[1] Feds Reluctantly Spread The Risk
After consulting with regional sovereigns, federal agencies have backed away from their plan to mitigate inriver fish losses in this low-flow spring by transporting more fish out of the lower Snake.
Their proposal had already been panned by the region's independent science panel who recommended maintaining the "spread-the-risk" policy of spilling at the lower Snake dams and barging at the same time.
The panel said there was not enough data to determine whether benefits to steelhead and chinook from increased barging outweighed the possible adverse effects of barging on sockeye and lamprey, and more straying of returning Snake hatchery steelhead in mid-Columbia tributaries.
The feds had estimated that by ending spill in May and maximizing fish transportation at the three collector dams on the lower Snake, steelhead returns might double--an added 46,000 fish by their estimate.
They thought spring chinook would benefit as well, given results from 2007, with its spring of low flows and both spill and barging mandated by the court-ordered fish operation.
But the science panel said the data from 2007 wasn't enough to base management decisions on. They said the region would be better off by collecting more information on spill and barging in other low-flow years like this one.
It's low alright. Spring flows in the lower Snake are expected to be the sixth lowest in the past 50 years--slightly better than 48 kcfs.
It's even going to be worse in the mainstem Columbia, where the water supply is expected to be the 3rd lowest in the past 50 years--surpassed only by 1977 and 2001.
But evidently most sovereign states and tribes in the RIOG process [Regional Implementation Oversight Group] still had concerns about spreading the risk, though the group backed the science panel's broader approach.
The operations plan filed with the Court April 19 stated the RIOG called for river flow and fish condition to be monitored, and notes that "if regional sovereigns recommend adjustments in spill and transport, the Corps will use the regional coordination process to make a determination on operational changes.
"This operation is for 2010 and with the additional information collected, we will be able to determine how best to protect the fish in future low-water years, using the best-available science and adaptive management as called for in the AMIP (the Adaptive Management Implementation Plan added to the 2008 BiOp after review by the Obama administration)."
The decision had environmental groups ecstatic, but others, like the BPA customers group under the umbrella of Northwest RiverPartners, were hopping mad.
"The government reluctantly urges the Court to maintain last year's spill/transport plan while recognizing that 50 percent of all returning steelhead adult fish--or approximately 46,000 fish--will be lost or destroyed as a result. No other action that we have observed has the potential to save or kill half of any listed population," said its April 20 response filed with the court.
The NRP filing said maintaining a plan that will kill 46,000 returning adults so more data could be collected in a poor water year "places the pursuit of academic science ahead of these ESA-protected fish."
The RIOG didn't seem worried about how many of these extreme years the region will have to study before it decides on which strategy works the best.
The RiverPartners' response said neither the RIOG nor the ISAB will be held accountable for the fish loss, "and for any future inability of the action agencies to meet performance standards--it is the action agencies and the region itself, who are collectively investing billions of dollars in salmon recovery. The region can ill-afford to take this sort of irresponsible gamble when the science--as articulated by NOAA's report and recommendation by the ISAB--dictates otherwise."
The feds got a few digs in themselves.
In an April 19 filing that responded to a memo from the plaintiffs in the BiOp litigation that supported the spread-the-risk policy, Justice Department attorneys said the ISAB approached the issue from a broader ecosystem perspective.
"While this approach may be consistent with the ISAB's broad basin-wide focus, in many cases their statements are broader than the scope of decisions required under Section 7(a)(2) of the Endangered Species Act ... Although the agencies have decided to implement the ISAB's recommendation for this particular year, this does not mean the agencies agree with many of the conclusions of this report. Both the ISAB and NOAA scientists acknowledge that leaving juvenile fish in the river will result in higher total mortality for some species, and for Snake River steelhead could reduce adult returns from this year's outmigration by as much as half."
Barging began April 24 at Lower Granite. Smolt numbers had been pretty skimpy, due to extremely low flows, which were still below 50 kcfs by April 21, with about 20 kcfs spill. Last year, flows were nearly twice as much at this time.
By April 21, only about 15,000 juvenile steelhead had reached Lower Granite Dam. Last year, more than 440,000 had reached the dam by then. But numbers have picked up since then. By May 4, more than 760,0000 steelhead smolts had reached Lower Granite, along with 1.3 million young spring chinook.
On a more optimistic note, by continuing spill, a study that started up last year to see whether barging sockeye beats inriver passage will continue this migration season.
Until the last few years, juvenile sockeye numbers were so small, that it precluded a tagging effort large enough to develop a statistically significant study.
From 2006 to 2008, nearly all PIT-tagged Snake sockeye were diverted back to the river at Lower Granite, so the feds said it would not be unusual to see no returning adults that were transported during that time frame.
Before that, most sockeye were barged, along with most spring chinook and steelhead. -Bill Rudolph
[2] Columbia, Snake Sockeye Runs Riding High
Regional fish managers expect another good year for returning sockeye to the Upper Columbia and Snake rivers, hoping to continue a trend that started two years ago.
But some fish scientists, including the region's independent science panel (the Independent Scientific Advisory Board), wonder why these runs are performing relatively better than other regional sockeye stocks.
In a recent review of the feds' proposal to barge more spring chinook and steelhead out of the Snake, they said NMFS hadn't proven that ocean conditions were primarily responsible for the improvement in sockeye returns, rather than increased spill and less barging of fish from the lower Snake since 2006.
The science panel didn't think the feds had made much of a case for marine conditions because they didn't explain why other regional sockeye runs that went to sea in 2006 and 2007 performed so miserably. But a closer look at those runs shows that they may have had their own problems long before they ever reached the Gulf of Alaska.
There is no debate over one thing--the upward trend of Columbia Basin sockeye runs counter to recent returns from the Seattle area's Lake Washington and B.C.'s Fraser River, where last year's 11-million sockeye forecast evaporated by late summer. Only about 1.4 million actually returned, which has led to an official government inquiry to examine the causes for the disaster. A preliminary report is due Aug. 1.
Although the Columbia Basin runs are miniscule compared to their northern cousins, and are counted in the thousands and hundreds of fish instead of millions, their return rates are two or three times stronger than they were just a few years ago.
The big turnaround began in 2008, when more than 200,000 sockeye returned to the Columbia, and left fish managers in shock--they had expected only about a third of that.
Most of the sockeye headed up the Columbia, turned left at the Okanogan River, and made a beeline for B.C.'s Lake Osoyoos, while a smaller group returned to Lake Wenatchee.
Another 1,000 ESA-listed sockeye made it into the Snake, and about 650 were counted at the hatchery weir near Redfish Lake, Idaho.
That huge return reflected a large increase in smolt releases in 2006 and better ocean conditions, along with improved inriver migrating conditions, principally more spill at dams--though the jury is still out as to which factors are most important.
A 2009 NMFS analysis found a correlation between returns to the Columbia and Snake, which suggested that improved ocean conditions likely played a large role in the better returns to both rivers. But others, including the Fish Passage Center, pointed to more spill and less barging in the Snake as more likely responsible for the eye-popping returns to Redfish Lake.
The feds' memo from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle said that sockeye return rates from 1996 to 2008 correlated weakly with the ocean indicators developed by the agency, but they also noted that those indicators didn't include the food resources important for young sockeye.
To make things even more confusing, they said the added spill at lower Snake dams did correlate with Snake sockeye returns, but the Columbia returns showed a negative correlation with spill at dams along their migration route.
Last year, the Redfish Lake sockeye return was even better--about 700 made the 900-mile trip back from the ocean out of 1,200 that were counted at the halfway point on their journey--Lower Granite Dam.
This year, managers have tentatively estimated that about 600 are expected to make it back to the mouth of the Columbia. But that's about what they predicted to return the year before. Idaho Fish and Game personnel think the run will be better than that. They reported recently that their 2010 Redfish Lake sockeye estimate ranges between 700 and 1,100 fish getting back to Lower Granite Dam.
In early 2008, the technical managers estimated only 700 Snake sockeye would return later that year, but the actual return was over a thousand fish. The Upper Columbia run was forecast at 75,000, but actually came in around 215,000.
Last year, they predicted 600 Redfish Lake sockeye to return to the Columbia mouth, and the final tally ended up more than twice that. However, the Upper-C run came in close to the 183,000-fish prediction.
Two years ago, Canadian biologist Kim Hyatt told NW Fishletter that, given the nearly 1.5 million smolts leaving the B.C. lake in 2008, he expected a really big return this year, since ocean conditions were prime when the juvenile fish reached the ocean.
Since then, managers have become more circumspect about this year's Upper C run, which is now expected to be about half the size of 2008's record-breaker, the largest sockeye return to the Columbia since 1959.
With this year's low flows, federal agencies were prepared to shut down all spill at collector dams and barge as many spring chinook, steelhead and sockeye as possible during May, but they decided to abandon the strategy after the ISAB's review and a subsequent meeting with other sovereigns to discuss the issue.
The review pointed out that survival data is lacking to determine whether barging helps sockeye, and there is some evidence that sockeye descale more easily than chinook or steelhead in bypass systems at dams--a route they must take before they are delivered to barges. Descaling can lead to early mortality.
But the ISAB also said NMFS couldn't really say that improvement in marine conditions, rather than the extra spill at dams since 2006, has benefited the Columbia and Snake sockeye runs.
They said the feds offered no hypothesis with supporting empirical evidence "to explain how or why marine climate has been favorable to sockeye smolts, in contrast to the hypotheses about conditions that favor inriver survival."
The ISAB said any such marine hypothesis would have to explain why ocean conditions in 2006 and 2007 "have been unfavorable to sockeye smolts from other geographically proximate populations whose SARs have also been measured (Lake Washington in Puget Sound, Chilko and Cultus lakes in the Fraser River, Sakinaw Lake in Georgia Strait). Given this uncertainty, it seems transportation of sockeye smolts adversely affects their survival."
But a closer look at the other sockeye stocks mentioned by the ISAB shows that their ultimate survival may have depended more on how well they coped with conditions closer to home, long before they reach the open ocean.
A recent report from the Washington Department of Fisheries suggested that the biggest bottleneck to sockeye survival for the Cedar River run may occur in Lake Washington, itself, when emerging fry compete with other lake species like smelt and stickleback for food, long before they ever reach salt water.
The report says productivity of the Cedar River stock is far lower than eight reference stocks from Washington and southern British Columbia. More fry in the lake means less fry-to-adult survival.
As for Fraser sockeye, there is evidence that early salt-water mortality may have killed most of the 2007 Fraser and Sakinaw sockeye smolts in Georgia Strait before they even reached the open ocean north of Vancouver Island.
Canadian federal fisheries scientist Dick Beamish told NW Fishletter that his annual smolt survey in the Strait showed up few Fraser smolts in 2007, which indicated to him the likelihood of an adult return well short of the 11-million fish prediction. What might have caused the high mortality?
Beamish, who works out of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, B.C., said waters in the Strait are warmer than in previous decades, and likely have an important role in juvenile salmon survival.
Since the mid-1990s, he said, coho, chinook and sockeye runs that use the Strait as a migration corridor have tended to decline, while pink and chum stocks have trended upward.
In 2007, many sockeye smolts in Georgia Strait may not have grown fast enough in the warm water due to metabolic issues, may have become weak, and later succumbed to a variety of natural diseases, Beamish said.
And in even-numbered years, when juvenile pink populations are relatively large, they may be competing with other salmon species for food--a condition where the carrying capacity of the system could be overwhelmed. The pinks stick around until September, while most sockeye are directed migrators, and head north much sooner.
One note of optimism here is that Beamish' annual smolt survey turned up high numbers of young sockeye in 2008 and 2009. So, the huge number of Fraser pinks that went to sea in 2008 (returned in 2009) may not have swamped the sockeye, who spend two years at sea, and are slated to return this year.
One draft estimate from DFO has placed a 50-percent probability of an 11-million-fish return this year. Beamish said his smolt survey suggested about a 10-million fish return.
And the huge Fraser pink run that returned in 2009 may have been even larger than most officials think. The Pacific Salmon Commission pegged it at an astonishing 21 million fish. But that may have been a lowball estimate, said Brian Riddell, executive director of the Vancouver-based Pacific Salmon Foundation, and an ex-ISAB member himself.
Riddell said there is evidence that the run was far stronger, about 30 million fish overall. That would put it far above the two largest returns (more than 20 million in 1991 and 2001) since 1959, when biologists began keeping track.
Meanwhile, back in the Columbia, things are looking up as well.
South end of Lake Osoyoos and associated plumbing.
-courtesy COBTWG
Howie Wright, a tribal biologist with the Okanagan Nation Alliance--which is working with other groups to boost the Lake Osoyoos sockeye stock--shared some amazing news last week.
Thanks to a shot of fresh water released into the lake last September to counteract low-oxygen levels, Wright said, it seems that fry production has gone through the roof. He expects around 8 million smolts to leave the lake this year. That's five or six times the number that migrated out two years ago.
But with inriver migration conditions fairly poor this year, it is not clear how many juveniles will make it to the ocean. However, the NMFS 2008 sockeye review reported that Upper Columbia juveniles experienced relatively high survival (66 percent) between Rock Island and McNary dams in 2001, when flows were the second worst in the past 50 years.
This year, flows are expected to be third worst, while conditions in the ocean itself are expected to be improving from the El Niño situation that developed last year. -B. R.
[3] Spring Chinook Run--More Than Half Over?
With every passing day, it is looking less likely that the upriver spring chinook run will hit harvest managers' original expectation--close to half a million fish by June 15. On the other hand, they said the adult count of more than 158,000 through May 3rd is the largest since 2002 and the third highest since 1977.
Based on passage to date, the harvest managers provided an admittedly unreliable 310,000-370,000 fish return prediction in a joint staff report yesterday. They said the run seems to be earlier than the past five years and they expect it to hit the 50-percent mark sometime this week.
Another passage predictor developed by the University of Washington has estimated that about 63 percent of the upriver run had passed Bonneville Dam by May 2, and pegged the return at about 262,000 fish. A different UW analysis pegged the return to Bonneville at 49 percent.
Springers have begun showing up at Lower Granite Dam near the Idaho-Washington border, more than 2,000 a day, with a total that reached above 20,000 by May 4.
So far, it's tracking close to the 10-year average, and IDFG expects an 180,000-fish return, which includes about 29,000 wild springers. But last year, only 320 spring chinook had been counted at Lower Granite by this date. Eventually, 50,000 hatchery and wild fish were counted, with about 50 percent of last year's run passing the dam by May 25. Fish counters may have a long way to go.
Harvest managers recommended opening select areas in the lower Columbia for two more days of commercial gillnetting to target locally produced chinook. They said test fishing had shown these local stocks are now abundant. "Fish are arriving at local hatcheries and it is important to harvest these fish before more escape into tributaries," said the report about the Youngs Bay area near Astoria.
Even though fishermen had netted more upriver fish in these out-of-mainstem areas than expected, managers said the upriver allotment to commercials remained within ESA limits. Out of nearly 9,000 springers caught in the select areas, about 1,300 were upriver-bound (including release mortalities). Altogether, gillnetters had caught 18,000 or so, with nearly half upriver chinook.
Sport fishers had caught more than 26,000 spring chinook in the Columbia this season, and their season is now closed below Bonneville Dam, though it is open in the Willamette River and above Bonneville.
Spring chinook numbers in the Willamette have improved immensely since last year. More than 15,000 have been counted at the Falls already, more than last year's entire return. ODFW is expecting almost 63,000 at the Falls, four times the return of 2008, and more than twice the size of last year's escapement.
With this year's good show of spring fish, more sea lions than ever have been showing up to chew on the chinook. Seventy-one of them were counted at Bonneville on April 15. Observers have recognized at least 55 different California sea lions and 53 Steller sea lions and one harbor seal, according to the latest hazing report from the Corps of Engineers.
More than two dozen of the California sea lions have been seen here before, and 21 seen this year are on the list for removal. Nine have already been removed.
Even with so many marine mammals in the vicinity of the dam, the report says the 3,400 salmon taken by them is the lowest percentage of the run since 2004. But one particular sea lion, identified as C287 has been observed at sites upstream of Bonneville Dam, and known to consume at least 186 salmon this year. Last year, observers saw him catch 157 salmon, "the highest ever attributed to one animal in one season."
In other news, NOAA Fisheries has started a pilot program to investigate adult survival from the lower Columbia to Bonneville Dam. By PIT-tagging and acoustic tagging nearly 300 spring chinook caught in tanglenets this spring, researchers have begun a pilot study to study that stretch of the river where no estimates of adult salmon survival have yet been developed.
With more than 7,000 pinnipeds in the lower Columbia, including 3,000 California and Steller sea lions, and 4,000 harbor seals, who all take a bite out of the spring chinook run, the researchers say they will work closely with state and tribal biologists who actively track predators "to compile circumstantial evidence of predation based on observed species co-occurrence as an initial step, and then follow up with more complex studies to look at specific predator/prey interactions when they are warranted."
Some federal biologists have said before that marine mammals in the lower river could be preying on up to 20 percent of the spring run. -B. R.
[4] Oregon Releases Billion-Dollar-Plus Lower C Draft Recovery Plan
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has finally released a 25-year salmon recovery plan for the Lower Columbia on the Oregon side of the river, designed to improve ESA-listed salmon stocks below Bonneville Dam, which include wild chinook, chum, coho and steelhead. It is now open for public comment and will be considered by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission at its June 3-4 meeting.
"An important element of this plan is an implementation structure that ensures our actions to rebuild salmon and steelhead populations are efficient and strategic," said Kevin Goodson, ODFW Conservation Planning Coordinator, in a press release. Goodson said implementation of the plan builds on a lot of work that is currently underway, "and prioritizes recovery activities to try to get the biggest bang for the buck."
Subbasins included in the plan are Youngs Bay, Big Creek, Clatskanie, Scappoose, Clackamas, Sandy, Lower Gorge, Upper Gorge, and Hood River.
But some big questions are still under review, including just how accurately represented are the different fish populations in areas like the Gorge region.
So far, most fall chinook stocks in the lower Columbia are listed at a very high risk of extinction over the next 100 years. So are chum. In some watersheds, only winter steelhead are pegged at a low risk of extinction.
Most populations are expected to benefit from the recovery plan, but a few are not expected to reach levels high enough for ESA delisting. Like Upper Gorge coho, for instance, whose current abundance is around 41 fish. The plan's delisting abundance level is 5,203. But most other populations are in much better shape. Winter steelhead from the Sandy subbasin currently number close to 700 fish. Delisting abundance is pegged at 1,519--a number the plan says is likely to be exceeded.
The April 19 announcement of Oregon's plan comes five years after one was completed by stakeholders on the Washington side of the river, and OK'd by the feds. Oregon's plan still needs to pass muster from NMFS before it becomes official policy.
The cost of the Oregon plan is estimated at about $1.5 billion. Washington recently attached a price tag of $740 million to its lower Columbia plan to restore streams, improve hatcheries, and rework harvests over the next 50 years. Most of the funding is expected to come from federal sources. The feds are also expected to spend more than $500 million on estuary improvements. -B. R.
[5] El Niño Shifts Into Neutral
The latest report from meteorologists Down Under says that most ENSO indicators in the equatorial Pacific have dropped below El Niño thresholds. That region of the ocean has been cooling since last December.
"The decline in the 2009/10 El Niño event is consistent with climate model predictions which suggest Pacific Ocean temperatures will continue to cool over the coming months," said the April 28 wrap up from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
"The majority of model predictions point towards cooler than normal Pacific Ocean conditions emerging during the southern winter. As autumn [southern hemisphere] is a typical transitional period for ENSO, model predictions through and beyond autumn are generally less reliable than at other times of the year."
Since March, the sea surface temperature of one large stretch of the equatorial Pacific has declined about .4 degrees C.
Off the Northwest coast, water temperatures have declined as well since March, when they were running up to 2 degrees F above average. By the end of April, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center showed that SST's had reached average temperatures for this time of year.
NOAA's May 3 El Niño update reported that several climate models suggest a transition to La Niña conditions by late summer or early fall.
In the meantime, most Northwest water users have dodged a bullet with late season snows in many Cascade watersheds, running most up to about 75 percent of average. But the Columbia Basin is still down in the 64 percent range, with the third lowest water supply in the past 50-year record. It has put BPA into a $233-million hole this year, according to spokesman Michael Milstein. He said the power marketing agency had originally expected to make $235 million this year.
It was a different story in California. After two drought years. snowpack in many Sierra basins was running at nearly 150 percent of average, thanks to the El Niño pattern. -B. R.
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