ORLEANS, Calif. - Low warm water conditions from the drought are starting to kill salmon in Northern California's Klamath Basin - the site of a massive fish kill in 2002.

A recent survey of 90 miles of the Salmon River on found 55 dead adult salmon and more dead juveniles than would be expected this time of year, Sara Borok, an environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said Thursday.

About 700 live fish were counted in cool pools fed by springs. Fisheries officials do not want see a repeat of 2002, when an estimated 60,000 adult salmon died in low warm water, but she said there is little to do but pray for rain.

The Salmon is a tributary of the Klamath River, and home to one of the last remnants of spring chinook salmon in the Klamath Basin, which return from the ocean in spring and stay in the river until October, when they spawn and die.

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