[1] Council Gets Update On Sea Lions, Hatchery Review
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.
In a presentation at the Mar. 15 meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Griffin said an annual $750,000 appropriation has dried up. It was used by the feds to work with states to study marine mammal populations and develop non-lethal ways to reduce predation by sea lions and seals on depressed salmon stocks.
In the past few years, some sea lions have moved upriver to the dam from the mouth of the Columbia where commercial gillnetters have long complained about the mammals stealing fish from their nets. Last spring it was estimated that sea lions had digested more than 3 percent (nearly 3,000) of the 82,000 adult spring chinook that showed up at the dam.
To put that into context, the 2005 non-Indian (sport and commercial) impacts to the upriver spring chinook run were estimated at slightly less than 2 percent of the upriver run, while the tribal catch in Zone 6 above the dam made up nearly 6 percent.
But Griffin said that 3.4 percent doesn't include impacts from Astoria to the dam.
Already this year one slender sea lion even slid past the $1 million grate barrier and "acoustic" fence constructed by the Corps of Engineers to keep them out of the fish ladder at Bonneville Dam.
Griffin characterized the culprit as a "scrawny, little, energetic guy with bad hearing and a large appetite" who knew the fish ladder from last year. The acoustic device was malfunctioning at the time, Griffin said, so biologists aren't sure if it will keep him and his pals out when the fish show up.
Protected by law since the Marine Mammal Act was enacted in 1972, marine mammal numbers on the West Coast have tripled since then. The California Sea Lion is population now estimated at about 250,000 individuals. Steller Sea Lions make up another 31,000, and the Harbor Seal population in Oregon and Washington adds up to about 25,000 more pinnipeds.
Biologists are even thinking of using lethal options to reduce predation by marine mammals during the fish migration, after sea lions decimated a steelhead run near Seattle in the 1990s.
By 1999, after the years-long debacle at the Ballard Locks, a few sea lions were actually shot by local tribes, who said they were part of their historical diet. NOAA recommended to Congress that year to amend the MMA to selectively reinstate lethal take protection for gear and catch.
States may now apply for authorization to "lethally take" individual pinnipeds that are "having a significant negative effect" on an ESA-listed salmonid stock or one that is being considered for listing.
But with a hundred or so sea lions below the dam, Griffin said if you shoot 20 of them, if they were the "wrong 20," the problem predators would still be there, since only five to 10 of them are the bold ones that do the lion's share of the damage.
The lack of federal funding this year will hamper the branding program that identifies individual marine mammals. The MMA says they must be identified before any problem animals can be removed.
Griffin said hazing had limited effectiveness last year, since the animals just moved from one side of the river to the other. But just getting the mammals to move around may have increased salmon passage, though the data to support this action is very limited.
This year, hazing will still be used as soon as the sea lions arrive at the dam, and personnel will try to keep the marine mammals from using the locks. The feds will try to get the jump on the situation, unlike last year when the sea lions arrived early and the fish showed up late.
Griffin said the sea lions have even figured out how to catch sturgeon after the salmon have gone by. He said states are very concerned about impacts to white sturgeon below Bonneville, where the largest population in the world resides.
It was reported during the Council discussion that Washington fish managers may soon ask for authorization for "lethal take" of some sea lions at the dam. On Mar. 17, fish agencies from both Washington and Oregon announced they would ask the feds to remove "selected problem animals" in future years if expanded hazing activities this spring prove unsuccessful.
In other Council news, facilitator Jim Waldo told members that it will take a couple of years to complete the new Bush administration initiative to review Columbia Basin hatchery operations. The review, announced in January, will look at the effects of hatchery programs on ESA-listed stocks in the Columbia Basin.
Waldo said hatcheries have two basic uses. "You're either doing it for a conservation purpose or for a harvest purpose," he said. The new assessment will determine program value, and benefits and risks by measuring how each hatchery's stock goals fit into all the stock goals for each area.
A second major effort of the initiative, Waldo said, is to work with basin hatchery managers to develop a performance-based system with three main elements. First will be the assessment of the future value by using the AHA tool, the All-H Analyzer developed by consultants who built the EDT model that has been used to estimate potential sub-basin productivities.
Next comes action, followed by outcome assessments and creating a way to measure improvements brought about by human actions only, factoring out elements like ocean conditions that managers have no control over. Waldo said the performance system, including the assessment of outcomes could be completed within a year.
The third main element will be an environmental impact statement for the Mitchell Act hatcheries. Waldo said it will differ from the one being fashioned for Puget Sound hatcheries because of difficulties encountered while writing an EIS about a system that is undergoing change. "That's the big problem with the Sound hatcheries that EIS writers are struggling with now," he said.
He said they will propose to NOAA that the overall hatchery effort and the Mitchell Act hatcheries be tied together "so there is a close fit," though it would take a bit of work to figure out how to accomplish that. But if it's successful, he said, the effort could provide the template for other hatchery managers when they have to fulfill similar requirements.
Waldo said he looked forward to working with the Council on issues that bring hatchery management into the habitat-based sub-basin planning effort. However, one of the biggest challenges will be to overcome the "process fatigue" on the Columbia, in order to find a way to do things "once, right" so folks don't have to keep doing the same thing over and over again, he said.
The Council completed a lengthy hatchery review in 2004 for Congress that included recommendations for coordinating hatchery programs with other salmon recovery efforts. But that effort came up short of actually implementing any reforms. -Bill Rudolph
[2] Fish Passage Center Gets Last-Minute Reprieve
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.
The petition, filed Feb. 16 by the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, Northwest Environmental Defense Center and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, had pretty much been forgotten in the publicity of a last-minute motion for a stay that the groups filed in U.S. District Court in Oregon on March 16.
In the District Court proceeding, Judge Ancer Haggerty declined to issue a stay of the Center's de-funding, noting that his court was probably not the right place to hear the argument over the BPA contractual issue.
The groups had claimed that Idaho Sen. Larry Craig "unlawfully retaliated" against the Fish Passage Center because FPC data were used by BiOp plaintiffs in the ongoing litigation of federal dam operations on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Craig, unhappy with the plaintiffs' use of FPC analyses in the litigation that culminated with increasing spill in the dam operations for helping fish, added language to a water and appropriations bill in September requiring BPA to quit paying for operation of the 11-person staff. The language was retained after the Senate and House hashed out spending differences in October, and BPA has since farmed out FPC duties to other entities, anticipating the closing of the center.
In their filing with the Niners back in January, NEDA and PEER argued that BPA actions to replace the Fish Passage Center violated provisions of the Northwest Power Act, and that the Committee report language added by Craig does not carry the force of law.
But report language added to spending bills by senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee usually commands respect, said one long-time Northwest politico who declined to be identified. Though some federal agencies have sometimes disregarded such language, BPA has always followed it. He said the issue could attract the attention of other members of the Appropriations Committee if they think such report language is ruled 'non-binding" by a federal appeals court.
For the time being, Sen. Craig is staying out of the fracas. Craig staffer Dan Whiting said his boss had nothing to say at this time.
But Fish Passage Center director Michele DeHart took a few potshots at the Idaho Senator and his staff in a declaration filed with the district court action. DeHart said neither she nor her staff were given "the opportunity to know or respond to any issue or accusations alleged by Senator Craig or BPA."
DeHart also said some statements made by Craig in a Nov. 10, 2005 press release were false when he said that salmon recovery programs were better off with the elimination of the FPC, since policy decisions would be based on reliable data and science would be "free from bias and agendas."
"Despite the fact that Senator Craig's statements regarding the FPC and its staff were false, BPA has adopted them and has refused to renew the contract to continue the work of the FPC," said DeHart's declaration.
DeHart said she had not heard of any specific issues raised by Craig or his staff regarding FPC work or analysis before he inserted the de-funding language in the conference report [in October] on the energy and water appropriations bill after House and Senate members met to finalize the spending measure.
Craig had inserted language to de-fund the FPC back in July in the Senate's version of the bill. In September, DeHart e-mailed Craig's staff to set up a time for discussing the issues and one of his staffers had a "substantive" discussion with her later that month (see NW Fishletter 206). But DeHart's declaration says, "To my knowledge, they had not brought any concerns to the Oversight Board or directly to me."
She also said that "people in the region" have "suggested" that she had been "personally targeted" by Sen. Craig and BPA and that the possibility of continued retaliation was a real deterrent for any agency or tribes to consider her for future employment. "This sends a chilling threat to other scientists in the region whose findings are counter to powerful hydropower industry interests."
Plaintiff groups were ecstatic after the Niners voted to stay the FPC's demise. "The importance of the Center's continued fish expertise outweighed the BPA's arguments that it is above the law," said Stephanie Parent of the Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center (PEAC) in a press release. PEAC filed for the stay in the Ninth Circuit.
Mike Hansen, spokesman for BPA, said the administration has amended its contract to extend FPC funding through April 19. FPC staffers who were moving under the aegis of the Pacific States Marine Fish Commission will still maintain the data warehousing function in their old digs, as they would under the new contract, said BPA Fish and Wildlife division head Bill Maslen, so his agency will not be paying for any duplicative work. But the data analysis function that BPA had awarded to Battelle Northwest is essentially on hold. -B. R.
[3] Science Panel Slams FPC's Latest Survival Study
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.
Responding to questions from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the Independent Scientific Advisory Board issued its review of the 2005 Comparative Survival Study [CSS] on March 15, just a couple of days before the FPC was scheduled to close its doors. While it said the design, implementation and interpretation of the statistical analysis "underpinning" the report were very good, the ISAB had broader concerns about the study design, and said many of the study assumptions need to be tested.
The board was also "concerned" about the basic premise of the study--that PIT-tagged fish could serve as surrogates for the unmarked population. NOAA scientists have found that using only PIT-tagged fish may severely underestimate survival of the run at large.
The ISAB noted that the NOAA Fisheries review of CSS last November pointed out that PIT-tagged fish returned at about half the rate of untagged fish. "The data to make these comparisons [with untagged fish] is in the CSS report, but the CSS authors do not make the comparisons," said the ISAB review.
The ISAB also agreed with the criticism leveled by BPA and NOAA Fisheries at the study for its use of only one downriver hatchery site to test the hypothesis that smolt-to-adult returns for salmonids would be lower for fish passing more dams. The ISAB called this hypothesis "a prime motivation" for the study in the first place.
They also took issue with the study using only annual SARs, when the smolt-to-adult return rates vary as much within years as between them.
"It has been an ongoing criticism of the FPC that they do not further refine their data to within-year conditions," said the latest review, noting that "the ISAB made similar comments in 2004 on the FPC analyses of flow augmentation."
The new ISAB review also agreed with an earlier ISAB comment on the CSS that said "formulas are complicated, convoluted, and in general, very unsatisfactory from a statistical point of view."
The science board took stock of the BPA and NOAA Fisheries reviews in its report, as well, but didn't include BPA comments that pointed out earlier versions of CSS used different downriver sites for comparing upriver and downriver stocks.
"Initially, the study started with multiple downriver stocks," said the November 2005 BPA review, "but these hatcheries have been reduced to only the Carson NFH, when the other hatcheries had SAR values less than upriver hatcheries. If investigators eliminate all the information that does not conform to their conceptual model, as in the case of the upriver-downriver comparison, you are often left with nothing but coincidences or wishful thinking."
Reviewers from the NMFS Science Center in Seattle had said the CSS summary appeared biased since it concluded that transportation had little or no benefit for wild chinook, yet it neglected to mention the overall 40-percent benefit of transportation for hatchery chinook and wild steelhead. They said that adds up to tens of thousands more hatchery chinook, and 5,000 to 10,000 more adult wild steelhead that would not have returned had they not been transported.
The Science Center also noted that the CSS treatment of upstream and downstream stocks "seems particularly biased," and asked why more downriver hatcheries weren't used in the comparisons. Since returns to upriver hatcheries vary considerably, they wondered if that wasn't true for downriver hatcheries, as well. And, the feds pointed out that Idaho's McCall hatchery had much higher SARs for several years than did the downriver facility at Carson, near Bonneville Dam.
The feds had also taken issue with statements in the CSS study's executive summary that implied transportation harmed wild fish because the average SAR of transported fish was lower than that of inriver migrants. The feds pointed out that in 5 of 10 years, the point estimate of annual SARs for transported wild chinook was higher than inriver migrants.
But data on wild chinook returns are skimpy, with some earlier years in the study showing only single-digit returns. The ISAB said 2001, with its large numbers of transported fish during the drought, was the only year in the analysis that provided any meaningful information on the relative survival of transported and in-river smolts. Transported wild chinook averaged nine times better survival than inriver migrants that year. -B. R.
[4] BiOp Judge Denies Immediate Remand Extension
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.
Todd True, Earthjustice attorney, said there was disagreement among technical representatives over some issues fundamental to the new BiOp's jeopardy analysis, and he characterized the failure of previous BiOps as due principally to the consistent failure of the federal parties to address the "legitimate scientific concerns" of states, tribes and others.
Most defendant-intervenors in the BiOp remand had gone on record opposing the motion. However, the federal agencies said they didn't oppose an extension, but called True's motion "disruptive," and showed "disregard" for the collaborative process. The regional coalition of upriver tribes, BPA customers, Montana, and Washington, along with the state of Idaho, opposed the five-month extension, arguing that plaintiffs' reasons were too vague.
Oregon went on record supporting an extension. It said more time was needed to complete "an appropriately robust collaboration" and rigorous analysis of the best science.
But the lower Columbia Tribes argued that the extension is necessary to "assure the integrity of the analyses." They said the de-funding of the Fish Passage Center would delay their analyses and limit their ability to participate fully in the remand process. They noted that tribes and others had appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to assure that the FPC's services continue. -B. R.
[5] West Coast Harvest Managers Offer Lukewarm To Grim Fishing Prospects
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.
Off the Washington Coast, three options are on the table, ranging from total allowable catches between 35,000 and 65,000 chinook for the non-Indian sector, split equally between sport and commercial folks. Last year, the two groups caught a little over 100,000 chinook between them. Options for treaty fishermen range from 25,000 to 50,000 chinook.
South of Oregon's Cape Falcon, the picture gets much darker, as concern for Klamath River stocks may keep both sport and commercial boats tied up for most of the summer. The potential closure has already led to demonstrations by commercial fishermen whose bread and butter is based on the Sacramento hatchery chinook runs that accounted for most of the 600,000 chinook landed by Oregon and California trollers last year.
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski hosted an emergency summit Mar. 28 to coordinate a response to the expected closure that would reduce the economic harm to fishermen. He said he has already prepared a request to the Secretary of Commerce to take steps to declare an economic disaster.
Gov. Kulongoski also called on federal authorities to look at the question of how many chinook are really needed to return to the Klamath to maintain the run's viability.
"Science has not yet supplied an exact answer to this question," Kulongoski said in a press release. "Accordingly, the state of Oregon has asked for an amendment to the salmon management plan that provides more flexibility from year to year, until we have that answer in hand."
Kulongoski wants to meet with both Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez and Interior Secretary-designate Dirk Kempthorne to discuss Klamath harvest issues and the kind of financial aid the government should provide to coastal towns and fishers.
Federal fish managers said in a pre-season report that if Klamath spawner numbers dip below 35,000 in 2006, it will be the third year in a row that the conservation objective will not be met.
In 2002, a good portion of the Klamath run, 30,000 fish or more, died from lethal temperatures during part of their upriver migration. That year, the Iron Gate hatchery saw its third highest return of fall chinook (24,000), but only 3,500 spawners returned to the nearby Trinity River Hatchery. Biologists think the later running chinook bound for the Trinity suffered the most damage.
Fishing interests have pointed to farmers in the Klamath Basin as the culprit in the 2002 fish kill. They say more water should have been used to help cool the river for migrating salmon. The high temperatures encouraged growth of a common parasite that killed many of the chinook.
The overall return to the Klamath Basin is predicted at 110,000 fish, about half the number that returned in 2005. More than 435,000 chinook returned to the basin in 2001, and numbers were above 300,000 in other returns years from 2000-2003. The lowest return on record occurred in 1992 when 96,000 chinook returned to the basin.
Meanwhile, spring chinook in the Columbia River are beginning to show, but in such small numbers that regional harvest managers are growing concerned that the run may be even less than the 88,000-fish pre-season prediction for the upriver stocks.
With ESA concerns limiting non-tribal impacts of upriver stocks to 2 percent, gillnetters in the lower river have netted about a thousand spring chinook in four openings since Feb. 23. About one-third of the catch is estimated to be from upriver stocks. Harvest managers have figured about 27 percent of the commercials' impact has already been reached.
Sportsfishers in the lower Columbia had caught about 953 chinook by Mar. 26, with about 40 percent estimated to be upriver fish. On the lower Willamette, about 188 hatchery springers had been landed by Mar. 19. Only eight chinook have been counted at Willamette Falls so far this spring.
Harvest managers voted to keep the commercial season closed for the time being because only four fish have appeared at Bonneville Dam and catch rates in the test fishery are low. WDFW harvest biologist Joe Hymer said this year's smelt run turned out to be pretty modest, which managers have used as a signal of recent ocean productivity, so he's not expecting anything big in the way of spring chinook numbers.
Managers are curious however, if a significant number of three-ocean chinook will return to the Columbia this year, which would allow them to re-affirm their faith in the use of jack counts to pre-sage the next year's run size. Last year's upriver spring run came in less than half the pre-season prediction. -B. R.
[6] Council OK's Funding For Ocean Tracking Study
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.
The scientific review panel that judged the merit of the project had serious reservations about it, but OK'd reduced funding for the proposal, developed by Canadian researcher David Welch to track spring chinook up the coast. Consultant Welch, who is president of the Kintama Research Corporation, has developed an ambitious project for tracking salmon called POST [Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking Project] that is funded by several entities to track major fish runs in BC through a growing network of arrays on the continental shelf all the way to Alaska. BPA will pony up $1.5 million this year as its share.
The panel questioned whether all the Snake smolts really stay on the shelf as they move north, but they OK'd a year's funding to test the feasibility of using the arrays to track fish migration and estimate survival. The ISRP said Welch's responses to their comments reinforced their initial recommendation "and raised new concerns."
Budget constraints have reduced the number of arrays that will be placed south of the Columbia to just one, but two of them will be deployed north of the river, one off Willapa Bay and the other off Vancouver Island.
In a presentation before the Council last December, Welch presented some preliminary evidence that he said showed about 15 percent of the Snake River spring chinook survived to a point off the north end of Vancouver Island. Another controversial element of his presentation was the inclusion of some sparse data on estuary survival that estimated about 50 percent of the inriver Snake spring run made it from Bonneville Dam to the ocean. Critics say Welch is confusing detection rates with survival rates.
Corps of Engineers and NFMS scientists have begun their own survival studies in the estuary, using much smaller tags which are completely incompatible with Welch's POST instruments. The smaller tags operate on different frequencies and must be used in conjunction with receivers placed much closer together than those used by Welch. With evidence that the large tags affect swimming ability since they weigh about 10 percent as much as the juvenile fish, US scientists hope they will be able to use the smaller ones in fall chinook as well. No estimates for estuary survival were made from last year's initial research, but they expect to get enough data this spring to produce preliminary results by next winter.
The Corps decided not to fund another proposal submitted last fall by OSU researcher Carl Schreck, who planned on using the same acoustic tags as Welch's group.
The lack of collaboration was a point emphasized by the ISRP. Last December, the panel told Welch that his proposal would be improved if he described attempts to collaborate or coordinate with estuary researchers. Welch said he was keen to collaborate and had worked with a NMFS group in 2002 that had proposed a different acoustic tag technology, but later was told that NMFS "had dropped us" from the project. He also noted that his own group has had useful discussions with NMFS plume researcher Ed Casillas. -B. R.
[7] Puget Sound Steelhead Proposed For 'Threatened' ESA Status
NOAA Fisheries announced today that it will propose the Puget Sound steelhead run as threatened, after a scientific review of its status was triggered by a 2004 petition filed by retired WDFW fisheries biologist Sam Wright.
The feds are calling for public comment through June 27, as part of the year-long process for a final determination of the status of the steelhead stock. A 1996 review of West Coast steelhead determined that it did not warrant listing, but did express concern about summer-run populations.
The agency said strong declines in some populations have occurred over the past nine years, despite large cuts in harvest. The stocks are also likely suffering adverse effects from widespread steelhead hatchery practices in the Sound.
"Even if a listing is ultimately required a year from now, the work already accomplished by Shared Strategy, the Sound's grassroots salmon-recovery coalition, will provide a solid foundation for the recovery of steelhead," said regional NOAA Fisheries administrator Bob Lohn. "We'll continue to work with Shared Strategy to assure that any additional effort needed to specifically benefit steelhead is included as part of our formal recovery plan for salmon."
In its new analyses, NOAA Fisheries said it will review the steelhead populations based on its "distinct population segment" policy, rather than the ESU policy it had used in the earlier review. This listing action will only look at the anadromous form of the Puget Sound populations. The resident form of the steelhead, rainbow trout, is under the jurisdiction of the US fish and Wildlife Service. -B. R.
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