[1] Spring Chinook Run Third Highest To Bonneville Dam
The 2010 Columbia River upriver spring chinook run has come in just shy of harvest managers' inseason re-estimation of 340,000 (to river mouth). By June 15, about 280,000 had been counted at Bonneville Dam. With about 38,000 upriver fish estimated to have been caught in lower river gillnet and sport fisheries, the 318,000-fish total comes up a little short of the in-season adjustment, but about one-third shy of the managers' preseason estimate of 470,000.
It is still the third highest spring chinook return to the dam since 1938, close behind 2002's spring run, but 100,000 fish shy of the 2001 bonanza.
The size of the Snake spring/summer run is significantly below the original expectations of harvest managers as well. But it's unlikely to even hit the more circumspect goal, developed by IDFG, of 160,000 spring/summer chinook to Lower Granite Dam.
Peter Hassemer, IDFG's anadromous fish manager, said two weeks ago they would be lucky to get 100,000 hatchery and wild chinook back. But a late surge of fish after the early June storm pushed totals at Ice Harbor past 113,000 by June 17.
Hassemer said the Rapid River Hatchery returns of spring chinook were only about one-third of their expectation from the 3-million-smolt release two years ago. But he said his agency's forecast of 29,000 wild spring/summer chinook returning to the dam may still be close to what actually shows up.
With nearly 95,000 springers already past Lower Granite Dam, there are plenty of hatchery chinook to go around. Idaho fish managers bumped up the daily recreational take to five chinook a day on the Lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers--three adults and two jacks--clipped fins only, to make sure they are hatchery fish. Residents also got a boost in their annual take. Now, they will each be allowed to catch 40 adult salmon this year, twice the previous limit.
Nobody was really sure what last year's huge jack return would bring this spring. The technical advisory committee that estimates run sizes was stymied by the biological puzzle from last year's spring chinook returns, when more than three times as many jacks were counted as seen before--about 80,000 jacks--and the big question was how to estimate the 2010 spring run with such an anomalous signal.
TAC ran seven harvest models and took the average from them to come up with the 470,000-fish estimate. It was an iffy estimate at best, since in 2001, a run of over 400,000 springers had materialized from a jack count of about 24,000 the year before.
In recent years, the jack count used by TAC has led to large over-estimates of the upriver spring chinook run in five out of the last seven years, feeding speculation that such differences in the jack/adult relationship might be related to changes in ocean productivity or even hatchery feeding practices. Some kind of higher adult mortality might also be at play, including the possibility of much higher predation in the river by marine mammals than seen in previous decades.
NOAA Fisheries scientists have been tracking other physical and biological indicators to see how they may help in predicting future salmon runs. NOAA researcher Ed Casillas said his group is working on a way to estimate run size that gives less weight to jack numbers and more consideration to other factors like juvenile fish surveys and coastal upwelling to judge future abundance. He said the jack count is useful to some degree, but it doesn't tell the whole picture.
The hugely productive ocean conditions that occurred in 2008, when 2009's jacks went to sea, may have boosted survival of young males--and helped those with an original propensity to jack--that is, those who were inclined to become sexually mature and return to the river a year before most of the run (see NW Fishletter 263).
Other biologists say that if the 60,000 extra jacks that came back last year had been subjected to more average growth conditions and had returned this year instead, the adult run in 2010 might have added up to 400,000 fish or more.
That's a figure close to the all-time record high run in recent years, 2001's 440,000 spring chinook return to the mouth of the river--with a Bonneville count of nearly 415,000.
However, the jack count from 2000 that presaged the 2001 run was only around 24,000 fish (the 10-year average jack count was only about 3,200 at that time).
So, there's the rub. More than three times the 2001 jack count in 2009 produced fewer fish this year.
Another problem--when one assumes that those 2009 jacks would have returned the following year under more normal ocean conditions, they would have skewed the male/female components of the run, in a very unusual way, one never seen before.
The percentage of jacks that make up each migration year's total return is also highly variable, especially for hatchery fish. Take Idaho's Rapid River Hatchery, for instance. Between 2000 and 2006, jacks accounted for between 1.3 percent and 22.4 percent of the total run. Wild spring chinook jacks returned at a much lower rate, generally in the 1-4 percent range in recent years, according to some PIT-tag results available on the Fish Passage Center Web site. But one year, 2002, it climbed up to 10 percent.
Another theory about last year's high jack count was based on changes in feed at hatcheries. But this year's spring jack count is back within more normal parameters, though high at 17,000.
If marine mammals are eating many more spring chinook than anyone really thinks--that would mean they could be consuming up to half the run before the spring chinook reach the first counting station at Bonneville Dam. A pilot study just underway this year may eventually get a handle on the question of adult predation between the estuary and the first dam.
More likely, last year's extreme jack count may never be successfully explained, but resulted from a combination of factors that has never produced such a phenomenon since biologists started counting fish at Bonneville Dam in 1938.
But the puzzle is still facing harvest managers, who must develop an estimate of next year's return. A major problem at hand was raised by one regional biologist, who told NW Fishletter that if one used the same ratio of jacks to adults that TAC used to estimate this year's return, only 56,000 or so spring chinook would be expected to return to Bonneville Dam next year. A return in that low a range hasn't been seen since 1999, when ocean conditions were much worse than recent years. -Bill Rudolph
[2] Summer Chinook Season Begins, Huge Fall Run Expected
With nearly 89,000 summer chinook predicted to return to the upper Columbia this year, the highest expected return since 2002, recreational fishing has already reopened on the lower Columbia to go after them.
About 56,000 chinook will be split evenly between tribal and non-tribal fisheries, with 13,400 allocated to non-treaty fisheries above Priest Rapids Dam, 5,450 fish for lower Columbia gillnetters, and another 5,450 fish going to the recreational side.
Nearly half a million steelhead are expected to migrate past Bonneville Dam this summer and fall, about 139 percent of the recent 10-year average.
Sockeye returns are expected to be better than average as well, with a 125,000-fish forecast to the river mouth. About 14,000 are slated to return to Lake Wenatchee, 110,000 to the Okanagon, and 600 ESA-listed socks are predicted to return to the Snake River.
The fall run should top more than 664,000 fish, managers say, with nearly 320,000 upriver brights expected to be heading for the Hanford Reach area, more than 100,000 higher than last year's return. Tule numbers should be way up this year, too. Nearly 163,000 are expected back to Bonneville Pool, more than three times last year's return. With another 75,000 destined for the mid-Columbia. About 85,000 hatchery falls are expected in the lower river, with about 10,000 wilds (ESA-listed) predicted to show. Managers also estimate that more than 5,000 ESA-listed wild fall chinook will return to the Snake River this year. -B. R.
[3] Heavy Rains Force Curtailments, Raise Water Supply Outlook
Heavy spring rains forced BPA to run the hydro system at full capacity last week, while wind generators, the Columbia Generation Station and the region's thermal plants cut back to make room for the excess power.
The strong precipitation event that drenched the Northwest in early June actually bumped up the latest water supply forecast for the Columbia at The Dalles by 2 percent. The April-to-August supply is now pegged at 69 percent of normal, according to the June 7 forecast from NOAA's River Forecast Center in Portland.
The runoff led to days of uncontrolled spill at federal dams in the Columbia Basin, where Corps of Engineers' officials said they were dealing with a lot of full reservoirs, and were running the river on the high side.
Last Wednesday, dissolved gas levels spiked past legal limits, especially at the lower Snake dams, where precipitation was at 400 percent of average. The high gas levels forced BPA to limit the reserves it makes available to wind generators. Typically, BPA reserves 1000 MW of capacity to accommodate wind-generation fluctuations. However, on Wednesday, with the nearly 2600 MW of wind energy being produced in the region thanks to a series of storms, the agency cut its reserve capacity to the range between 100 and 200 MW, according to Michael Milstein, spokesman for BPA.
Milstein said later that BPA told wind generators to restrict their output to what they had already sold. The power marketing agency also got some help from BC Hydro, who stored extra water at reservoirs north of the border during the runoff event.
The agency also began trimming the output from the Columbia Generation Station. On Wednesday, CGS' output was already cut to 55 percent for repair work, by Thursday it was down to 40 percent and on Friday morning the region's lone nuclear plant was operating at 25 percent capacity, according to BPA.
But by Friday afternoon, wind production had dropped to near zero and BPA's capacity reserves expanded to about 400 MW.
Bonneville expected the curtailment schedule to remain in effect through June 14, Milstein said.
Also on June 14, a barge broke free of its tow leaving the navigation lock at Lower Granite Dam near Lewiston, Idaho, and damaged the guide wall above the dam. Temporary repairs have been made, but two spillway bays had to be closed. It will be about two weeks before the wall is permanently secured.
Most of the precipitation fell in the Oregon and southern Washington Cascades, central-northern Idaho, and southern B.C. The largest amounts were measured in the Willamette Valley where it was 3-10 inches above normal for the first week in June. Central Idaho saw 2-8 inches above normal.
Average precipitation for all of June fell during the first four days of the month, said Corps of Engineers' Steve Barton at last week's meeting of the technical managers responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Columbia-Snake hydro system.
Barton said Lake Roosevelt and Dworshak reservoirs were expected to be nearly full by the middle of the month. He noted that some tributaries were still above flood stage, including Idaho's Payette River, and some headwater streams in the Salmon River watershed.
The June 7 final forecast also estimated April-July inflows at Lower Granite Reservoir on the Snake River at 64 percent of normal, up 2 percent.
Lower Snake flows topped out at Granite on June 6 at about 207 kcfs, about 100 kcfs above the earlier May 20 high brought on by the spring freshet. Flows there were still running around 200 kcfs three days later.
Downriver at Bonneville Dam, flows were still climbing by the middle of last week, measuring 364 kcfs on Wednesday, with about 175 kcfs being spilled.
At Lower Granite, the high flow event raised spill levels from 20 kcfs to more than 100 kcfs, about 50 percent of total outflow. By June 5, that put tailrace gas levels above 130 percent--10 percent above the BiOp waiver.
The TDG level in the Lower Granite tailrace has been above the legal limit ever since, though it was slowly dropping by the morning of June 11.
At Little Goose, the next dam downriver, TDG peaked in the tailrace on June 6 at 128 percent, and finally dropped to 120 percent Friday, but the gas level was still slightly above the 115 percent forebay waiver on June 16. On June 7, only 6 percent of sampled chinook and steelhead showed signs of gas bubble trauma in fins. But on June 14, that went up to 15 percent.
By Thursday afternoon, flows had dropped enough so that legal gas waiver limits had nearly been reached at the other two dams on the Snake, Lower Monumental and Ice Harbor.
Gas levels weren't much of a problem at mainstem Columbia dams, where TDG exceedences of only a few percent occurred around June 10-11 at some projects.
At the TMT meeting, Corps officials said summer dam operations will be similar to last year.
They noted that seasonal flows had improved enough to go ahead with a fish survival study at Bonneville Dam that had been cancelled because such low flows were expected.
The managers have also decided that the temporary spill weirs at McNary will not be in operation this year.
By continuing last year's summer spill regime, the feds have decided to not follow their own BiOp, which calls for ending spill early if few fall chinook are still in the system by August, if three days of fewer than 300 juvenile fall chinook are counted at each dam. Spill could end as early as Aug. 1, but no later than Aug. 31.
Now the dams will spill through August whether there are any fish left or not.
Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners said the feds were not following their own best science, and caved in just as they had in April when NOAA Fisheries backed down from its proposal to maximize barging in May to improve overall steelhead and spring chinook survival.
She said it will cost BPA another $7 million to $20 million to make up for the extra spill, and the power marketing agency should cut costs somewhere else in the fish and wildlife plan to make up for it.
Flores said the large precipitation event in early June has already moved a lot of juvenile fall chinook downstream. "There will be few fish left by mid-August," she said.
Adult passage had all but stopped when the gulleywasher hit the lower Snake. The chinook count went from 1,522 on June 4, to only 40 fish three days later.
But the high flows helped boost many sockeye and fall chinook smolts now migrating through the system.
A huge number of sockeye left Lake Osoyos in southern B.C. last month (8 million by some estimates) and by the time they reached Rocky Reach Dam, it was reported the smolt monitoring system was totally swamped, so that it could only open to sample smolts for 15 seconds at a time. -Bill Rudolph, Steve Ernst
[4] Judge Sets Schedule For Arguments Over Supplemental BiOp
U.S. District Judge James Redden set the stage last week for the next act in litigation over the 2008 salmon plan.
He told plaintiffs to file motions by Aug. 20 for leave to file supplemental complaints, and gave federal agencies until Aug. 27 to file their administrative record for the additions to the 2008 salmon plan the Obama administration had integrated into the BiOp after a limited remand granted by the judge.
Redden's June 8 order made it clear that all parties should stay focused on the added material.
"The parties shall not re-litigate issues raised in the summary judgment motions currently pending before the court unless the 2010 Supplemental Biological Opinion, its Administrative Record, and/or the Amended Records of Decision directly affect those previous arguments," he wrote.
Plaintiff environmental and fishing groups argued in a May 28 filing that they could not agree to such conditions if federal defendants argued for them, but would agree to page limits imposed by Local Rule 7, regarding summary judgment and other non-discovery motions.
Redden agreed to the page limits and gave plaintiffs 45 days to file supplemental briefs after the feds file their administrative record, and the feds another 45 days to respond to them.
This schedule means it will be sometime in December when the court would likely set a date for oral arguments.
BPA customer groups that support the BiOp said it was a good sign the judge was clear about limiting the arguments, and that he intended to make a ruling in a timely manner. -B. R.
[5] Little Goose Top Spill Weir Has Been A Mixed Blessing
The spillway weir at Little Goose Dam on the Lower Snake River has proven to be a bit of a headache for dam operators this year.
The top spill weir [TSW] has been great as a water slide for boosting smolts past the dam, but its operation has blocked the upstream passage of thousands of adult spring chinook. The adult fish are confused by the water currents that the "bulk" spill pattern creates and have a hard time finding the fish ladder to get by the project.
The problem became evident May 13, when dam operators shut spill down in the TSW and two nearby spillway bays while they adjusted the weir's crest to accommodate higher flows. They kept the court-ordered 30-percent spill in place by reconfiguring the spill pattern at the project to a more even level across the spillway than the bulk pattern. That was all the fish needed.
Soon, amazed dam operators watched the adult count zoom past 9,500 fish from about 1,600 on May 12, and the migrating spring chinook were once again on their way.
The TSW has been shut down twice since then to help adults reach the fish ladder. It stopped operation May 18. The day before, about 1,800 springers were counted passing the dam. The number jumped to 9,600 on May 18, and about 5,000 passed the dam on May 19.
With a flat spill pattern in place on May 25, adult numbers passed 2,400, more than twice the previous day's tally. On May 26, another 1,200 spring chinook passed the dam, and numbers were back down to 468 fish on May 28, when the TSW was watered up again.
Tim Dykstra, lead biologist for the Corps of Engineers' Walla Walla District, said it's a phenomenon that seems to be unique at Little Goose.
"When flows are below 60 kcfs, we started to see it," he told NW Fishletter. But once the TSW is out of service and the spill pattern is changed, he added, the adult chinook seem to quickly find the ladder.
Dykstra said the TSW has two spillway crest settings, depending on flows. In the spring, it's designed to pass 7 kcfs where it is located in the first spillbay next to the powerhouse, while water is spilled at other spillbays to maintain the court order that mandates spilling 30 percent of the flow at Little Goose.
"The tailrace at Little Goose is extremely sensitive," Dykstra said. When a lot of flow is coming out of the spillway, eddies can be created that complicate egress from the tailrace. He said the eddies are created by flows past a little point of land near the navigation lock.
But at times, the flows can keep adult fish from locating the fish ladder, even though the TSW was designed to work with 30-percent spill.
"When overall flows are more powerful, it tends to spread it more evenly across the spillway," he said. The Corps' modeling predicts fewer problems at high flows.
But even before the TSW was installed last year, there had been problems at Little Goose with adult passage.
In the spring of 2007, the bulk spill that was designed to improve smolt passage over the spillway was modified to a more even pattern, which allowed thousands of spring chinook to get by the dam after stacking up for days below the fish ladder.
Dykstra said in 2008 the Corps tried to replicate the 2007 conditions and study fish passage, with a group of radio-tagged adults at the ready, but the fish passed the project with no delay.
"It's kind of a head-scratcher," he said.
In 2009, with normal to high spring flows, he said no adult passage problems were apparent. But this year's low water supply has created a whole new set of problems. Spring flows were generally below 50 kcfs before the short freshet bumped them up over 100 kcfs around May 20.
Later in the summer, when flows are expected to drop into the low 30-kcfs range, Dykstra said dam operators have agreed to take the TSW out for the rest of the migration season. Unlike the huge weirs at some other dams, this one can be removed by crane.
But it's not just the low flows that cause problems. On May 25, the last time the TSW was taken out of service, flows were actually around 70 kcfs. And in the earlier May 18-20 period when it was out, flows were rising from around 70 kcfs to over 100 kcfs. At these higher flows, the bulk spill pattern can still mask the attraction flow at the entrance to the fish ladder. When more water is going through the powerhouse, adult passage seems to go without a hitch, Dykstra said. -B. R.
[6] Delwiche Named VP Of Power Services At BPA
Greg Delwiche was named vice president for power services at BPA, replacing Paul Norman, who retired last year.
Before joining BPA in 1992, Delwiche was with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He became BPA's vice president of generation asset management in 1999 and has served as vice president for environment, fish and wildlife since 2004. In his new role, he will oversee the agency's power operations, including generation, bulk marketing and power rates issues.
Delwiche's appointment as VP for power services was praised by Scott Corwin, executive director of the Public Power Council.
"I have known Greg for many years, and have seen him perform at a high level in every role he has had with the agency. This is an excellent choice, and we look forward to working with Greg as he takes on this important position," Corwin told NW Fishletter.
Delwiche holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in civil engineering from the University of Florida and Oregon State University, respectively. -Steve Ernst
[7] Washington State Sued Over Spill Levels At Dams
Some fishing and conservation groups have filed a suit in Thurston County Superior Court against the Washington State Department of Ecology, aimed at making the state ease water quality standards and allow more spill at federal dams to improve salmon survival.
The Ecology Department had turned down a petition from the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, the Association of Northwest Steelheaders and Idaho Rivers United to allow higher dissolved gas levels at dams where spill is used to help migrating juvenile salmon.
The 2007 petition claimed that such a change would allow dam operators to boost spill in forebays now limited by a 115-percent gas cap to 120 percent, a change that enviros say could add another 4 MAF to spill regimes for migrating salmon.
In January 2009, after more than a year of meetings, a group of water quality managers from Washington announced it would not change its 115-percent total dissolved gas [TDG] water quality criterion for dam forebays in the Columbia and Snake rivers--the level the federal hydro BiOp sets for managing spill during the fish passage season.
Using analyses from the Fish Passage Center, Oregon fish managers had already called for removing forebay gas monitors at mainstem dams in hopes of wringing a little more spill for fish at the dams. It was an approach other plaintiffs endorsed in the current litigation over the 2008 BiOp.
But in the final analysis, most participants said any potential fish benefits were lost in the "decimal dust" of the methodologies.
Back in March 2008, the Corps of Engineers said the FPC methodology left out many of the factors included in its own hydro model and called the FPC result "unreliable."
The groups suing Ecology are still claiming that spill "has played a significant role in increased salmon and steelhead returns in the past several years," says their June 3 press release.
NOAA Fisheries' COMPASS model estimated the 120-percent-only scenario would produce only a 0.922-percent increase for Snake spring chinook and a 1.1-percent decline in survival of Snake steelhead, because the slight increase in spill meant fewer of them would be routed to barges. -B. R.
[8] New Predation Study Begins on Bass Note
Funding has been approved for a new study of predation on salmon smolts by smallmouth bass at several federal dams on the Columbia River.
The report will also look into the role of shad in the food chain of reservoir-dwelling fishes. Shad, probably the most famous non-native fish in the Northwest, return to the Columbia by the millions, yet scientists have never understood just how they fit into the river's ecosystem.
Smallmouth bass are also an introduced species, but classed as a game fish by WDFW. It is thought they consume large numbers of smolts at several mainstem dams.
The study, led by researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and ODFW, will begin a quantitative look at the issue, prodded by language in the 2008 hydro BiOp that calls for managers to find ways to reduce populations of non-indigenous fish.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council approved initial funding at its June meeting--$350,000 for an FY 2010 planning budget--after the proposal got a provisional green light from the independent science panel that reviews F&W projects. The science panel was concerned whether the investigators would be able to capture enough smallmouth bass in dam forebays and tailraces to make adequate comparisons.
The study will look at suspected "hot spots" for smallmouth bass in the forebays at McNary, John Day and The Dalles dams, and try to compare them to tailrace areas thought not to be hot spots for the bass, based on pikeminnow catch data.
The proposal will also try to figure out the role of juvenile shad in the diets of non-native predators.
A 2008 regional workshop shared the skimpy knowledge among biologists.
Researchers said that smaller smallmouth bass were the most predaceous and grew large enough to eat salmon by two years of age. It's thought that older bass concentrate on prey other than salmon.
The bass also tend to focus on the smaller naturally-produced fall chinook instead of the larger hatchery-produced yearlings.
Others at the 2008 meeting noted that "a lot of people really like bass fishing, so there could be sub-stantial opposition to removal -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
