire life. Unlike most of their Pacific salmonid cousins, steelhead are iteroparous, meaning that they can spawn more than once in their lifetime. This adaptation allows steelhead to have a more flexible lifecycle that can be advantageous during warmer or drier seasons, especially near the southern end of their distribution in California’s Central Valley.