With sea lions preparing to mount another assault on the spring chinook run below Bonneville Dam, NOAA Fisheries scientist Garth Griffin said the federal agency has run out of money to study them. ...more

A few hours after staffers at Portland's Fish Passage Center finished their farewell luncheon on March 17, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a motion for an emergency stay. The court action called for the Bonneville Power Administration to fund the beleaguered center until the resolution of a petition by environmental and fishing groups that calls for judicial review of BPA's de-funding decision. ...more

A group of independent scientists who try to sort out sticky scientific issues in the salmon recovery realm have joined with earlier critics of a controversial chinook survival study overseen by the Fish Passage Center that has been going on for the past 10 years. ...more

On March 17, U.S. District Court judge James Redden denied a request by environmental and fishing groups to extend the hydro BiOp remand process for another five months. But Redden said the issue could be discussed in conjunction with the remand's next status review and in-court hearing on April 21. Redden had given the parties a year to produce a new BiOp after he tossed the 2004 opinion and ordered a new remand last October. ...more

The Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in early April to decide how many chinook the citizenry will be able to take home in their coolers this year. This year's harvest options include the possibility of a draconian closure for sports and commercial fishermen in southern Oregon and northern California to boost numbers of the weak Klamath River fall chinook run. ...more

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has approved an expensive proposal to track juvenile salmon along the West Coast with acoustic tags and long lines of receivers stretched out along the Continental Shelf, despite the fact that the instruments won't be able to pick up signals from another kind of tag being used by other scientists to study estuary survivals at the same time. ...more

NOAA Fisheries announced today that it will propose the Puget Sound steelhead run as threatened, after a scientific review of its status that was triggered by a 2004 petition filed by retired WDFW fisheries biologist Sam Wright. ...more