[2] Hatchery Reform Group Says Harvest Changes Needed As Well

Preliminary recommendations for changes to hatchery operations in the Lower Columbia River were unveiled at this week's meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. It's the first product of the Hatchery Scientific Review Group, charged with the task of examining hatchery programs throughout the Columbia Basin.

Depending on the stock in question, the HSRG says hatcheries must be managed either to augment wild fish numbers (integrated) or keep hatchery fish away from wild stocks as much as possible (segregated).

The Lower Columbia region is one place where many hatchery fish are found on spawning grounds--40 percent to 70 percent, in some cases. By reducing hatchery spawners, the HSRG says productivity of wild chinook can improve. The wild chinook in the lower Columbia are protected under the ESA, as well as chum and steelhead.

HSRG member Steve Smith, an Oregon-based fisheries consultant, told Council members Aug. 15 that changes to hatchery operations could boost productivity of the nine wild chinook populations in the lower Columbia and increase harvest opportunities if some harvest techniques are reformed. "We could not do it with hatchery reforms alone," he said.

By increasing selective harvest in terminal areas, spatially and temporally segregating hatchery fish for harvest, improving homing, and increasing selective harvest in Oregon and Washington ocean fisheries, Smith said overall harvest numbers could actually increase while allowing more natural fish to spawn.

Such changes would require all hatchery fish to be marked, Smith said. "There's some potential for new fisheries, more toward the terminal areas," he added. "Anything you can do, in any location, to remove those excess hatchery fish--put them into the economy and get them out of the bad biology."

But he said this would not work without improving stream habitat to support more wild spawners. "The other thing we also found is that we can double the benefits of habitat enhancement with the hatchery and harvest reforms. You make the habitat improvements, and the fish that you are allowing to spawn in that improved habitat are going to be much more productive because you're doing better hatchery and harvest actions."

Using the All-H tool developed by consultant Lars Mobrand, the HSRG analyzed several scenarios to see how different harvest and hatchery changes could play out. The HSRG solution calls for reducing ocean harvest rates on lower Columbia stocks from 42 percent (recently cut already from 46 percent) to 36 percent and focusing on catching hatchery stocks in mainstem fisheries, which could boost mainstem harvest rates to 20 percent on hatchery stocks from the current 12 percent. But this scenario would reduce harvest rates on natural stocks from about 12 percent down to 4 percent.

The review group has looked at every facility in the lower river and includes recommendations for management changes.

If the group's recommendations are followed, big changes could be in store for hatcheries like the WDFW facility on the Elochoman River, near Cathlamet, on the Washington side of the Columbia.

According to the report, the Elochoman River once contained the most significant historical fall chinook population in the region, but the recovery goal of 1,400 naturally spawning fish can only be achieved by drastic changes to current management which now releases about 2 million clipped fingerlings every year.

Hatchery broodstock is captured at a weir, where a small but unknown number of natural-origin fish are taken as well. However, the weir has not kept hatchery fish from reaching spawning grounds. In fact, hatchery spawners account for about 65 percent of the total spawning population, which also includes out-of-basin strays, principally from the Rogue River stock raised across the Columbia near Astoria for the Youngs Bay select area fishing program.

Since the natural population is not even replacing itself, the group said the "integrated" program now in place cannot be supported under the current harvest regime. The HSRG said significant decreases in fish releases would improve natural fish numbers, but it would also reduce harvest benefits. And still, it wouldn't likely meet its 1,400-natural fish goal (from the Lower Columbia recovery plan), even with extensive habitat improvements, unless more selective harvest regimes were implemented in the nearby ocean and mainstem fisheries.

Under current conditions, the HSRG estimated that a more selective harvest regime would allow about 600 or more natural spawners to return to the Elochoman. By shutting down the hatchery altogether about 300 spawners would be expected.

So the group examined two alternatives for future operations, in a range that either supported a small, segregated program, or an integrated program if more natural spawners were used for broodstock.

The segregated program would only release about one-tenth of the current number of fingerlings, but could produce from 350 to 580 spawners and another 600 or so for harvest.

An integrated program would release about half a million fingerlings if more natural fish could be used for broodstock (around 20 percent). The HSRG estimated natural-origin escapement could go from 370 fish to 590 fish annually, with the average harvest contribution bumped up slightly, from 1,200 to 1,300 fish a year.

After analyzing the results of those proposed operations, the HSRG recommended that the Elochoman Hatchery be operated on a much smaller scale than it is now, with an integrated program that would release only 190,000 uniquely tagged, but not adipose clipped fingerlings (to identify them on spawning grounds) "to sustain the population until fitness and natural potential has improved to sustain the population." They also called for a more effective weir and an updated hatchery facility.

But to achieve recovery goals, they said harvest impacts on natural fish need to be reduced, habitat must be improved, and hatchery operations changed. Since the population is so important to the lower Columbia ESU, they recommended "every possible step be taken" to achieve the abundance goal.

However, they recommended that ODFW's Big Creek Hatchery, where more than 5 million tule smolts are released every year, should maintain its current production and be operated as a segregated facility. Since Big Creek has the potential for being home to a few hundred natural spawners at most, they said it was best to keep the facility geared for producing harvestable fish. Though their report said the hatchery contributed a lot of strays to other areas of the lower Columbia, by improving homing fidelity and increasing terminal harvest, these adverse effects could be reduced. About 8,000 Big Creek adult chinook are harvested every year. -B. R.

The following links were mentioned in this story:

Lower Columbia Hatchery Analysis

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