[1] Enviros, Oregon Go After New Hydro BiOp
Longstanding BiOp plaintiffs fired the first shot across the bow of the new hydro BiOp last week, by filing a "supplemental" complaint in federal court.
But the coalition of conservation and fishing groups, Indian tribes and the state of Oregon that stood together during the last seven years of litigation aimed at removing the four lower Snake dams (NWF v. NMFS) is considerably smaller now.
Three lower Columbia River tribes have promised to support the new BiOp in return for millions of dollars worth of salmon restoration projects. And the Nez Perce may not join in this time round, either. By press time, tribal attorney David Cummings had not responded to repeated calls.
However, that hasn't stopped environmental attorneys from characterizing the latest several-thousand-page BiOp from NOAA Fisheries as only a slightly different version of the old 2000 BiOp they had successfully challenged in court.
They also attacked it on a couple of new fronts, knocking the new BiOp for failing to deal with effects of climate change on ESA-listed fish and short-changing an analysis of possible hydro impacts on recently listed resident killer whales in Puget Sound.
"Notwithstanding the extraordinary length of these documents and a relentless effort to convey a sense of complexity in their analysis," says their June 16 filing, "the core judgment about whether the 2008 RPA [Reasonable Prudent Alternatives] for FCRPS operations avoids jeopardy or destruction or adverse modification of critical habitat for ESA-listed salmon and steelhead, is remarkably thin, subjective, biased by a persistent optimism, and ultimately at odds with the best available scientific information as well as the law and this Court's guidance for how to comply with it."
They also chided the feds for not sticking to the conceptual framework for jeopardy analysis originally outlined in the collaborative process with tribes and states to come up with the new BiOp, a process that environmental plaintiffs were not a part of.
But they used language from earlier criticism by the tribes that took issue with the feds in their latest deliberations for not evaluating "a major overhaul" of the hydrosystem, even though three of those four tribes have come out supporting the new BiOp.
Some of these issues were already aired last December in a status hearing conducted by federal Judge James Redden in his Portland courtroom, when Department of Justice attorney Robert Gulley defended the draft BiOp, and said the feds' jeopardy analysis was expanded from the technical recovery team's "survival gap" analysis to add six other updated metrics to back its case for most stocks "trending towards recovery."
The best scenario developed by the Interior Columbia TRT found that Snake River spring chinook would still need an overall 29-percent boost in numbers to achieve a level that the technicians said would reduce extinction risk over the next 100 years to less than five percent.
The new BiOp analysis took a cue from the 2000 BiOp's extinction risk analysis, but used a shorter-term view of 24 years from the 100-year time frame.
There were always plenty of critics of the TRT results, but the BiOp writers included the extinction analysis to please the judge. Critics said the TRT's use of the basic assumptions behind population viability analysis, which was originally developed to analyze endangered birds and mammals, didn't take into account the huge natural variation in salmon populations.
Also, the risk-averse assumptions that the TRT built into their model weren't based on science, but were more related to what the team felt should be included, they said.
The TRT's definition of extinction--a population of less than 50 individuals--didn't jibe with reality when stocks in some Idaho creeks have actually gone to zero, then rebounded into the hundreds the following year, the critics said.
The state of Oregon, another major party to the latest complaint, told the judge at the status hearing that the feds had manipulated the science--a charge that environmental attorneys repeated in their latest filing.
The complaint also alleges that the new BiOp does not use the "best, available science" because it actually reduces beneficial hydro operations for fish by ending spill at lower Snake collector dams in the late spring to allow for a maximized barging strategy feds say is designed to improve steelhead survival.
This strategy is supported by the feds' salmon passage model called COMPASS, which has received several positive reviews by the Independent Scientific Advisory Board. The ISAB is currently looking at that barging strategy and is expected to come up with its review in a few weeks.
The science panel has also weighed in, more than a year ago, on the question of dam-induced latent fish mortality, saying it was a waste of time for regional scientists to try and quantify effects on juvenile migrants.
That judgment was a major blow to Oregon's push for more spill and a drawdown of John Day Pool because any benefits to fish were based on a convoluted analysis of latent mortality by some state and USFWS staffers that the science panel had dissed.
At last December's hearing, Judge Redden said he might put together his own expert panel to sort out the salmon science. He already has a list of ex-ISAB members to choose from--most of them have already taken part in some of these reviews.
The complaint also noted that the new BiOp has taken a conflicted view on hatcheries, since it calls for their use in the short-term to boost some populations, but is still waiting for completion of a basin-wide hatchery review to sort out which programs are hurting listed fish populations and should be changed.
The plaintiffs also found wanting the BiOp's treatment of habitat restoration. A major reason Redden cited for throwing out the 2000 BiOp was that its actions to improve habitat weren't "reasonably certain to occur."
Now, the enviros' major complaint is that the benefits from most future habitat actions are unspecified. That is, while more funding is planned for near-term actions, nothing specific is mentioned for implementation after 2010, even though the BiOp is expected to govern hydro operations until 2018.
Though the complaint's main theme is that the feds aren't using the best science, it never mentions the ISAB findings on the COMPASS model, latent mortality, or the board's support for changes in flows to boost Montana's resident fish.
However, it does bring up a 2007 ISAB report on climate change, and says the BiOp does little to address future impacts from a warming climate.
Last December, the feds said the draft BiOp's conservative approach towards global warming issues would hold up under scrutiny. Actually, the final version was expanded to include a section on climate change to take such criticism into account.
The feds also added a section that examined potential hydrosystem effects on ESA-listed killer whales from Puget Sound, which have been sighted off the mouth of the Columbia and as far south as California in late winter.
The enviros' complaint takes issue with the feds' argument that any losses from the orcas' original prey base have been made up by hatchery fish from the Columbia Basin. The complaint points out that Washington's 2004 status report on the whales said that the hatchery fish weren't equivalent to wild fish, but were "often smaller and contained less fat than wild salmon," and that hatchery runs returned over a shorter time period.
The NWF complaint goes even further, and says NOAA neglected to consider "net effects" to the orcas' likelihood of survival and recovery from BiOp actions since the feds' analysis had "cemented" current hydro mortality in the whales' prey base.
Because the feds ignored the best available scientific and commercial data available, the NWF complaint says, this led the feds to the erroneous conclusion that the resident whale population would not be adversely impacted.
With little political traction in the Northwest for breaching the dams, the new litigation coincided with a national campaign by the Save Our Wild Salmon coalition that culminated in towing a 25-foot-long fiberglass salmon from the West Coast to Washington, D.C. It was a kind of children's crusade to support breaching lower Snake dams, and a call for Congress to legislate solutions to the West Coast salmon crisis.
The enviro campaign lumped together the recent poor salmon returns to California's Sacramento River and Columbia Basin fish issues.
"After so many failed plans, we obviously cannot rely on the Bush administration to help restore salmon in the Pacific Northwest," said Debbie Sease, Conservation Director for Sierra Club, in a June 17 press release.
"Today we are urging our leaders in Congress to step up with legislation that will authorize removal of four outdated dams on the Snake River and provide real long-term solutions to the salmon declines that have left people and the environment bearing the brunt of the government's failures," she said.
The campaign kept up the drumbeat about ocean warming, even though waters off the West Coast have cooled off since 2006, and are in a highly productive mode, thanks to the current La Niña and a resurgent Pacific decadal-oscillation cycle.
"The new plan doesn't suggest even a single new action to address long-term impacts from climate change," said John Kostyack, executive director of Wildlife Conservation and Global Warming for the National Wildlife Federation.
"Science tells us that the warming waters on the West Coast are making salmon populations even more vulnerable to other threats they're facing in the Columbia River Basin, such as the four outdated lower Snake River dams. It's unacceptable that the administration is ignoring the best science we have," he said.
Idaho water users were quick to respond to the latest complaint. "We are painfully aware that their misguided actions means litigation that will once again put Idaho's water and its sovereignty squarely in the cross-hairs of environmentalists," said Norm Semanko, executive director of the Boise-based Idaho Water users Association.
"That is a threat we do not take lightly. It has been crystal clear for years now that these fringe environmentalists' only interest is in breaching the four lower Snake River dams. So what saddens us the most is that virtually everyone else in the Pacific Northwest region has agreed to roll up their sleeves and work together cooperatively on the salmon recovery issue. But the increasingly isolated environmental fringe has again chosen litigation, a strategy that does nothing to help the salmon recovery efforts," he said.
The new BiOp picked up more support from Northwest River Partners, the large coalition made up of industrial and public water users, utilities and other BPA customer groups.
"This plan addresses all of the issues Judge Jim Redden has raised in the courtroom.," said NRP executive director Terry Flores. "It includes an unprecedented, rigorous science analyses, has strong support in the region and major funding commitments."
"The litigants appear to be the only ones not looking out for the fish with their single-minded focus on dam removal," Flores said. "In the midst of the world seeking remedies for climate change, they persist in demanding removal of the lower Snake River dams, a renewable source of clean electric power."
The lower Snake dam issues sparked an interesting exchange in Washington, D.C., last month when Congressman Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) paid a surprise visit to the House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans hearing, "A Perfect Storm: How Faulty Science, River Mismanagement, and Ocean Conditions are Impacting West Coast Salmon Fisheries."
The venue gave politicians like McDermott a chance to fire at their favorite targets, whether it was dams, irrigators, federal agencies or fishermen.
McDermott used his time to stump for the latest version of his four-year-old bill that calls for the National Academy of Sciences to study salmon recovery actions and their anticipated benefits, including breaching lower Snake dams. His original bill included a provision for Congressional authorization to remove the dams; the current bill does not.
But in a dialog with Portland-based consultant Jim Litchfield, who was on a panel representing Northwest River Partners, McDermott said he was not aware of the huge Corps of Engineers' study on the lower Snake dams, developed throughout the late 1990s for the 2000 BiOp with an EIS finally completed in 2002.
The Corps ultimately concluded that the ESA-listed Snake salmon and steelhead stocks could recover without the hugely expensive costs involved in breaching and making up for the lost power production, and the loss of the inland barge system.
After McDermott asked why the NAS and GAO should not do a study, Litchfield pointed out that "millions of dollars have been spent studying dam removal on the Snake River."
McDermott then asked if they were "independent dollars?"
"The project was managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers," said Litchfield. "It involved a great deal of public participation and input from outside parties. There were detailed designs done and developed by engineers of how the projects would be removed. There were economic studies conducted of what the value might be of a free-flowing river in terms of recreation and boating and rafting. So there was a lot of effort put into this."
"This was 15 years ago, you are saying," said McDermott.
Litchfield said no, that it was completed in the late 1990s.
"I have not seen that study because the only one I know is 15 years old," said McDermott. "I would like to see the one that you say was done recently."
After the hearing, some participants seemed incredulous that McDermott, whose dam study bill once had dozens of co-sponsors in the House, was not aware of the Corps' huge feasibility study of lower Snake operations.
Later, his office said the Congressman was actually aware of the Corps' study and that he meant to say the data in it was 15 years old.
But it isn't. It was only a few years old by the time the final EIS was completed in 2002.
McDermott's bill, on the other hand, still relies on old analyses like the PATH process and a long-since discredited report called the "Doomsday Clock" that pegged the extinction of some Snake River stocks by 2017.
Only one other Northwest politician, Oregon's Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D), has signed on as one of the bill's 32 cosponsors. In November 2005, McDermott had up to 76 cosponsors for his proposed breaching studies legislation, and last June, 103 House members signed a letter to NOAA head Conrad Lautenbacher, urging his agency look at all options for salmon recovery, including dam breaching. Twenty-five California politicians signed the letter, but only three from the Northwest--McDermott, Diane Hooley (D-Ore.), and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) No Northwest governor supports breaching, nor do current presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain [Bill Rudolph].
[2] Science Panel Blesses Feds' Passage Model
A panel of independent scientists has reiterated its earlier recommendation for Columbia Basin fish biologists to concentrate on finding out whether fish do better in barges or in the river, instead of trying to quantify latent mortality linked to dam passage.
The Independent Scientific Advisory Board included the recommendation in its June 2 report on the COMPASS model developed by federal agencies to estimate fish survival and compare different hydro operations, including fish barging in NOAA Fisheries' latest hydro BiOp.
COMPASS is the culmination of the analysis of years of PIT-tag survival data that has been collected since the early 1990s.
These data were used first in the BPA-funded CRiSP model developed by the Columbia Basin Research group at the University of Washington. CRiSP eventually won the modeling war with the states' and tribes' FLUSH model, which placed little emphasis on new data and mostly depended on the religious fervor of its practitioners' firm belief in a strong, unproven relationship between river flows and fish survival.
The ISAB has already looked at various facets of the COMPASS model as it was being developed, and has given it a generally favorable review all along. The board's latest words say that the model's "fit to available inriver and hydro-system data is quite good. With a few exceptions, the model has captured the impact of the variables considered. The question of how well the model will work for river conditions encountered in future years must await later data."
Rich Zabel, a NOAA Fisheries researcher and one of the architects of COMPASS, said that "overall," he was pleased with the reviews.
"It offers constructive criticism but does not indicate the need for a model overhaul," he said, "We should be able to address all the concerns raised by ISAB."
In fact, the ISAB specifically said the COMPASS model "strikes a healthy balance between simplicity and realism." It said the model must serve myriad purposes, "and we find ourselves calling for more detail at various points, while constantly reminding the team to 'keep it as simple as possible.'" The feds had pointed out other confounding factors.
A COMPASS analysis is also the basis for the new BiOp's call to maximize fish barging from lower Snake dams in early May to boost survival of ESA-listed steelhead over the current court-ordered operation. The feds' computerized crystal ball says the change would boost steelhead returns by 18 percent over BiOp judge James Redden's temporary prescription.
In its latest report, the ISAB echoed its earlier findings in a report released more than a year ago, saying it was "somewhat pointless" to quantify latent mortality, given the absence of reliable data for fish survival below Bonneville Dam, and a general lack of comparable data from the period before the dams were built.
Latent mortality is a hypothesis born in the 1990s from a testy collaboration of state, tribal and federal scientists called PATH (Plan for Testing Hypotheses) that basically says young fish die eventually at higher rates after they have passed dams than fish which have no dams to contend with--and fish that are barged have even higher rates of mortality than those migrating inriver.
However, the ISAB did say it was time to separate survival data of transported fish at each dam where they are collected, because it seemed to make a difference.
For years, state, tribal and some USFWS scientists have argued that upstream/downstream comparisons of fish survival proved that latent mortality is a good reason to breach lower Snake dams.
In their latest analysis, presented before the ISAB in late 2006, members of this group told the panel that latent mortality for the Snake spring chinook was in the 60-percent range, based on comparisons with downriver stocks from the John Day River, and that accumulated stress from passing those four dams on the Snake was the primary cause.
But in its 2007 review, the ISAB took issue with the states and tribes for using reconstituted stock recruitment "data," confounding effects from innate biological differences in upstream and downstream stocks.
The feds had pointed out other confounding factors, including the likelihood that barged fish were, on average, smaller than inriver fish since they were more easily guided to bypass routes at the dams where fish were collected. They also said differences in the timing of ocean entry played a role in their ultimate survival.
Another hypothesis presented by NMFS scientists Mark Sheuerell and Zabel suggested that the difference between post-Bonneville Dam smolt-to-adult returns is a function of arrival time below the last dam, and a year-effect. Earlier arriving fish survive better, they say.
But that hasn't stopped state and tribal biologists from wanting to expand their old upstream/downstream analysis--this time to fall chinook. In a nod to the Corps of Engineers, state and tribal parties to the U.S. v. Oregon process have OK'd, for this year only, a reorganization of priorities that allows the use of fall chinook hatchery fish to be raised as wild fish "surrogates" for an important 5-year-long Corps transportation study.
But the U.S. v. Oregon parties added a big footnote to their approval. They want the Corps to tag downstream fall chinook from Hanford Reach, the Deschutes River, and the Little White Salmon Hatchery beginning next year as part of the study. If the Corps doesn't agree, the parties will bump the transport fish from 6th on the production priority list down to 12th and 14th.
The Corps wouldn't agree to tag downriver fish this year, and they don't plan to next year, for the same reasons the ISAB had raised about spring chinook, said Corps biologist Rock Peters. But he also noted that it is an issue likely to be visited by all parties again next year.
Others say the biological differences between upriver and downriver fall chinook stocks are even greater than those between spring chinook. One major difference is the large share of upriver Snake fish that hold over in the basin until the following spring, unlike downriver stocks that have a tiny overwintering component. -B. R.
[3] Enviros Send Feds' BiOp Bill
Earthjustice attorney Todd True sent his bill to the federal government for blowing the last FCRPS BiOp (NWF v. NMFS) out of the water.
For service rendered by True and fellow environmental attorneys from 2004 to 2008, they say the government owes them $1,130,531.53.
They say fees are based on "enhanced market rates" due to the specialized knowledge and skills needed to prosecute the case. True himself is billing over 1,700 hours at $350/hr., which adds up to $611,450.
True's June 4 filing in Oregon District Court includes a footnote that says the number of billable hours reflects a reduction in more than 1,400 "in the exercise of billing judgment and in consideration of other factors from the total number of hours actually spent on the various aspects of the case by NWF's counsel."
In another document filed the same day, True said the National Wildlife Federation, his main client, "anticipates that it will file shortly a supplemental complaint seeking judicial review of the 2008 FCRPS BiOp."
In that document, True says, NWF and federal defendants have agreed to put off a briefing on the fee issues because it would reduce their ability to address proceedings regarding the new BiOp.
In June 2007, the same parties reached agreement over fees and costs due the environmental attorneys for work from 2000 through November 2004 after extensive litigation over the 2000 BiOp, a sum that added up to $950,000. -B. R.
[4] BPA Calls For Changes In Fish Recovery Yardsticks
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council is getting in deep, thousands of pages deep, as the process to amend the region's fish and wildlife program picks up steam. By June 18, 65 sets of recommendations from fish agencies, tribes and citizens came in for review, followed by 147 comments on those recommendations.
Now, to help the process along, the Council staff has floated a list of "high-level" indicators designed to measure program success and is asking the public to comment on them.
The draft points to using biological indicators that include total numbers of salmon and steelhead, along with trends in abundance and productivity, for each ESU, with special attention on ESA-listed populations, life-cycle survival estimates, harvests and relative fitness of hatchery stocks funded by BPA.
The new initiative is supported by BPA and its customer groups as a way of changing the focus of the current F&W program's overarching goal to produce one to five million salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin.
Actually, fish numbers nearly hit one million in 2000, and the following year topped 2.1 million salmon and steelhead counted at Bonneville Dam. In 2002 and 2003, fish numbers topped 1.5 million each year. That's a far cry from 1995, when fish totals hit about 461,000. And were in that range for some years thereafter.
But fish agencies want to keep the old goal intact and boost fish numbers passing Bonneville Dam to five million salmonids by 2024, according to comments submitted by the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority.
Another yardstick in the current program may be even harder to reach. It calls for restoring "the widest possible set of healthy naturally reproducing populations of salmon and steelhead in each relevant province by 2012. Healthy populations are defined as having an 80-percent probability of maintaining themselves for 200 years at a level that can support harvest rates of at least 30 percent."
In its latest comments, BPA trotted out an analysis by regional fisheries consultant Rich Hinrichsen that estimates survival goals for some specific populations in the Snake drainage may have to be four or five times higher than those estimated by the Interior Columbia Technical Recovery Team, which were based on a 5 percent extinction risk over the next 100 years.
That's why BPA is supporting a new yardstick using the abundance level and trend indicators instead of raw numbers, a position they say reflects the "the most accessible currency with which to evaluate the progress in region-wide recovery efforts over multiple years."
BPA also takes issue with the extensive CBFWA recommendations that estimate the level of improvement obtainable for fish populations in each subbasin--through use of the EDT [Ecosystem Diagnosis and Treatment] and AHA [All-H Analyzer] tools, which BPA says does not meet requirements of the Northwest Power Act's mandate to use the "best available science" for supporting all recommendations.
The power marketing agency pointed out that CBFWA lacks supporting documentation for 34 out of the 72 sections listed in its recommendations, while the state of Oregon submitted 86 recommendations with supporting documentation for only one.
Furthermore, BPA said it looks like CBFWA's use of the AHA tool to measure the amount of fish mitigation pinned to the hydro system is inappropriate--since AHA was developed to gauge wild and hatchery spawner performance under various hatchery scenarios under different harvest and habitat assumptions.
According to one regional biologist very familiar with the AHA tool, it was never intended to produce quantitative goals for any kind of gap analysis. He told NW Fishletter last fall that the inputs are very simple and not meant to be used to develop potential fish numbers.
BPA noted that a 2005 review of AHA by the Puget Sound technical recovery team judged that the model wasn't well documented and hadn't received enough review by scientific peers to give team members enough confidence to use the model to allocate effects between H's.
BPA said that the model has undergone further development since 2005, but still is largely undocumented. "This renders its use, whether for biological objectives or other purposes, highly questionable."
At this month's NPCC meeting, CBFWA executive director Brian Lipscomb said his group's analysis with the AHA tool was very comparable with the feds' analysis in the newest hydro BiOp. "They didn't use the same methodologies, but the results were comparable," said Lipscomb. "So, I think that what that tells you is that we're starting to get in the ballpark of what the hydropower effect is on anadromous fish."
BPA also questioned CBFWA's recommendation to keep the old program's 5-million-fish goal by 2025, given the region's independent science panels's own feelings on the subject, made known way back in 2001. In a review of the biological objectives of the 2000 F&W program, the Independent Scientific Advisory Board said at the time, "It is not possible to assess whether the numerical objectives for biological performance listed under "Anadromous fish losses" (p. 18) and the timeframes for achieving the objectives are realistic because no quantitative or qualitative justification of the objectives and timeframes is provided."
The state of Oregon's draconian hydro recommendations also came in for some heavy criticism from BPA, which said the state's "prescriptive" spill and flow regimes, specific operations and recommendations for new passage technologies conflict with the new BiOp and MOAs between some CBFWA members--NOAA Fisheries, the Umatilla, Colvilles, Warm Springs, and Yakama tribes, and the states of Idaho and Washington.
The main rub with the CBFWA recommendations is that they seem to confuse the differences between the Council's program--which keeps fish recovery issues in a more general format, and its project solicitation process, which consists of on-the-ground efforts that have actually been through a scientific review process.
NOAA Fisheries signed aboard with the CBFWA recommendations, thinking that the AHA analysis was not going to be included in its final product. But the agency abstained from supporting the CBFWA recommendations for implementation.
The Council expects to release a draft of the latest F&W program by mid-August, with a series of public hearings planned through October before the amendments are finalized. -B. R.
[5] Ocean Stays Cool, But pH is Dropping
Researchers who spend most of their time bobbing about on the deep Pacific have returned to their home ports with some good and bad news.
On the issue of sea water warming, there seems to be little of it going on. In fact, scientists who deployed a huge array of 3,000 robotic buoys throughout the world's oceans say the waters have not warmed for the past four years.
These drifting buoys are programmed to descend to depths of several thousand feet, then rise and record data on temperature, salinity and velocity. Once they reach the surface, they send the information to a satellite. Then, they depart once more to the deep and do it all over again.
According to a report aired on National Public Radio earlier this spring, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Josh Willis said the buoy data actually showed a slight cooling trend in the oceans for the past four years.
In 2006, he and others published a report that said the buoy array showed significant cooling in the first two years of their data collection. Later, they corrected their findings because they found that two datasets used in their analysis were biased.
His results jibe with other news coming out on the climate front, including a paper published May 1 in Nature by Richard Wood, a British climate scientist. Wood described a newer climate model that predicts over the next decade, "natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific oceans will temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming: surface temperatures in Europe and North America may even cool a little during this period."
Wood and others since then have pointed out this is only a temporary situation, and eventually, CO2 levels will lead to sharp increases in global temperatures out 20 years or so.
CO2 may be affecting oceans already. Another group of scientists has found high levels of acidified ocean water for the first time off the West Coast, according to a May 22 report in Science Express, written by Richard A. Feely and Christopher Sabine, both oceanographers at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.
They say the increasing acidity comes from increasing levels of CO2 absorbed by the oceans.
"Our findings represent the first evidence that a large section of the North American continental shelf is seasonally impacted by ocean acidification," said Feely, in a May 22 NOAA press release. "This means that ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on our continental shelf right now."
Burke Hales, an associate professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University and co-author on the Science study, said water upwelled in recent years was last at the surface about 50 years ago and "was exposed to an atmosphere with much less CO2 than today, and future upwelled waters will probably be more acidic than today's because of increasing atmospheric CO2."
He said there was a strong correlation between recent hypoxia events off the Northwest coast and increasing acidification.
"The hypoxia is caused by persistent upwelling that produces an over-abundance of phytoplankton. When the system works, the upwelling winds subside for a day or two every couple of weeks in what we call a 'relaxation event' that allows that buildup of decomposing organic matter to be washed out to the deep ocean.
"But in recent years, especially in 2002 and 2006, there were few if any of these relaxation breaks in the upwelling and the phytoplankton blooms were enormous," Hales added. "When the material produced by these blooms decomposes, it puts more CO2 into the system and increases the acidification."
The scientists said they did not expect to see this extent of ocean acidification until the middle to the end of the century.
Cooler oceans may also play a role in increasing populations of jellyfish off the coast, according to a recent paper by NOAA Fisheries scientist Richard Brodeur. In another report soon to be published, Brodeur and his co-authors found that jellyfish and salmon do not seem to share much of the same turf, but jellyfish do seem to compete for the same types of plankton as sardines, anchovy, saury and herring, which in turn are important prey species to salmon diets.
Back in April, JPL scientists said the powerful La Niña that has cooled West Coast waters was slowly weakening, but was still very much in evidence, according to sea-level height data collected by the U.S.-French Jason oceanographic satellite, and packed extra punch from the cool PDO phase the region is now in.
"The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are part of a longer ongoing change in global climate," said JPL scientist Willis. "In fact, these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it." -B. R.
[6] B.C. Fishers Expect Big Cuts From Treaty Changes
The brunt of the 30-percent Canadian harvest cut negotiated in recent salmon treaty talks is expected to be borne by the 160-boat commercial troll fleet that plies the waters off Vancouver Island.
But the $30-million cost, which the U.S. federal government will supply, is not expected to simply buy out fishing licenses. It will also compensate businesses adversely affected by the future cuts, said Larry Rutter, one of the U.S. commissioners involved in the 18-month-long talks.
Salmon licenses for commercial trollers in that area are worth around $100,000 apiece on the current market. Rutter said the U.S. contribution may seem like a lot of money, but he pointed out that it wasn't much compared to the $170 million in disaster aid that Congress approved for West Coast fishers in mid-May to keep the fleet and businesses alive after the drastic decline in chinook returns to the Sacramento River. The U.S. aid was tacked on to the farm bill passed by Congress, which last week overrode a veto by President Bush.
Commercial fishers in Canada are at the short end of the political stick, compared to their U.S. brethren. After a major overhaul of the management of salmon fisheries was completed in the late 1990s, their troll fleet became last in line for annual chinook allocations, behind native fishers and sportfishers.
It's a situation that 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."
Scarfo didn't mention the funding provided by the new treaty to test a mark-selective fishery for hatchery fish, which could boost catches by releasing more wild fish headed for both B.C. and Lower 48 spawning beds.
B.C. hatcheries would have to clip more of their hatchery chinook before it would work, Rutter told NW Fishletter.
The Vancouver Island troll fleet fishes earlier than during previous harvest regimes--a change designed to keep them from hammering their own weak chinook stocks. But the increase in winter and early spring harvest has put more pressure on Columbia River tules and Puget Sound chinook that graze off the B.C. coast.
In 2006, the Vancouver Island fleet caught only 104,000 chinook, but they hooked a lot of U.S. fish that the current salmon model used by the two countries doesn't figure in.
The model, like the treaty, needs an overhaul to reflect the changes in fishery timing. It also needs better spawning data from Oregon and Washington fish agencies. Currently, it tends to underestimate abundance when stocks are building, and overestimate abundance when they are declining.
Some of the money generated by the recent talks will go to improve it.
The Pacific Salmon Commission's chinook technical committee discovered last winter that its estimate of overall chinook abundance was lower than they thought last year when they pegged harvest allocations.
That meant Alaskans caught about 60,000 more chinook than they should have last year, 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.
Troller representative Scarfo told NW Fishletter that her group has managed to keep their federal government from acting on the treaty recommendations until next fall. In the meantime, they all calling for independent oversight of the whole process.
Scarfo isn't convinced that if the southern B.C. trollers give up 30 percent of their chinook quota, there will be any reduced harvest on the U.S. side of the border to ultimately benefit spawning stocks. "Don't pretend to be saving fish, since it's just a re-allocation scheme in the long run," she said.
Canadian harvest managers just shut down the West Coast Vancouver Island fishery out of concern for an upper Fraser chinook run, but they refused to share recent DNA harvest data with the public, Scarfo said. -B. R.
[7] Summer Season Starts With Big Sockeye Bang
Summer chinook season officially began on the Columbia River June 15, with a new harvest regime designed to target hatchery fish heading for the Upper Columbia. But the late spring run was still much in evidence, and one sportfishing group called for the release of any unmarked chinook, even though it was not a legal requirement.
However, sockeye have begun to show in surprising numbers, compared to preseason expectations, which led managers to let fishers keep them as well, for the first time since 2004.
The Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association sent a June 20 message that asked recreational fishers to keep only chinook with clipped fins for two reasons. First, they want as many wild chinook heading for the Upper-C to get there as possible, since they say they are remnants of the "June hogs," the legendary run of large chinook that may actually be more myth than reality.
But most wild Upper Columbia chinook now are likely come from strayed hatchery stock over the years, which was originally obtained by trapping returning wild fish at Rock Island Dam in the 1940s to seed the federal hatchery program that began after Grand Coulee Dam was completed. Even by then, there wasn't much of an upper Columbia run left, according to an important 1992 report by USFWS biologist James Mullan.
But the NSIA has put forward another reason to keep releasing unmarked chinook. "[It] ... is the fact that recent pit tag data indicates that a substantial number of spring chinook are still crossing over Bonneville Dam. Spring chinook [are] federally protected, and sport fishers are required to release all wild spring chinook unharmed."
Harvest managers approved the summer fisheries a few years ago, knowing that a few spring chinook would still be migrating upriver by the middle of June, but this year's late spring run didn't stop them from opening the summer season to treaty and non-treaty fisheries, including several days of commercial gillnetting.
Approximately 52,000 summer chinook salmon are expected to return to the Columbia River this season--up from 37,200 last year, said Joe Hymer, a WDFW fish biologist. The forecast for upriver summer steelhead is about 325,000, similar to last year, he said.
Recreational fishing for chinook was open below Bonneville Dam from June 21 to June 28, Above the dam, all the way to Priest Rapids Dam, it opened June 21 and was slated to go through July 31.
Hymer noted that summer chinook salmon are distinct from spring chinook, which returned to the Columbia River in lower numbers than predicted this year. To conserve spring chinook, fishery managers closed fishing early in some areas and delayed the hatchery steelhead season in the lower river to prevent the incidental catch of spring chinook in that fishery. Most of those fish have now moved upriver to spawning areas and fish hatcheries, clearing the way for summer chinook and steelhead fisheries, Hymer said in a June 12 press release.
Since the Upper Columbia summers are not listed under the ESA, harvest rates can be considerably higher than on the spring run. The latest agreement allows for a 10-percent treaty harvest and 7 percent non-treaty harvest when the run is between 36,250 and 50,000 fish; any excess will be harvested at a 50 percent rate and split equally between the two groups.
For runs above 50,000 fish, the treaty harvest is 50 percent of 75 percent of the margin above 50,000 plus 10,500 fish. Non-treaty harvest above 50,000 is the same.
But a check of the latest fish counts at mid-river dams still shows plenty of Snake fish around, with four to five times as many spring/summer chinook heading up the Snake as the upper Columbia. On June 23, 1,594 chinook passed Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake, while only 275 were counted at Priest Rapids Dam on the Columbia.
Meanwhile, the sockeye are still pouring in. On June 20, WDFW's Cindy LeFleur said this year's sockeye run to the Columbia River was expected to far exceed the pre-season forecast of 75,600 fish. As of June 18, a total of 50,900 sockeye had been counted moving past Bonneville Dam, with more than half of the run expected to arrive in the weeks ahead. By June 24, nearly 137,000 sockeye were tallied at the dam.
The Columbia's shad run is showing up as well, with more than 1.5 million counted so far, less than last year's 2.3 million by the same time. In 2006, more than 3 million shad had crossed the dam by now. -B. R.
Subscriptions and Feedback
Subscribe to the Fishletter notification e-mail list.
Send e-mail comments to the editor.
THE ARCHIVE :: Previous NW Fishletter issues and supporting documents.
NW Fishletter is produced by Energy NewsData.
Publisher: Cyrus Noë, Editor: Bill Rudolph
Phone: (206) 285-4848 Fax: (206) 281-8035
