[2] Mass Marking Threatens Integrity Of Salmon Harvest Analyses, Experts Say
An October report from the Pacific Salmon Commission has highlighted concerns about the unintended effects of legislation that calls for marking all hatchery chinook from federal hatcheries in the Columbia River basin.
It's just one of several recent reviews that describe the increasing complexities of harvest management brought about by a law that calls for mass marking all chinook from federal facilities.
The 2003 legislation was sponsored by Congressman Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), who said it was designed to assure that viable populations of fish were available for harvesting, while wild fish were protected. The hatchery fish are marked by a clipped adipose fin.
Since that's the same fin clipped to mark any fish sporting a tiny coded-wire tag (CWT) deeply imbedded in its nose, the changes in marking protocols have generated big headaches for managers, who for the past 20 years have relied upon CWT program results to sort harvest impacts by different fisheries on different stocks.
The mass marking efforts of recent years have made the database of mixed stock fisheries less robust, scientist Gary Morishima told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council at a symposium last summer. That's because the clipped hatchery fish sustain a higher harvest rate. And many sport fisheries allow only chinook with clipped fins to be kept, in order to let more wild fish spawn.
Morishima, co-chair of a committee that evaluates mass marking proposals, told NW Fishletter last week that sampling efforts in Alaska, Canada and the U.S. will have to be restructured to catch up with the changes and help answer questions about whether the two countries are achieving management goals.
Another problem is that fish agencies are strapped for cash and are hard pressed to pay for new detection techniques without considerable improvements in their budgets, Morishima said.
He said Canadian researchers couldn't even afford to read the tags detected in fish heads saved last year--$15,000 that was reprioritized for other agency needs at the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Morishima said the exploitation rate analysis is two years behind, and fish heads are piling up in agency freezers. They come from high-seas freezer trollers, processing plants, and recreational fishermen, along with some heads from unclipped fish, part of a program designed to improve estimates of catch of wild stocks.
But it's not only a matter of dollars. Politics is playing a big part, too, along with a lawsuit against federal agencies by a coalition of conservation groups and Snohomish County PUD. Supporters of the suit say that, despite harvest cutbacks in recent years, too many wild ESA-listed fish are still being caught. They say, in some cases, government scientists have admitted that current harvest rates are too high to reach fish recovery goals. Their answer to the overharvest of ESA fish is restricting catch to clipped hatchery fish.
However, the salmon commission's review of 23 mass marking proposals outlines some serious roadblocks to improving the analysis of harvest impacts by tagging 64 million chinook, mostly fall chinook from the lower Columbia River and the Washington coast, an increase of 48 percent increase from marked chinook numbers in 2004.
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) has even weighed into the fray. In the 2004 congressional record, he requested that upriver bright and Washington coastal fall chinook raised in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department hatcheries not be marked that year. He called on the USFWS to work with his state and U.S. representatives of the salmon commission to make sure that mass marking didn't much interfere with data collection, salmon management programs, or the abundance-based management policy under the treaty.
"The political climate surrounding MM [mass marking] is confused by conflicting policy positions," the Pacific Salmon Commission report says. "On the one hand, Alaskan Congressional representatives have requested a moratorium be placed on MM of far-north migrating chinook stocks. On the other hand, U.S. appropriations bills require MM at federal facilities."
The report says mass marking is likely to increase tag recovery and fishery sampling costs in Alaska and Canada. But these agencies still rely on visual sampling methods rather than electronic methods, which reduces the ability of Lower 48 agencies to get data from both marked and unmarked CWT groups that are used to estimate impacts of mark-selective fisheries.
Until the differences in sampling and tagging methodologies are resolved and once more synchronized between agencies, they will "impact" analysis by commission technical committees.
Another expert panel convened by the salmon commission has just released a report that deals with these issues in more detail, Morishima said. One of its major findings says there is no "viable" short-term alternative to the CWT system. Though some new technologies are promising, the panel said agencies must rely on the CWT program for at least five more years, even if they decide to implement a different methodology in the future.
They listed other problems that have developed over the years, such as changes in commercial fisheries where fish are now unloaded in many different locations, making it harder to sample them. Since sportsfishers now land a greater share of the catch, it has become more difficult to sample than commercial fisheries. The panel also said CWTs aren't likely to be an effective tool to answer fish managers' questions that require the identification of the origin of all fish encountered, or survival and migrations routes of individual fish.
The independent panel of scientists, which helps both the Power Council and NMFS deal with thorny questions of science, produced its own synopsis of the marking situation in July after it said it couldn't tell whether the harvest of ESA stocks was being adequately managed. The panel said the ability of the coded-wire tag system to continue as the foundation for chinook and coho salmon management in the Northwest was very much in doubt.
"Despite their 'common sense' appeal," said the panel, "mass marking and mark-selective fisheries have not been shown to be an effective management tool to constrain impacts on natural stocks of chinook and coho salmon to allowable levels. The effectiveness of mass marking and mark-selective fishing has not been evaluated prior to widespread application, and has instead, been blindly accepted as a matter of faith." -B. R.
The following links were mentioned in this story:
October report, Review of 2005 Mass Marking and Mark-Selective Fishery Proposals Report SFES (05)-1
Coded Wire Tag Program Review- Final Report of the Expert Panel
ISAB Clarification on Mass Marking and Mark-Selective Fisheries, July 29, 2005
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