[1] Some Sea Lions May Die Over ESA-Salmon Diet

The federal government has given the go-ahead to kill up to 80 or so California sea lions that are expected to be munching through this spring's chinook run in the Columbia River. Oregon and Washington asked for permission to take the drastic step more than two years ago, after the marine mammals began taking increasing amounts of spring chinook near Bonneville Dam.

Last year, Corps of Engineers' biologists estimated the sea lions had consumed four percent of the run at the dams -- more than 3,000 spring chinook. Scientists expect they eat a lot more than that, since the mammals roam up and down the river below the dam. Some testimony at a Congressional hearing suggested their overall take could be four times as much.

With about one-third of the spring chinook run listed for protection under the ESA and the high costs of mitigating hydro effects, some policymakers felt enough was enough, pointing to the sea lion fiasco that occurred in Seattle in the 1990s. Federal and state bureaucrats dithered for years over increasing sea lion predation at the Ballard Locks while the marine mammals decimated a wild steelhead run that still hasn't recovered.

Several Northwest politicians tried to speed up the process to authorize lethal removal, but their proposed legislation to do an end run around the Marine Mammal Protection Act hasn't been successful.

The sea lions have been protected since the early 1970s, when Congress passed the MMPA and their numbers have grown into the hundreds of thousands since then.

But the lengthy process has proved even quicker than Congress. It began when a task force was convened to weigh alternatives after learning how ineffective hazing had been in the vicinity of the dam.

The task force voted 17-1 to support lethal removal, with a lone dissenting vote from a representative of the Humane Society.

Ten members of the task force preferred a lethal alternative aimed at reducing salmon predation to a rolling average of 1 percent within 6 years. Seven members preferred another lethal alternative that would have reduced predation 0.5 percent in the observation area below Bonneville Dam.

Before making their final decision, the feds reviewed the task force report and public comment, along with information from the Marine Mammal Commission. Then they developed a draft environmental assessment, which was released for public comment Jan. 18 and finalized Mar. 12.

The feds say the states may trap predatory sea lions and euthanize them after a 48-hour wait if a pre-approved permanent holding facility such as a zoo or aquarium is not available. They have already identified more than 60 sea lions that could be killed.

Other predatory sea lions could by shot at the dam if they are hauled out on the concrete structure or within 50 feet of it. The feds say a marksman must use a shotgun at close range, or a hunting rifle from greater distances, and "ammunition shall not contain lead."

Sea lion predation on salmon has been building in recent years. The feds say fish with scars from sea lions have increased from 11 percent in 1999 to 37 percent in 2005.

One sea lion, known as C 265, who has been in the neighborhood for the past five years, was trapped near Astoria last year, and weighed in at 559 pounds. After being radio-tagged and tracked -- the pinniped was down near Newport, Oregon in late March, but spent most of his time in April and May feeding on salmon at Bonneville -- he was trapped once again at Astoria May 21 and tipped the scales at 1,043 pounds. That's a gain of 484 pounds in two-and-a-half months.

After the decision was announced, the Humane Society said it was disappointed, especially since the states have agreed to boost harvest rates this spring in expectations of a huge run. Actually, the non-Indian harvesters will stick with the same 2-percent impact, but tribal harvesters get a boost to 10 percent, up from 8 percent last year, thanks to a sliding scale that increases harvest rates when expected runs become large.

"The claim that sea lions must die to protect salmon is entirely bogus, and more than a little disingenuous," said John Balzar, HSUS senior vice president of communications. "If the government really thought salmon are so critically imperiled that we need to start slaughtering their natural predators, they wouldn't allow fishermen to catch three times more fish than sea lions are eating." The group has not decided whether it will sue to stop the action.

"NOAA has made the right decision at the right time," said Fidelia Andy, chairwoman of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and Yakama Nation tribal member. "The salmon need relief and the public deserves remedy to this serious problem. We recognize the strong sentiment and emotions on all sides of this matter. We ask for the public's patience and support, while management activities proceed."

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) said with the spring salmon runs only weeks away, it was critical to implement this plan. "It has taken over two years to reach this point, and I am hopeful that this effort is able to move forward without getting blocked by lawsuits."

A new forecast tool being developed by the University of Washington's Columbia Basin Research group estimates this year's spring chinook run should reach its peak around April 22. -Bill Rudolph

[2] NW Salmon Runs Dodge A Bullet

For years, Northwest fishermen have looked longingly at the huge salmon runs in California, fueled largely by stocks from the Sacramento River. But no more.

Federal scientists say a massive failure of the normal upwelling phenomenon in the spring and early summer of 2005 has led to a collapse of the Central Valley's fall chinook runs -- mostly in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries.

As late as 2004, California sport and commercial fishers were hauling in more than half a million fall chinook south of Point Arena with another 300,000 fish left over to escape to Central Valley rivers.

This year, harvest managers forecast only about 157,000 fish bound for the Golden Gate, before any harvest at all. Only about 59,000 of those are expected to head for the Sacramento.

"We are not dismissing other potential causes for this year's low salmon returns," said Usha Varanasi, Director of NOAA Fisheries Service Science Center for the Northwest Region, in a March 3 press release. "But the widespread pattern of low returns along the West Coast for two species of salmon indicates an environmental anomaly occurred in the California Current in 2005."

The scientists said a southerly shift in the jet stream in 2005 kept favorable northwest winds from building in early spring to kick-start the upwelling process. The northerly winds displace the surface water, causing nutrients to rise from the deep as cold water rises to fill the surface layer. The process causes the surface layer of the California Current to flow in a southerly direction through the spring and summer. The current moves north in winter months.

The bad news will likely catch up next year with the Klamath River, where most returning fish are four-year-olds as opposed to the Central Valley's three-year-olds. But this year, the Klamath is expected to be home to quite a healthy return.

In fact, ocean abundance levels of the Klamath fall chinook -- 191,000 fish -- are estimated at higher levels than the Central Valley run, which is expected to be the lowest on record.

At last week's PFMC meeting, the Council recommended that NMFS take inseason action to close the Cape Falcon to Humbug Mountain commercial and recreational salmon fisheries between March 15 and at least April 30, close the Fort Bragg recreational salmon fishery between April 1 and at least April 14, and close the Fort Bragg commercial salmon fishery April 7-25.

They also identified three potential harvest options for dealing with the problem -- including the possibility of closing the commercial troll fishery from the OR/CA border south for the entire season.

The situation is a lot rosier in the Northwest, where the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's estimates of fall chinook runs on the Columbia River add up to more than 366,000 fish this year, an obvious improvement that reflects much better conditions off the Oregon and Washington coasts than in recent years.

Three chinook harvest options on the table for ocean fisheries north of Cape Falcon are similar to last year's -- when they picked an overall non-Indian catch of 35,000 chinook. But low estimates of coho escapement means coho fishing will be severely limited this year, compared to 2007.

The backbone of the Northwest fall run is the upriver bright stock from the Hanford Reach, which is estimated at about 163,000 chinook. Managers consider that a "strong" return. It's about 70 percent of the 10-year average.

The second largest component is the hatchery tule run heading back to the pool above Bonneville Dam. About 87,000 are expected, much better than the last two years (14,600 in 2007) and about even with the 10-year average.

The weakest link -- the ESA-listed lower Columbia wild fall chinook -- is not expected to do well, with only 3,800 estimated. Last year, about 4,300 returned, less than half the preseason prediction.

It's obvious that predicting fish returns can be a pretty iffy business, especially when Mother Nature throws a curve ball once in a while. The fish managers who predicted the Central Valley returns last year were off by a factor of 3. They relied on a simple regression based on jack counts to make their estimate. The 14,500 jacks that returned in 2006 was the lowest number on record up to that point and close to levels in 1990 and 1991.

The 2006 jack count wasn't great, but it still caused managers to bump harvest rates up 65 percent last year from 2006, when their low expectations for the Klamath run had them adjusting catches down accordingly.

The story of those decisions is contained in a table of figures in a preseason report released in late February. It shows that ocean chinook landings (sport and commercial) south of California's Point Arena (about 200 miles north of San Francisco) totaled nearly 112,000 chinook in 2007, more than 20,000 fish above the number of hatchery and natural fall chinook that made it back to the Sacramento and its tributaries. But the catch was only about one-third of what managers had expected.

And even worse news was that the Central Valley fall jack count had plunged to about 6,000 (only 2,000 in the Sacramento) in 2007, from a long-term average in the 40,000 range.

In late January, the Council issued a statement saying Central Valley fall chinook conservation objectives would likely not be met even if the 2008 ocean fishing season was completely curtailed.

A total closure could have devastating impacts to coastal communities -- $60 million or more, according to the PFMC. On Mar. 20, the Council said it was asking NMFS to lead a multi-agency task force to investigate up to 50 potential causes for the Sacramento chinook collapse. It acknowledged that "many biologists believe a combination of human-caused and natural factors are to blame; including freshwater instream water withdrawals, habitat alterations, dam operations, construction, pollution, and changes in hatchery operations."

"After everyone asks how this could have happened, the question then becomes 'is there anything we can do to fix it?'" said Council chair Don Hansen in a press release. "The Council will take an immediate step to fix what it has authority to fix, which is appropriately managing the ocean fisheries that affect this valuable resource."

The issue struck home when mid-level policy makers in the Columbia Basin met Mar. 6 to hear a report by NOAA Fisheries scientists on ocean and estuary issues.

Researcher Ed Casillas explained how his group has been developing a series of biological and climate indicators to help scientists get a better idea of what to expect from future salmon runs.

Casillas said his group has told California harvest managers that if they had looked beyond the jack counts to what was actually occurring off the California coast in 2005, they would have had a cause for concern because "the world wasn't very good out there."

He said managers should look at additional indices to temper their forecasts so people won't be caught off guard.

Casillas said good conditions for fish off the Northwest coast began early in 2007, but fizzled fast. However, there was a lot of the kind of plankton around that young salmon like to eat.

Trawl catches of young coho were high in June, but the lowest in 10 years by September, while sea surface temperatures climbed very high in July and August. But overall, the NOAA Fisheries indicators showed much more hospitable conditions for both chinook and coho than a few years ago.

Casillas said managers should probably expect to see ocean conditions change more rapidly than in the past, when 20- to 30-year cycles of alternating warm and cool ocean climate regimes seemed more the norm. Since 2000, conditions have already flip-flopped from a few cool salmon-friendly years to a really warm year, followed by several intermediate years and now back into a cool year like conditions around the turn of the century.

But even taking ocean conditions into account doesn't automatically ensure success. Managers blew last year's Oregon wild coastal coho predictions big time, even with a model that factored in ocean conditions. The run came in more than 400 percent lower than their preseason estimate.

NOAA Fisheries scientist Pete Lawson told NW Fishletter that the poor coho returns had everybody "scratching their heads," since ocean conditions had been pretty good during the stock's tenure in the ocean, and that the high preseason prediction was based on those good conditions.

"Obviously, something has decoupled," Lawson said.

There was an odd decline in coastal upwelling in the spring of 2006, after it started off with a bang in April. However, winds changed, and upwelling stopped altogether in May, but perked up again later in the summer.

It may be just as well that the Columbia's spring chinook run leaves the neighborhood as soon as it hits the ocean. This year's return to Bonneville Dam is expected to be possibly the third highest since 1938. -B. R.

[3] Puget Sound Stocks Still Doing OK

The extremely poor forecast for California's largest salmon run doesn't mean Puget Sound stocks will tank this year. Nearly 245,000 hatchery and natural fall chinook are expected to return, with more than 59,000 of them natural. And some of the Sound's biggest runs, like on the Skagit River, are expected to be exceptionally healthy, according to the late February forecast from the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

The Skagit should produce nearly half of the Sound's natural run with a forecast of about 24,000 fish, which would compare to the 2004 and 2005 returns, two of the highest counts since the mid-1980s.

More than 35,000 hatchery chinook are expected for the Nooksack/ Samish watersheds.

Another 6,500 naturals are predicted for the Snohomish River, along with about 9,000 hatchery chinook.

South Puget Sound is expected to produce about 21,000 natural chinook and 101,000 hatchery chinook, with another 34,000 headed for Hood Canal hatcheries.

WDFW managers expect the Sound's coho runs to come in around 614,000 fish, about 16,000 less than last year's prediction, but they aren't optimistic about Columbia River coho returns, where they have predicted about 196,000 coho to show up. That's nearly 266,000 fewer than last year's run.

"We haven't seen a Columbia River coho salmon forecast this low since the late 90s," said WDFW deputy director Phil Anderson. "Poor ocean conditions that persisted off the West Coast in 2005 and 2006 appear to be the primary factor in the dramatic decline of Columbia River coho, as well as chinook originating from central Oregon and California river systems."

The poor forecast is likely to seriously constrain the recreational coho fishery off the Washington and Oregon coasts this year.

But chum salmon returns to Hood Canal and other parts of the Sound should be strong, say fish managers. They are expecting close to 2 million of them this year. -B. R.

[4] Science Panel Questions TRT's 'Gap' Analysis

A technical analysis quantifying the overall improvement in fish numbers needed to recover Interior Columbia Basin salmon populations is too confusing, "potentially" misleading, and even contains too many typos, an independent science panel said in a report released earlier this month.

Still, federal scientists like Mike Ford, Director of the Conservation Biology Program at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, said the panel's review of the Interior Columbia Technical Review Team's latest product was "basically positive."

The Independent Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB) is frequently used by NOAA Fisheries and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to weigh in on controversial scientific issues related to salmon recovery.

Ford said his agency has used them to review other ICTRT products like its population viability criteria.

The ISAB's latest findings were included in a concise, 12-page report released March 7 and posted on the NPCC's Web site. The report answered several questions about the Interior Columbia Technical Recovery Team's analyses raised by federal scientist Usha Varanasi, who heads the NOAA Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

The TRT, a mix of federal, state and tribal agency scientists, has spent the past few years sorting out salmon runs and developing an analysis of extinction risk for ESA-listed salmon and steelhead stocks in the interior Columbia Basin, which includes the Snake River runs. The TRT's gap analysis was the third step in a 10-step process outlined by NOAA Fisheries to get to the new hydro opinion.

The TRT has released several reports, including an interim "gap analysis" that estimated the survival improvements needed by different runs to ensure a low risk of extinction over the next 100 years. But in the most optimistic scenario developed by the team, it said Snake River spring chinook would still need an overall 29-percent boost in numbers to reduce extinction risk to less than five percent.

To reduce that risk below one percent, it said, the fish would need a 150-percent boost over their life-cycle.

In its final report, released last November, the TRT found median gap for the Snake spring/summer chinook around 33 percent under the most optimistic ocean conditions and improved survival from future BiOp actions. The gap needed to recover Upper Columbia spring chinook has shrunk from 53 percent in the interim report to 9 percent in the final.

For Upper Columbia steelhead, the interim gap was more than 300 percent, now it's down to 157 percent.

And for Snake River steelhead, the interim gap was a negative 23 percent, which meant no gap had to be filled. But the TRT's final analysis suggests that the stock is in worse shape and needs a 31-percent boost in survival in addition to what is gained from the new BiOp actions.

But the ISAB says the gap analysis "seems not to distinguish between gaps caused by unacceptable natural productivity and unacceptable abundance resulting from a shortage of suitable habitat. A pair of gap measurements would shed more light on both the nature and extent of factors limiting recovery."

They also pointed out that the gap analysis was based on only two of the four criteria for ESA recovery goals -- abundance and productivity -- since they can be more easily modeled than the other criteria of spatial structure and diversity.

One of the questions asked by NOAA Fisheries' Varanasi was whether the TRT results could be replicated.

The science panel's answer seems to be no, since it pointed out that there was "essentially no outside-the-group documentation (i.e., literature, peer-reviewed or not) for the methodologies and the rationale for using them. This may not be critical to the report, but if it is, then some more use of important literature is necessary. There is plenty of it out there for some of the topics."

But the review didn't take issue with the numbers themselves. However, others say they had only been able to reproduce the TRT's results after months of interaction with some TRT members and their spreadsheets.

And some regional scientists, in years past, have argued that such exercises are futile because of the huge data needs (see NW Fishletter 173).

The ISAB did say that the life-history matrix models for spring chinook and steelhead models developed by the TRT appeared to be sound. But the advisory board criticized the TRT's analysis for not including confidence bands in their gap analysis, which would have allowed readers to get a better idea of the uncertainty levels involved, rather than simply treating uncertainty "as a need for [a] higher restoration target."

The ISAB also felt the recovery team didn't use a future scenario of ocean conditions that was pessimistic enough, because "oceanic conditions are probably going to get worse for salmon than they have been in recent years, perhaps substantially worse."

However, the ISAB itself may get into an argument with NOAA Fisheries over just how much pessimism should be injected into those future scenarios.

Last October, in remarks that followed the release of the latest draft BiOp, regional NOAA administrator Bob Lohn said the most important assumption to make about predicting future fish numbers was how ocean conditions would affect them.

Lohn said the data set being used in the BiOp analysis had only four years favorable to salmon and 18 years of unfavorable conditions, so the feds' own analysis of the future was likely very conservative. If near-term ocean conditions are similar to what has occurred since the turn of the century, "the results obtained should be considerably better than those displayed in this opinion," he added.

But faced with such huge interim survival gaps developed by the TRT, the BiOp writers developed a 24-year risk of extinction metric more in sync with the 10-year planning life of the next hydro BiOp, while still paying lip service to the misty 100-year extinction-risk horizon so much in favor among conservation biologists.

The feds also built a "trending towards recovery" argument that said a stock's risk of extinction must be reduced if its numbers are growing, as most are these days. This has led to recent analyses that paint a rosier view of salmon futures, with less chance that weak stocks will wink out over the short-term.

The TRT analysis itself ran into technical problems in several areas. Results were highly variable, depending on such things as the time frame of past data, and the choice of a quasi-extinction threshold -- that is, whether the run had shrunk down to 50, 10, or simply one single fish.

In some cases, spring chinook runs in some Idaho streams had actually gone to zero in the mid-1990s, only to bounce back a few years later.

Plaintiffs in the BiOp litigation have called the feds for shelving the TRT results in favor of the 24-year analysis, arguing the point in status conferences with federal Judge James Redden, who is supervising the BiOp remand process.

Earthjustice attorney Todd True argued last December in Redden's courtroom that the federal jeopardy analysis was flawed because it didn't use results generated by the TRT.

But the feds said the TRT results were focused on recovery, while the BiOp analysis is focused on what fish wonks call the "survival" prong of the jeopardy standard, while the TRT's long-term gap analysis is geared toward the "recovery" prong of the jeopardy standard

At that hearing, federal attorney Robert Gulley said the feds had expanded their jeopardy analysis from the TRT results to include six additional ways of examining the trends of the stocks and what was needed to keep them on the road to recovery.

Gulley ran head-on into comments filed by the state of Oregon alleging the draft BiOp was not guided by science, but, rather, was manipulated by federal agencies to justify policy objectives that subordinated the needs of listed fish.

Gulley countered, claiming the state of Oregon failed to explain how the ISAB analyzed two issues -- the questions of latent mortality and the COMPASS model used to estimate survivals from different hydro operations -- and came up with results much different from the state's position.

Now that the ISAB has weighed in on the TRT recovery gaps, federal attorneys are sure to mention the board's review if plaintiffs litigate over the new BiOp that is expected May 5.

Lower Columbia tribes had also complained that the feds had disregarded the TRT results, but sources say the action agencies are close to reaching agreement over MOAs that would provide more salmon-recovery actions for tribes in return for their support of the upcoming salmon plan.

Redden said in December that he might use some kind of independent science panel to judge controversial salmon issues in the salmon plan -- and a list of names of ex-ISAB members has already been given to him. -B. R.

[5] Action Agencies Reverse Course On Hatchery Spill Decision

Action agencies announced Mar. 6 they would provide spill at Bonneville Dam for a 7.6-million fish hatchery release after all.

In recent weeks, through two forums of Columbia Basin technical folks and policymakers, the Corps of Engineers said it would not spill for the Spring Creek Hatchery fall chinook this year because the new corner collector would be operating at the dam.

The Corps said the collector is the best way for fish to pass the dam, with nearly 100-percent survival for juvenile spring chinook. The feds weren't swayed by fish managers who touted an analysis that purported to show benefits from spill versus the collector route. The analysis even admitted its results weren't "statistically significant."

But Oregon requested the Corps' decision be elevated to the federal agency executive level for a final call. That meeting never took place because tribes and agencies had been talking about the issue "on the side," and a deal was struck by the afternoon or Mar. 5.

Details were announced the following morning at the Implementation Team meeting in Portland. Spill at Bonneville was slated to begin March 6 at midnight and run continuously for 78 hours at 36 kcfs, while turbines would be operated at the low end of the highest 1 percent efficiency range to reduce possible mortality.

According to the agreement, this will be the last year the spill will occur, since agencies have committed to moving the hatchery production below the dam by 2010, or 2012 at the latest. Sources say the details are part of larger MOAs between Action Agencies and tribes that spell out future actions to improve fish numbers in return for the lower Columbia tribes' support of the next hydro BiOp.

The tribes want more hatchery production of upriver bright fall chinook above Bonneville Dam to make up for the tules that will no longer swim through their fishing zone, but no mention was made of any final action on that score.

The spill decision still had some parties frustrated.

"We're aware an agreement has been reached," said Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners. "But we still don't see any scientific rationale for the hatchery fish spill at Bonneville Dam if we've got the $55-million corner collector in use."

The 35-kcfs spill level is only about one-third of what fish managers wanted. It was expected to cost BPA about $860,000. -B. R.

[6] Feds Will Look At West Coast Smelt Populations

NOAA Fisheries announced Mar. 12 it has accepted a petition from the Cowlitz Tribe to examine smelt populations for possible listing for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Smelt, also known as candlefish or eulachon, have long been prized by tribal cultures for their oil. Many Northwest tribes still use "ooligan" oil as part of their native cuisine, especially in BC and Alaska. Lewis and Clark ate plenty of them during the winter of 1805 when they were hunkered down at Astoria. In fact, the word "Oregon" may actually be a variant of the Cree Indian pronunciation of the word "ooligan," and the source for the modern word "eulachon," according to the petition.

In recent years, harvestable levels of eulachon in Columbia River tributaries have declined significantly. "Because the prospect of eulachon becoming extinct is wholly unacceptable to us, we are asking the Secretary of Commerce to list eulachon as a threatened or endangered species under the ESA," said the tribe's petition.

The petition seeks designation of smelt populations in United States rivers south of the Canadian border as a "distinct population segment," even though there seems to be little genetic difference between US runs and those in BC. However, a regulatory finding that allows the DPS would mean the agency will consider US stocks a sub-group of the entire species as a candidate for listing under the ESA.

The feds said they will assemble a team of experts "to examine in detail the health of smelt populations along the coast and the causes for the apparent declines." By fall, they said the agency could propose ESA protection for some or all of these smelt populations. "A formal proposal would be followed by a year-long period of peer review, public comment and public hearings before any final decision about official ESA listing is made."

Eulachon harvests bounced back in 2001 and were relatively high through 2004, but have dropped significantly since then. Warm ocean conditions may have played a big role in the decline, said the petition, but it also noted that "variability and/or trends in ocean conditions are for the most part unpredictable and are not able to be manipulated by humans. This leads to confusion about the primary causes and consequences of population declines and what we can do (or cease doing) to restore them."

NMFS turned down a 1999 petition for a formal review of the smelt populations filed by retired WDFW biologist Sam Wright. They said not enough information was available to determine if the Columbia River population was a DPS. They also said harvest data didn't provide a reliable measure of abundance, but the stock had shown an ability to rebound, and ocean conditions probably played the most important role in controlling abundance. -B. R.

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