[1] U.S., Canada Cut New Harvest Deal To Save More Chinook

U.S. and Canadian negotiators announced May 22 a new, 10-year agreement for reducing harvest impacts by B.C. and Alaska fishermen on chinook stocks from Washington and Oregon, including some listed for ESA protection.

It comes with a hefty price tag -- $30 million paid to Canada for reducing their harvest by 30 percent, and $7 million to Alaska for reducing their chinook impacts in the state's southeast region by 15 percent.

The agreement, which still must be OK'd by both governments, also paves the way for the possibility of a mark-selective ocean fishery off Vancouver Island, which could increase wild ESA-listed spawner numbers in Northwest rivers.

"I appreciate the work of all parties in reaching this new pact, which will lead to fishery-management measures that restore and protect one of Washington's most important natural resources," said Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire. "This is good news not just for current Washington residents but for future generations."

According to her press release, the agreement, if approved, would result in approximately one million fewer chinook salmon harvested in Canada and Alaska over the 10-year life of the pact, with about half of the saved chinook coming from Washington and Oregon waters.

The trim to Alaska harvest should allow more listed fall chinook to return to the Snake River and more listed springers back to the Willamette, while adding to returns of unlisted upriver brights heading to the Hanford Reach, and fall chinook stocks from Vancouver Island.

"The reductions in catch in northern ocean fisheries will increase annual returns of summer and fall chinook to the Upper Columbia River by 3-7 percent, a significant improvement from the 1999 agreement," said Olney Patt Jr., Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission executive director and U.S. Tribal Commissioner on the Pacific Salmon Commission.

The Canadian cutbacks should also improve returns of ESA-listed wild tules in the lower Columbia and Puget Sound chinook.

"With this agreement, we make a substantial down payment in our efforts to return Washington's weak wild chinook salmon populations back to sustainable levels," said WDFW Director Jeff Koenings. "By allowing more salmon back to Washington's waters, this precautionary management agreement provides us a unique opportunity to fulfill our stewardship obligations to future generations. We cannot waste this opportunity."

The new agreement also calls for $3 million from the United States to Canada to evaluate and consider implementing mark-selective fisheries for chinook salmon; $7 million to Washington state from the U.S. federal government to improve the productivity of ESA-listed Puget Sound wild chinook salmon through habitat improvements; and approximately $15 million divided between the two nations for improving salmon fisheries research and data collection.

The 18-month negotiation also spells out new arrangements for coho, chum and transboundary rivers.

"From my position as Executive Secretary, it has been particularly gratifying to observe the Commission's progress throughout these difficult negotiations, and to see that the Commission now functions well enough to achieve this enormous success," said Don Kowal, executive secretary of the Pacific Salmon Commission.

"There was a time, prior to the 1999 Agreement, when this kind of success simply was not achievable by the Commission," Kowal continued. "The new agreement is designed to provide for effective conservation of the resource, and to address the interests of the people affected by it."

Svend Brandt-Erichsen, a Seattle attorney who has represented several fishing-conservation groups in litigation challenging status-quo salmon harvests, was encouraged by the new harvest regime, but still had reservations about its future effectiveness.

"It is encouraging to see that Canada appears willing to experiment with mark-selective fishing in the West Coast Vancouver Island fishery," said Brandt-Erichsen, "and that the harvest in the WCVI fishery will be reduced significantly from what was allowed under the 1999 treaty. This should help Puget Sound and Lower Columbia native stocks, in particular. The reductions in the Southeast Alaska fishery also are likely to benefit weaker Canadian stocks.

"However, significant harvest of ESA-listed chinook would occur under this treaty," he said, "and we have not yet seen an evaluation of the impacts of that harvest. I expect we will have to wait for NMFS' biological opinion for that information."

The brunt of the Canadian harvest cuts is expected to be borne by the 160-boat commercial troll fleet that plies the waters off Vancouver Island. Salmon licenses for that area are worth around $100,000 apiece on the current market, but not all of the funding to be supplied by the U.S. is expected to buy out fishermen. Some of it will likely go to help businesses adversely affected by the cuts as well.

The troll fleet is last in line for chinook allocation, behind native fishers and sportfishers, a policy that began in the 1990s after a major overhaul of B.C. fisheries management, and it could doom the fleet, said Kathy Scarfo of the West Coast Trollers Association. "We take the full hit," she told the Toronto-based newspaper The Globe and Mail. "So if there are 100,000 fish [to be caught] off the west coast of Vancouver Island, the recreational fleet will take 50,000, the natives will get 5,000 ... and if they take 30 percent off the top that leaves 15,000 [for the troll fleet] and that would support about 15 boats."

The Vancouver Island troll fleet fishes earlier than during previous harvest regimes to keep from hammering B.C.'s own weak chinook stocks. In 2006, they caught only 104,000 chinook, but in so doing, they hooked more Columbia River tules and Puget Sound chinook than the old harvest model used by the two countries had estimated.

But the model, like the treaty, needs an overhaul. It tends to underestimate abundance when stocks are building, and overestimate abundance when it is declining.

Some of the money generated by the recent talks will go to improve it.

The Pacific Salmon Commission's chinook technical committee found its estimate of overall chinook abundance was lower than thought last year when they pegged allocations. That means Alaskans caught about 60,000 more chinook than they should have, given post-season abundance indexes. That's about 20 percent of their allowable catch of treaty chinook. Northern B.C. trollers also caught about 35,000 chinook more than real abundance would have suggested, and Vancouver Island fishers caught about 20,000 more than the post-season analysis would have allowed. -Bill Rudolph

[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.

[3] BPA'S 2007 Fish Bill Adds Up To $716 Million

BPA spent more than $700 million on fish and wildlife last year, according to a report compiled by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council for Congress that has been released for public comment.

About $400 million of last year's costs was due to a combination of forgone hydro revenues from operations for fish ($283 million) and power purchases ($121 million) to make up for those operations.

Since 1978, BPA has spent $9.4 billion on fish and wildlife, with more than $3 billion going for power purchases to meet load requirements, and another $2 billion in forgone revenues.

In 2001 alone, the second-worst water year in BPA records, the agency was on the hook for $1.5 billion in forgone revenues and power purchases, a sum that accounted for half of BPA's F&W spending from 1978 to 2001. Power prices were sky-high that spring, with heavy-load Mid-Columbia hub prices averaging $262/MWh.

Since 1978, BPA has spent almost $4 billion on the direct F&W program and capital expenditures, along with another $1.5 billion in fixed expenses for bonds issued to pay for capital investments in fish-passage improvements at dams.

Another $923 million was paid to the U.S. Treasury since 1978 for the power-generation share of other federal agency expenditures to mitigate power impacts on Columbia Basin fish and wildlife.

Over the years, state fisheries agencies have captured a good share of the direct program funding for fish-enhancement projects and for other recovery actions. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has raked in more than $100 million since 1978, about $20 million in just the last two years.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has received about $200 million in ratepayer money and $20 million in the past couple of years.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has captured about $136 million overall, and about $21 million over the past two years, while Montana fish agencies have landed more than $44 million over the years, but only about $3 million in 2006 and 2007.

Major tribes in the basin have also been beneficiaries of major funding decisions. The Yakamas have received about $140 million since 1978 and more than $24 million in the past two years.

The Nez Perce received about $147 million over the years, and about $24 million over the past couple of years.

The Umatilla tribes got $66 million in direct F&W funds, which included about $12 million over the past two years.

The Warm Springs tribes captured about $40 million over the years to pay for projects, and about $8 million in the past two years, while the Colville tribes have been recipients of about $56 million in BPA's direct F&W funding since 1978, including about $15 million in the past two years.

BPA's direct program costs are expected to almost double with the signing of the recent fish and wildlife accords with some tribes and states that trade more F&W spending for support of the new hydro BiOp. -B. R.

[4] High Flows, Debris, Affect Fish Passage At Dams

Dam operators and fish managers agreed last week to raise screens at Bonneville Dam's second powerhouse to reduce injury to juvenile fish caused by debris pinned to the screens in front of the turbines. The screens are designed to guide fish into the dam's smolt bypass system.

Snow melt from the recent warm weather had increased flows at Bonneville to about 400 kcfs and flows climbed even higher by the end of last week. The high flows were likely responsible for the levels of trash at the dam.

By May 20, about 19 percent of the smolts examined showed descaling, some very severe. Fish managers made a formal request to run turbines at the low end of 1-percent efficiency to reduce powerhouse flows and boost flows to a 125-percent total dissolved-gas limit.

Managers decided that cleaning the screens would take too long, compared to the immediate benefits of their temporary removal. They also decided to operate several turbines at PH II at the low end of 1-percent efficiency, and others at the mid-point of 1-percent efficiency. This was expected to slightly reduce flows through the powerhouse, but the increase in spill from the change was expected to raise TDG levels by only 3 to 5 percent.

Meanwhile, TDG gas levels spiked at lower Snake dams from peak flows that pushed toward 200 kcfs by last Thursday. Gas levels in the tailrace of Lower Granite Dam nearly reached 134 percent, as more than half the river went over the spillway, well above the 120-percent tailrace gas cap.

This spring, more than 6 million spring chinook and steelhead smolts have been barged from lower Snake River dams. Numbers of juvenile spring chinook are tailing off fast in the Snake from the peak day on May 8 at Lower Granite Dam, when around half a million young salmon passed the dam.

After flows peaked, dam managers decided to screen one turbine intake at Bonneville Dam before the next pulse of Snake River smolts show up.-B. R.

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