OPB: Scientists Determine Hatchery Salmon Threaten Wild Fish

Mann Lake, on the eastern side of Steens Mountain, was famed for its crystal clear waters and large Lahontan cutthroat trout. But the trout fishery started going downhill about five years ago. ODFW Biologist Shannon Hurn thinks the goldfish were accidently released into the lake in 2001, probably from an angler who was using them as live bait.

Wildlife officials hoped the trout will gobble up all the goldfish. But that’s not how things are working out. Instead the trout are disappearing and fishermen are reeling in goldfish more than a foot long.

In August, ODFW plans to spread rotenone across Mann Lake to kill off the goldfish. This is the same chemical used at Diamond Lake a few years ago to get of the tui chub. But before doing that, the agency is asking for the public’s help in removing as many lahontan trout as possible. The trout will be held at a nearby pond until Mann Lake is safe enough for restocking – probably in late fall or early spring.

ODFW is holding a meeting on May 12 to explain the plan to the public. It starts 5:30 pm at the Oregon State Offices, 7809 W. Jackson, Suite 500, Burns.

If you want to volunteer for the trout round up, call Hurn at at the ODFW Hines office, 541-573-6582.

How much fishing will be allowed varies widely along the coast. The Columbia River is having another year of strong salmon runs, good news for fishermen in Northern Oregon and Washington. For fishermen further south, the Sacramento and Klamath Rivers are doing better, but the seasons are more limited.

The news came out Thursday from the Pacific Fishery Management Council. PFMS is the federal agency that regulates West Coast salmon fishing.

North of Cape Falcon, Oregon:

Commercial fishing – a chinook season in May and June. Then an all-salmon season from July through September. Commercial boats will be allowed to catch 56,000 chinook which is double last year’s quota. The coho catch is limited to 13,000, about one-third of 2009′s quota.

Recreation fishing – a chinook season in late June. All salmon fishing opens in July and runs through September.

South of Cape Falcon, Oregon:

Commercial fishing – Along Oregon, fishing will be allowed from May through August. Off the California coast there are very short seasons in July and August.

Recreation fishing – In Oregon, fishing for chinook will be allowed from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day. Coho fishing starts in June with a limit of 26,000 fish. In California, chinook fishing will be allowed during the summer, but not coho.

As anyone who’s fished for salmon can tell you, the actual regulations are far more complex than what I’ve posted. For complete information see:

PFMC Adopted Salmon Regulations (Opens a PDF file)

These rules still need to be approved by NOAA. But that agency usually accepts them without major changes.

Then sometime in the 1990s, things started to go very badly for the Pacific Smelt.

On Tuesday, NOAA Fisheries announced it will list the fish as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The Pacific Smelt, or eulachon, spends most of its life in the ocean. But they return to freshwater rivers in the winter and early spring to spawn. The annual migration was once quite a spectacle. Streams and rivers could be so thick with smelt you could just dip a net in the water and pull them out.

They also played an important role in the culture of Northwest tribes. Their high fat content made them an important food source during the lean winter months. In fact, it was the Cowlitz Tribe that petitioned NOAA to put the fish on the Endangered Species List.

The fish covered by the announcement range from Northern California to the Canadian border. The biggest threat to the smelt’s long term survival is climate change, which has reduced the availability of the fish’s prey and caused changes in the timing and volume of Northwest river flows in the spring.

Other threats include shrimp harvesting. The two species share some common areas in the Pacific Ocean and smelt can get caught up in shrimp nets. During migration, predation by sea lions, birds and other fish have become a serious problem.

One of the best known fishing spots for smelt is along the Cowlitz River in Washington. The state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife says it supports NOAA’s decision and will work with the agency and tribes to help the fish recover.

According to a February 12th story in the Longview Daily News, commercial smelt fishermen netted about 3,000 pounds of fish this year. But few of the fish have been seen since late January.

Chinook Salmon Courtesy USGS

After a few brutal years, things are looking somewhat better for Oregon’s coastal salmon fishermen.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council released its salmon forecast for 2010. Salmon numbers on the Sacramento and Klamath rivers are high enough to allow for some kind of commercial fishing season off Southern Oregon and California.

Along the Northern Oregon and Washington coasts, the situation looks better. Coho numbers are down about a third from last year, but Chinook numbers are up.

Still to be determined… how much actual fishing will be allowed.

In past forecasts, we’ve seen Council officials use words like “disaster” to describe the upcoming season. Today’s announcement lacks that kind of dramatic language. Instead it says the Sacramento and Klamath forecasts are, “sufficient to support some level of ocean fishing.” While vague, that’s an improvement over 2008 and 2009 when commercial fishing off Southern Oregon and California was cancelled.

These forecasts play an important role in helping federal regulators set the 2010 commercial salmon season in the Pacific Ocean. In about a week, regulators will meet in Sacramento to come up with a range of options. One set of options will cover the West Coast south of Cape Falcon, Oregon. The other set will cover the coast north of there.

Then the feds take these options on the road with a series of public meetings scheduled for late March along the coast.

Finally, the Council meets again in April for a final vote on the fishing season. The results have to be approved by NOAA Fisheries, but the agency rarely ever makes changes.

Groups such as Oregon Wild and Water Watch, say they were kicked out of the talks that produced the two historic deals on Klamath Basin water sharing and dam removal. National groups such as American Rivers and Trout Unlimited did sign on.

Earlier this week, we talked with Sean Stevens of Oregon Wild about his group’s objections. He calls this a billion dollar boondoggle that doesn’t do enough to protect Klamath Basin salmon.

Video: Water Sharing

The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, or KBRA, governs how water in the region will be shared by farmers, tribes, and salmon. Stevens says the KRBA guarantees water to farmers first. There may not be enough leftover for salmon during droughts and dry years when water supplies are low.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8LZjnUFDhg

Video: Farming On The Wildlife Refuges

The two deals allow for another 50-years of farming on the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuges. Stevens calls this a bad idea. It limits how much land is available for wetlands – important habitat for salmon and other wildlife. It also means farmers get a greater share of the water in the basin. Finally, he says pesticide runoff from agriculture only hurts water quality in the refuges.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj97LrHNaOI

Video: Dam Removal

The Klamath Basin Hydroelectric Agreement lays out a plan for removing four hydropower dams from the Klamath River. This will open up more than 300 miles of river to salmon. Oregon Wild is a big supporter of removing the dams.

But Stevens says it was a mistake to link the two agreements together. He says this has created a billion dollar boondoggle for irrigators. Much of the estimated billion dollar cost in the KRBA, says Stevens, is for irrigation subsidies, and there’s not enough in there for doing actual restoration work in the basin.

Besides, the dam removal agreement doesn’t guarantee the dams will come out. It says the Interior Secretary first has to decide if removing dams is a good idea. That process could last a couple of years. While it appears that dam removal is likely, Stevens says there are other ways this deal could fall apart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8MoyBAaNI0

THURSDAY:

Klamath Basin Agreements

Decades of fighting over water, salmon and dams in the Klamath Basin could come to a close Thursday in Salem. Governor Kulongoski, Governor Schwarzenegger and Interior Secretary Salazar will take part in a ceremony to sign two agreements that are designed to make sure there’s enough water for farming and salmon, while laying out a plan to remove four dams from the Klamath River,

Despite the historic nature of the agreements, they’re unpopular with Oregon’s environmental community. Oregon Wild says the deals don’t do enough to protect salmon, and allow farming on two wildlife refuges.

The ceremony is Thursday morning in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Salem.

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY:

Wild Horse Adoption

The first Pacific Northwest mustang adoption for 2010 is set for Friday and Saturday, February 19 and 20 at the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Wild Horse Corral Facility in Hines, OR. Over 100 vivid pintos, speckled roans, and creamy palominos are slated for adoption at this two-day event.

Animal viewing and registration is Friday, February 19 from 8am. to 4pm., and Saturday, February 20 from 8am to 11:30am. Adoption fees begin at $125. If you adopt a horse at this event, BLM will ship it to most areas in Oregon for free.

SUNDAY:

Campaigning To Win

Feel strongly about an environmental issue? Ever wonder how you can influence government decisions that impact the environment? This Sunday, the Oregon League of Conservation Voters Education Fund holds a day-long workshop designed to teach critical organizing skills to citizens who care about the environment and want to engage in effective, winning campaigns.

Topics include: fundraising, grassroots organizing, recruiting management and volunteers, and getting your message out.

The workshop is Sunday, February 21, 11am. to 3:30pm at the OSU Memorial Union, Corvallis.

The event is free. Registration is required and the deadline is Wednesday, February 17. To learn more and to register:

Campaigning to Win 2010

Chinook Salmon Courtesy USGS

When the chinook salmon return on the Columbia River next spring, get ready for massive numbers of fish.

Wildlife officials say they’re expecting about 470,000 chinook for the spring run. If that prediction is accurate, it would be the biggest return of spring chinook since 1938.

The announcement by Oregon Fish and Wildlife, Washington Fish and Wildlife and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, admits that past predictions of salmon runs haven’t always been on target.

So they’re taking extra precautions to get it right for 2010.

Among salmon experts, a “jack” is an immature salmon who thinks he’s ready for spawning. They’re the hormone charged teenagers of the salmon world. Jack doesn’t want to wait around in the ocean to become an adult before returning to his native stream to spawn. So he’ll come back a year or two early. Not surprisingly, almost all jacks are males.

Wildlife experts count the number of returning jacks as one of the factors in predicting how many adult salmon will return the following year. But this method has been unreliable lately. Over the past few years, the forecasts have been too high by an average of 45%. For example, the 2009 spring run of chinook was forecasted at about 300,000. But the actual number was just under 170,000.

What’s also making the prediction for next year especially tricky is that the number of jacks returning in 2009 is way beyond normal. Some 80,000 jacks were counted, that’s 3 to 4 times higher than what the experts would normally expect.

Some of the questions the experts are trying to answer:

• Does the huge number of jacks mean there’s huge numbers of adult salmon waiting to return?
• Or does it mean more salmon are returning early leaving behind fewer adults in the ocean?

Because of the uncertainty, the agencies studied seven different models for forecasting next year’s run. The models produced a range of 366,000 to 528,000 adults for next spring’s chinook run. The committee which produces the forecast agreed on 470,000 fish as an average.

Two members of the committee, Stuart Ellis and Tom Nigro say they don’t really know why these numbers are so high. Both men pointed to changes in how the dams are operated as one possible factor. The federal hydro system on the Columbia River is under orders by a federal judge to adjust the timing of spills, and the amount of water spilled to benefit salmon. They also say we may be seeing the results of better management of hatcheries.  Plus, there have been better conditions for salmon in the Pacific for the past few years.

“We don’t know what 80,000 jacks can produce,” says Nigro, “because we’ve never seen it before.” But whatever the reason, Nigro adds, “Something is fundamentally different.”

As for those jacks who just can’t wait to spawn? They almost never do. The jacks can’t compete with the larger, tougher adult males and are losers in the battles for a mate.

A commercial halibut boat in Sitka, Alaska. Photo from NOAA.

Hoping to rebound fish stocks and boost coastal economies, NOAA is calling for big changes in how commercial fishermen go about their business.

The agency says it’s starting a voluntary program to encourage the industry to move to what’s called Catch Share systems. These rules are already in place for 13 commercial fisheries around the country. Four more fisheries will adopt the rules over the next year.

So how does this work?

Under the old way of doing things, NOAA sets an overall limit of how many fish could be harvested in a certain area. It was up to fishermen to catch as many of those fish as possible until the limit was reached. Critics say these kinds of rules create a “gold rush” mentality in the ocean, leading to problems such as overfishing, too much accidental catch of other fish (bycatch), and a short fishing season where all the catch would come in at the same time and depress prices.

With a Catch Share system, the total harvest is divided into shares. Each boat or group of boats is given its own quota. That means a fisherman knows how much he can catch ahead of time, and can adjust the schedule according to market conditions and the weather.

“Catch shares allow fishermen to plan their businesses better and be more selective about when and how they catch their allotment, because they know their share of the fishery is secure,” says Dr. Jim Balsiger, acting administrator of NOAA Fisheries. “Catch share programs help eliminate the race to fish, reduce overcapacity and bycatch, enhance the safety of fishermen and their vessels.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted this kind of a program for the West Coast groundfish harvest about a year ago.

NOAA says it won’t force the new rules on anyone, adding that a locally designed Catch Share program usually produces the best results.