[1] Basin Sockeye Keep On Coming Home
Sockeye are returning to the Columbia River in numbers not seen since the 1950s, helped by a multi-national effort that planted more than a million juvenile fish in Canada's Osoyoos Lake that feeds into the Okanagan River.
Sockeye counts at Bonneville Dam are about three times what Columbia Basin harvest managers had originally expected. By July 21, more than 213,000 had been counted, four times the 10-year average and higher than any year since 1959.
Most are headed for Canada, past nine mainstem dams, up eastern Washington's Okanogan (as it is spelled on the U.S. side of the border) River and over the border into Osoyoos Lake. Already, more than 187,000 sockeye are heading up the upper Columbia past Priest Rapids Dam.
By July 15, 137,000 sockeye had been counted passing Wells Dam, the last barrier before the Canadian-bound sockeye head for the Okanogan (no counts have been posted since), with more than 12,000 counted daily on July 6 and 7. However, warming waters may kill 50 percent or more of them before they reach Canada.
Some sockeye have been harvested in lower-river fisheries during the summer chinook season. Basin harvest managers estimated total sockeye mortalities from non-Indian recreational and commercial fishers at 1,000 fish, which is nearly half of their 1-percent ESA impact limit. Tribal treaty fisheries were projected to reach a total mortality of 9,400 sockeye through July 10, with another 6,700 available for harvest.
Sockeye returns to the region have bounced up and down with real vigor. In 1994, only 1,666 were counted at Wells. In 2001, about 75,000 made it to the dam, but in the following year only 11,000.
In 2004, numbers rose to 78,000, but have declined since. Last year, about 33,000 sockeye passed Wells.
About 25 percent of the Columbia run is expected to be headed for Lake Wenatchee. By July 21, about 33,000 were headed for the lake, where a Chelan PUD-funded hatchery program is based.
The sockeye returns to Canadian waters have been boosted by a new program that planted more than a million hatchery-raised fry in Skaha Lake above Lake Osoyoos.
BPA, along with the Colville Tribes, and the Okanagan Nation Alliance Fisheries Department, helped fund a three-year project to evaluate the feasibility of the project. Since then, Douglas, Chelan and Grant PUDs have helped fund the on-the-ground effort.
Kim Hyatt, a biologist with Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, said he was pleased with this year's return to Lake Osoyoos, noting that about 10 percent of the fry introduced into Skaha Lake in 2005 survived to the smolt stage--144,000--and provided a welcome addition to the one million wild sockeye smolts that migrated from the watershed in 2006.
Hyatt said wild sockeye production has also been enhanced by improved management of the whole Okanagan Basin, where a new provincial-federal agreement has been in place for several years to improve water for fish spawning, while satisfying irrigation needs and flood-control issues.
"Flows are managed much better than in previous years," said Hyatt, who noted that before the new management regime was implemented, flows had been out of compliance about 75 percent of the time. The new regime uses a complicated computer model developed with funding from Douglas PUD.
There is more study under way to develop fish passage facilities so returning adult sockeye can pass a small irrigation dam, McIntyre Dam, and recolonize old spawning grounds. Currently, the Skaha fry are raised from eggs taken from returning adults trapped below the dam.
Hyatt said productivity of the lake environment has improved over the past several years. In 2008, about 468,000 smolts were estimated to have been produced from the reintroduction project. With ocean conditions in prime shape, he expects even larger returns in 2010.
Even the tiny, ESA-listed component of the run that heads up the Snake River and aims for Idaho's Redfish Lake is showing signs of life. More than 800 of these ESA-listed cousins to "Lonesome Larry," the single spawner that returned to Redfish Lake in 1992, have been counted at Lower Granite Dam, the halfway point on their journey to the high-altitude spawning grounds.
Increased numbers of juvenile releases in 2006 from a captive broodstock program are likely playing a large role in the good adult show.
A first-hand report from NMFS personnel at the dam says the sockeye checked at the adult trap look very healthy, with no signs of infection common when water temperatures are high. NMFS' Jerry Harmon, who supervises adult trap operations there, said his crew estimated about 25 percent of the sockeye return is made up of jacks, which have spent only one year in the ocean.
The cool water and good flows still evident in the lower Snake should help this year's migration in their last 450-mile push to the Stanley Basin. As rivers warm, it's not unusual if only 25 percent or less of the fish counted at the dam make it all the way to Redfish Lake.
Last year, 52 fish were counted at Granite, but only four finished the last 450-mile trek to the trap at IDFG's Sawtooth Hatchery, near Redfish Lake. Managers had originally expected 50 to 100 to return.
In 2006, three sockeye returned to Redfish Lake. The average return over the past five years has been only 12 fish, but in 2000, when river conditions were relatively good, more than 200 of them made it all the way home, about two-thirds of the number counted at the dam that year.
The Fish Passage Center released a July 14 memo that strongly suggested the high sockeye returns to both the Columbia and Snake were mainly due to court-ordered spill at federal dams and high flows when juveniles migrated in 2006, while others have attributed the blockbuster runs more to improved ocean conditions. NOAA Fisheries is reviewing the FPC memo, which used pretty weak correlations (r2 = .34) in their analysis. This means that only 34 percent of the variability in adult returns in their analysis could be explained by the factors they considered.
Most scientists say an r2 of .65 to .7 is necessary before a correlation is taken seriously enough to be used in management considerations.
Sparks may fly. In the recent past, NOAA Fisheries scientists have found little to no relationship between inriver juvenile survivals and smolt-to adult returns, but a strong correlation between ocean conditions and adult returns (see NW Fishletter 236) .
The FPC fired off another memo a few days later that did seem to backtrack a little, by acknowledging the importance of ocean conditions for adult returns. But the memo also noted that that last high sockeye return to the Snake in recent years happened in 2000, when 299 were counted at Lower Granite. The FPC said their analysis showed that the 1998 outmigration that made up most of the 2000 return experienced the lowest water travel time and second highest average spill percent among the years they analyzed with good ocean conditions.
What the FPC didn't say was that the captive broodstock program really took off in 1998. According to the FPC's annual report, nearly 336,000 sockeye smolts were released into the Snake zone in 1998. In 1997, only 1,926 were released, a year when flows in the basin were extremely high. Only 14 sockeye returned to the dam in 1999.
The FPC's July 14 memo may also be reviewed by the Independent Scientific Review Board, the group that weighs in on various issues in the salmon recovery arena. NPCC staffer Erik Merrill told NW Fishletter by e-mail that the FPC had sent the ISAB a copy of their sockeye memo "to inform the ISAB's spill-transport review, so the FPC didn't request a review on their own analysis as much as offer the analysis for background material. The ISAB was interested in information on other species besides steelhead and chinook that are affected by transport and spill operations, particularly sockeye and lamprey." Merrill said the Council has also expressed interest in having the ISAB review the memo, but hasn't yet issued a formal request.
"In any event," said Merrill, "the ISAB is going to review the sockeye analysis and discuss how it informs the spill-transport review, with the intent to also anticipate potential Council questions on the FPC analysis itself."
Sockeye runs in BC are also coming in stronger than expected. Canadian fish managers have upgraded their estimate of the Early Summer-run sockeye on the Fraser River to 500,000 from 349,000. Their July 22 announcement also noted that this year's Summer-run sockeye run is tracking near their 50 percent probability forecast. Strong catches were reported in test fisheries in Juan de Fuca Strait.-Bill Rudolph
[2] Oregon Files BiOp Complaint
The state of Oregon filed a supplemental complaint July 22 seeking judicial review of the latest hydro BiOp. The action was backed up by a press release from Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who said the feds' latest plan was still justifying status quo actions at federal dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers.
"The State of Oregon has a long legacy of protecting our wild fish for future generations so they remain a vital part of our heritage, and this is a legacy worth fighting for," Gov. Kulongoski said. "The federal government may be satisfied with the number of wild salmon and steelhead in our rivers. I am not."
In its filing, the state argued that implementation of the new BiOp means that inriver migrating juvenile salmonids will get short-changed in the future, because they will not get the benefits of the court-ordered spill, as in 2006 and 2007.
The new BiOp proposes to maximize fish barging in early May for several weeks to help ESA-listed steelhead runs, which just about everyone now agrees are better off being barged downstream. But Oregon's July 22 filing says the strategy, which ends spill for a few weeks at collector dams, would short-change survival of ESA-listed sockeye from Idaho because they don't seem to benefit from barging.
That very issue--the steelhead barging strategy--is under review by the panel of independent scientists (Independent Scientific Advisory Board) who weigh in on various issues of salmon recovery for NOAA Fisheries and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. Their results should be out by Aug. 7.
In a veiled reference to a July 14 memo from the Fish Passage Center, Oregon's filing mentions how recent sockeye returns, seem to have "improved dramatically" with the court-ordered spill regime, an assertion that is under review right now, by both NOAA Fisheries and the ISAB (see story 1).
Retired members of the ISAB may be pressed into service to help BiOp Judge James Redden sort out the science issues this time around. Both plaintiff environmental and fishing groups and Oregon have called for it in their initial filings. They have asked the judge to schedule a status conference to discuss the issue. Federal attorneys have previously been opposed to using a panel.
Using a scientific panel to sort out the BiOp is not a new idea. Oregon assistant attorney general David Leith passed on a list of potential members to the judge from the ISAB back in 2005, during litigation over the 2004 hydro BiOp. They were all ex-ISAB members who were not only willing to serve, but also were willing to be cross-examined. The list included Charles Coutant, retired ecologist from Oak Ridge National Lab; Richard Whitney, consultant and a retired faculty member from the University of Washington; Daniel Goodman, an expert in ecological risk management from Montana State University; Lyman McDonald, a consulting statistician and former professor at the University of Wyoming; Brian Riddell from Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans; and Jim Lichatowich, a fisheries consultant and former ODFW assistant chief of fisheries.
The Oregon complaint also takes issues with the trend analysis used by the feds, who say most stocks are improving. The state says the analysis "unduly emphasizes" some recent years when relative abundance has been high, "causing an upward bias, and creating the misleading impression of movement towards recovery." The state says the trend lines, with low abundances in the 1990s, and higher later, "appear to be more related to environmental conditions such as ocean productivity and snowpack than to movement towards recovery. The relatively high abundances of the early 2000s have not been sustained in subsequent years."
But the state didn't mention that spring chinook jack counts at Lower Granite Dam this year are now pointing to a return next year that could top any of the abundant runs from the early years of this century. -B. R.
[3] Council Gets Complicated Message On Toxics
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council heard a sobering analysis of toxic pollutants and their effects on Columbia Basin salmonids at last week's meeting, but federal scientists admitted they have little data that could actually quantify the effects.
In their presentation NOAA Fisheries scientists discussed a wide range of studies from spring and fall chinook, along with field studies and lab work to estimate how much effect toxics might have on migrating salmon.
A month ago, the Council had prepared a series of questions for the scientists to help members deal with the possibility of including toxics issues in the next revision of the basin's fish and wildlife program. The toxic chemicals include pesticide residues from agricultural runoff, hydrocarbons from urban runoff, heavy metals, PCBs and DDT.
NOAA scientists Tracey Collier and Lyndal Johnson told a complicated story to the Council, mixing lab studies that showed detrimental effects on fish from contaminants with field work that showed how juvenile migrants already stressed from the rigors of inriver passage could be adversely affected by spending time in the estuary.
Collier told NW Fishletter they were trying to present a "big picture" of the toxics issue. The scientists estimated that juvenile fish might incur 3 to 11 percent mortality from exposure to toxics, with more ill effects likely to occur to fish that spend a month or more in the estuary.
That lets most young spring chinook off the hook, since they are making a beeline for the ocean. Some fall chinook migrants, however, spend considerable time in the estuary, where most pollutants in salmonids were found at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers.
The presenters cited a study that found transported fish seemed actually healthier than inriver fish when both groups were presented with a "disease challenge," and another one that suggested juvenile salmonids with lipid contents below 1 percent were more susceptible to mortality from toxic sources, a group that made up about 13 percent of the total number examined.
They pointed out early on, however, that the hydropower system was responsible for only about 5 percent of toxic contaminants found in the Columbia.
Johnson said modeling studies found that the increase in disease-induced mortalities during estuary residence "was pretty similar in fish exposed to chemicals and in fish that were undergoing the stress of dam passage and all the difficulties associated with that, but without this additional chemical exposure. So this study basically shows that the problems with the contaminants may be comparable to the problems with dam passage, at least for this particular endpoint."
She said the studies suggest "if we got better control of the contaminants and reduce the levels, this might give a boost in survival that could actually have some real effects on the recovery of the population."
Council chair Bill Booth questioned how much real inriver data was used in these analyses. Johnson said contaminant concentrations in fish were based on inriver studies and the mortalities were based on lab work.
Johnson said another study on fall chinook in the lower Columbia that modeled potential adverse effects of toxics on the fishes' ocean survival and fecundity showed that such effects could influence abundance and population dynamics throughout the ESU.
Collier's bottom-line message to the Council: "We're pretty sure contaminants in the Columbia are affecting the survival and productivity of some of the listed salmon stocks." He said research in Puget Sound found that contaminants can undermine the effectiveness of physical habitat restoration efforts, "and that certainly indicates the potential to occur with some of the restoration sites and where they are located, in the lower Columbia, especially."
Collier said discussions are underway to work toxics issues "adequately" into salmon recovery modeling, and was "exceedingly complex," noting that the presentation before the Council represented only about 15 percent "of what they had."
Collier said it was quite a challenge to develop enough data to be regionally specific to the different stocks, noting that at present, there is no data about the rates that fish are picking up contaminants in the lower part of the river. -B. R.
[4] ISRP OK's Latest Klickitat Fish Plan
The Independent Scientific Review Panel has given a qualified thumbs-up to an ambitious 10-year, $27-million plan to improve fish stocks in the Klickitat River.
Funding for the plan, which is sponsored by the Yakama Tribes, is pretty much assured as part of the recent fish accord signed by BPA and three lower Columbia tribes. The Yakamas are part of that deal, which swapped hundreds of millions of dollars in fish projects for tribal support of the new hydro BiOp.
The June ISRP review was taken up by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's F&W committee at last week's meeting in Kalispell, Mont. The project will come before the full council in August for a vote on whether to move it forward to the second step of the three-step Council process for major projects.
The ISRP, which judges the scientific merit of projects proposed for BPA's Fish and Wildlife Program, said the document needs a better explanation of natural and artificial production plans for chinook and steelhead.
The plan calls for getting more native fish past Castile Falls and opening up another 50 miles of spawning and riverine habitat, by boosting spring chinook and steelhead production at an existing hatchery. The hatchery would also provide more fish for harvest. New facilities in the lower river would also produce coho and fall chinook for harvest.
An extensive habitat restoration plan would also be implemented to help improve wild fish numbers.
The plan itself says it will cost $9 million more than the $27 million outlined in the fish accord. The tribe is expected to work with WDFW and ask Congress for Mitchell Act funding to pay for a new hatchery in the lower river designed to produce coho and fall chinook for harvest. Neither coho nor fall chinook are native to the Klickitat.
The panel said one "progressive attribute" of the latest version of the plan includes a "general suite" of habitat improvement strategies for each target species "at a variety of scales and levels of complexity," and "includes some thought and apparent analysis (which is not specifically presented, but should be) about the specific habitat improvement activities planned in the Subbasin and within specific stream reaches."
But the ISRP also said that the plan's estimates of increased productivity and capacity appeared "overly optimistic."
According to the plan, natural escapement of spring chinook has averaged 300 since 1977, and around 700 for steelhead. The long-term--10-year--objectives for the plan are to reach an annual escapement of 700 wild spring chinook and 2,500 for wild steelhead
The science panel still isn't too excited about the large coho and fall chinook releases planned for the lower Klickitat to boost harvest, which they said could have negative effects on spring chinook and steelhead.
"Consequently," the panel said, "the Master Plan does not provide scientific justification for the fall chinook and coho hatchery programs. Rather, the Master Plan justifies these programs based on U.S. v. Oregon obligations."
The ISRP found serious deficiencies in two earlier versions of the Klickitat plan, but much more to praise in the latest one, including the strategy of monitoring steelhead colonization above Castile Falls for nine years before starting any supplementation effort.
A fishway around the falls was completed in the 1960s, but design flaws and poor maintenance kept it from working. From 2003 to 2005, work was completed on the two fishway tunnels within the Castile Falls complex, and it was brought up to NOAA Fisheries' fish passage standards.
Another proposal that is making its way through the EIS process will improve an existing fishway farther downstream at Lyle Falls, which was originally constructed in 1949. -B. R.
[5] ISAB Weighs In On Invasive Species
The Independent Scientific Advisory Board has recommended that state fishery agencies declare open season on certain species of fish like smallmouth bass and channel catfish that are not native to the Columbia Basin. It's sure to give some fish managers heartburn because there are programs in place to enhance the numbers of some of these predators. But the ISAB said the Northwest Power and Conservation Council should urge state agencies to find ways like this to reduce the numbers of non-native predators, especially the ones that prey on young salmonids.
Bass fishing in the Snake River Canyon.
--courtesy www.reeltimefish.com
Other recommendations in the new ISAB report call for improving enforcement of current regulations, and the exploratory surveillance and monitoring of plant and animal populations to get a jump on preventing their proliferation. They also said a thorough risk assessment should be conducted before any resident fish substitution project, or introduction or enhancement of a non-native species is begun.
The science panel said the non-native species issue should get a boost in priority equivalent to other important concerns like habitat loss, climate change, and human population growth and development.
They said some introduced species like shad now pose serious competition to juvenile fall chinook for food and habitat. Shad also carry a protozoan salmon parasite. -B. R.
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