[2] Spring Chinook Run Downgraded By 30 Percent
This year's spring chinook run in the Columbia River was expected to be one of the best -- maybe the third-largest since Bonneville Dam's completion in 1938.
But harvest managers announced May 9 that the run -- earlier pegged as being fashionably late -- was now going to be about 33-percent shy of their preseason estimate, coming in around 180,000 fish or less. The original estimate was around 269,000.
Managers were worried enough this year's optimistic management regime may overshoot expected ESA impacts that they cut off all mainstem tribal fisheries May 12, and delayed opening the trout and chinook jack fishery below the Interstate-5 bridge until the middle of June, to reduce impacts to spring chinook.
The managers had closed spring chinook sport fishers below Bonneville Dam on April 21, where their catch, plus release mortalities, added up to nearly 20,000 fish. On May 11, they shut down recreational fishing between Bonneville and John Day dams, which had accounted for another 1,100 fish.
Then, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife closed recreational fishing in the Snake River May 12, due to the recent run-size downgrade. Sporties had caught 240 and released 58 in that area.
So far, managers have estimated non-tribal impacts to be about .14 percent above the 1.9-percent limit.
Tribal fishing in Zone 6 ended May 11, for the time being, with more than 17,000 harvested, including about 8,000 caught for ceremonial and subsistence purposes. The tribes' harvest rate was estimated at 9.6 percent -- above their impact limit of 9.1 percent, as well.
However, limits are figured with a 180,000-fish run prediction. If managers announce further downgrades, the overage might end up considerably higher.
Managers noted in a May 12 staff report, "180,000 fish appears to be at the top end of the range at this point." So far, about 121,000 spring chinook have been counted at Bonneville Dam, but it's hard to estimate the run's future momentum.
National Marine Fisheries Service staffer Jerry Harmon, who supervises the adult trap at Lower Granite Dam, told NW Fishletter that returning fish looked "big and bright" this year, with a lot of them having spent three years in the ocean. He also noted many of the returnees had gillnet marks, and more than half showed evidence of marine mammal bites, probably from seals.
WDFW staffer Robin Ehlke said state and tribal harvest managers met May 19 to review the run again. With a midweek bump in numbers, she said they were feeling more optimistic the 180,000-fish estimate would hold, or maybe even improve. A short spurt in adult returns caused them to boost their run estimate slightly again -- to 190,000. However, by the middle of last week, daily counts at Bonneville had dipped below a thousand, likely affected by high flows. Numbers were back in the 1,500-fish range by yesterday, as flows went down a bit.
Once again, it seems that a recent jack count has turned out to be a fairly unreliable predictor. The 2005 spring chinook return was a disappointment, too, after 2004 jack counts led harvest managers to estimate a 2005 spring run that turned out to be more than 50 percent lower than expected. It ended up around 100,000, a far cry from the 254,000-fish prediction.
The 2004 spring chinook prediction by harvest managers was also way off. They predicted a 360,000-fish return for 2004, based largely on the signal from 2003 jack returns. That would have made it the second largest spring run since 1938. But managers later downgraded the spring run to about 190,000 fish.
Ocean conditions off British Columbia in 2003 were shifting from cooler water temperatures to a warmer state, which reduced primary food production, and likely affected migrating stocks like the spring chinook. By 2004 and 2005, sea surface temperatures in the region were the highest seen in over 50 years. Large schools of hake were observed offshore during these warm water years, and could be responsible for high levels of predation on young salmon.
The most recent run-size downgrade reflects a situation where the 2007 jack returns showed a higher level of survival than the following adult returns. Biologists say it may mean that jacks were actively foraging in a different part of the ocean from the later maturing fish, and encountered better conditions than migrants that passed through the still-warm waters off Vancouver Island in the spring of 2006.
There was an odd decline in coastal upwelling in the spring of 2006 as well, 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.
By late June that year, the largest plankton bloom ever observed off BC occurred , and was easily visible from space. Biologists said it was made up of a coccolithophore species of phytoplankton, and was similar to large blooms in the Bering Sea in the late 1990s that were associated with basic productivity declines. Sea surface temperatures began to decline by July and were below average by that fall, which signaled much improved conditions for salmon.
In any case, this year's adult returns have had little to do with the high inriver survival observed in 2006, which was enhanced by a court-ordered spill regime at federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
With the large jack count last year presaging high expectations for this year's return, little attention had been paid to jack counts this month -- until May 14, that is, when 2,035 jacks were counted, likely a modern record for a single day. Daily counts are running about five times the 10-year average, and have now surpassed last year's totals for May.
In other harvest news, the House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans held a May 15 hearing in Washington, D.C., that focused on California salmon woes, but also drew testimony from several Northwest parties.
The subject of the hearing, "A Perfect Storm: How Faulty Science, River Mismanagement, and Ocean Conditions are Impacting West Coast Salmon Fisheries," gave politicians a chance to fire at their favorite targets, whether it was dams, irrigators, federal agencies or fishermen.
Washington Rep. Jay Inslee (D) excoriated the latest Columbia and Snake River hydrosystem BiOp for failing to effectively deal with growing climate-change issues. He also blamed the poor ocean conditions in some recent years on global warming.
He was rebutted by Portland-based consultant Jim Litchfield, who represented Northwest RiverPartners, a group of BPA customers and river users.
Litchfield pointed out climate change has been a new element included in weighing BiOp actions, but the document has only a 10-year life, so it's unfair to criticize it for not dealing with potential changes in river flows and temperatures 40 years or 50 years hence.
Litchfield's written testimony focused on the adverse effects of hatchery fish and current harvest regimes on stocks on which the region has spent hundreds of millions for recovery. He also noted the growing recognition among Northwest scientists of the important role ocean conditions play in regulating salmon productivity.
"The current hatchery-harvest strategy is now inconsistent with the ESA's mandate to preserve every unique life history," Litchfield wrote. "This is a fisheries management strategy that must be reformed so that hatcheries can assist in recovery of ESA-listed populations."
The fishing community was represented by Washington-based troller Joel Kawahara, who makes a living from the mixed-stock coastal fisheries that Litchfield said caught nearly half the ESA-listed fall chinook bound for the Snake River.
Kawahara bashed the latest BiOp and blamed federal agencies for failing to meet 1990 Alaska harvest goals set by the original Pacific Salmon Treaty. Conceding that nearly 30 percent of the Alaska troll catch originates from the Columbia Basin, he told the politicians the federal government had not fairly shared the burden of salmon restoration in the basin.
New negotiations over the latest round of treaty talks made news last week (see story 1) after rumors surfaced that the United States had offered to lease or buy fishing rights from Canadian trollers fishing off Vancouver Island, where changes in the timing of their fishing regimes has increased the catches of lower Columbia tules and Puget Sound chinook, both listed for protection under the ESA. -B. R.
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