Auburn Ravine Salmon Cameras are operated by Friends of Auburn Ravine.
We use our overhead and underwater cameras near downtown Lincoln, CA, to record video of Chinook Salmon as they migrate upstream to spawn in Auburn Ravine.
The cameras run 24-hours a day from mid-October to mid-February every year so that adds up to PLENTY of video.
We scan all the videos to get the count for each season, and we usually get that done by the end of April each year.
Since 2016, the count of large adult fall-run Chinook Salmon in Auburn Ravine has averaged 127. In some years we have had more than 300!
We share that data with the local water districts and State and Federal wildlife agencies.
The two video files show the same salmon swimming past the cameras on December 7, 2022, at about 12:37PM
One video is from the overhead camera. The other is from one of the underwater cameras.
The mid-day light and the salmon’s slow swim past the cameras helped us get some nice clear video.
This fish was about 30 inches long. We know that because the white panels that you’ll see on the overhead video are 4-feet long from the upstream edge to the downstream edge.
Our volunteers clean the underwater camera lenses 2 or three times each week, but a leaf can still get stuck on a lens between cleanings. That is why you’ll see a brown patch on the left side of the view from the underwater camera.