This is what I mentioned earlier, if the smolts are migrating into a massive wall of predators, all the habitat and ocean conditions mean squat. It sure seems like habitat and predators are something that we can manage to a certain degree, ocean nutrients and temps, probably not as much.

Wanna bet!

Rivrguy,

I'm no expert on the Nooch, and I likely miss a lot of things many places. I didn't mean to imply that the Wynoochee was some kind of mainstay of Spring Chinook production, only that the limited habitat capacity for producing springers was compromised and degraded by forest practices in the upper watershed, same as occurred in the upper Chehalis, Skookumchuck, and Newwaukum. None of the Chehalis basin has been prime spring Chinook habitat in the last 200 years. But parts of upper watershed reaches marginally provided the habitat conditions necessary for them to be there, so in those former times of salmonid abundance, spring Chinook occurred wherever the environmental conditions favored their existence, even if the total abundance was low.

Darth,

Now ya' got me curious; I'm going to take another look at that EIS. It's been decades for me. As naive as I was then, I didn't understand how WDF decided salmon mitigation beyond temperature regulation wasn't required and that WDG took a lump sum of $$ for steelhead mitigation. Those conclusions just don't pencil out over the prospective lifetime of a dam.

20 Gage,

What makes you think 1968 was "peak" returns? I think we have cumulative data suggesting that larger returns of wild steelhead occurred earlier than that. The 1968 - 1972 time period mainly reflects the peak combined harvests of hatchery and wild steelhead for many river systems, and not the peak abundance of wild steelhead.

RunnGun,

I'm sorry to see you use the term "excuses." I don't see anyone here trying to excuse anything. IMO we are making observations and trying to explain what has happened and why it has happened. That's not an excuse.

SG old WDG took the money set aside to rear a required number of Steelhead smolt but used a hunk of it to rebuild Aberdeen Lake Hatchery. They were allowed to do this by guaranteeing to produce the smolt regardless of funding for the life of the dam in writing.

Now WDFW has twice tried to get away from that but the in writing thing stopped them. It is the TCL funds in trust for further mitigation that have been setting for over 20 years.

I think you captured the rest of Springer thing about right on.

Factors dictating stock abundance are not easy to see.
Science says the two main factors are ocean conditions and spawning and rearing habitat carrying capacity.
Never ever read anything about predators being a deciding factor.

Ever hear of Herschel? For sure there a multiple factors involving predators, but there definitely is a connection. This article in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound provides some insight in to predation and the fact that an increasing in other forage fish could solve the problem. Great example of the interplaying factors.

https://www.eopugetsound.org/magazine/ssec2018/marine-survival-3

That was a predator taking advantage of a man made obstacle.

As Krijack noted, if the forage fish were increased then the predators would switch off to them. It is my understanding that pinniped preferred lamprey to salmon; lots more fat and nutrients. If we want more salmon maybe, just maybe, we should lay off other species. And, in the short term, it may be necessary to control predators in specific locations where they take unnaturally concentrated smolts/adults like at dams.

The unfortunate thing about trying to recover anadromous salmonids is the myriad of factors crashing them, none of them responsible for the whole thing. Take out dams and don't change ocean fisheries (forage fish and the recovery species) and no recovery. Kill off predators and leave the ocean bereft of forage? No recovery.

The harbor seal diet studies (scat samples) from the late 1990s and early 2000s provides some interesting observations.

In Hood Canal during the fall 79% of the samples contained gadids (primarily hake), 30% herring and 26% adult salmon. During the spring 85% of the samples were gadids, herring 26% and anchovy 35%.

In South Sound 99% of the had gadids (hake and tomcod) herring 69%, midshipman 37% and various flatfish 33%.

Juvenile salmonids were consumed by the harbor seals with the heaviest rates in the spring but in terms of both numbers and biomass they are minor portion of the harbor seals diet though a small portion of an individual seal diet can add up to a significant number for the population as a whole.

Regarding the hake between 1980 and late 1990s there was a decline in abundance for the inland (Georgia straits and Puget Sound) Distinct Population Segment (DPS) and is currently listed as a federal species of concern. If the Puget Sound portion of the DPS was considered separately the status concerns would increase. In that period a decline in both size and average weight was noted in the hake.

A major hake historic PS spawning area was Port Susan WDFW monitoring of the spawning biomass for the period 1980 and 2000 showed an 85% decline.

The long trend in herring abundance is no more encouraging. Since the mid-1970s WDFW has been monitoring various spawning aggregations annual (estimating the spawning biomass). WDFW produces a status report on the population trends every 4 years. As part of that evaluation stocks that fall below 25% of the running 25-year average are giving status rating of critical. In 1996 none of the 17 populations monitored given a critical. In the most recent report (2016 - the 2020 report should be available soon) of the 18 populations rated 9 (50%) were rated as critical.

The question we all quickly jump to is whether these as well as Chinook, coho and steelhead smolt survivals declines are all due to seal pinniped predation or some other large ecosystem problem is unknown and can't be known without more holistic evaluation of the PS ecosystem.

curt

Looks like salmon and steelhead habitat has been traded for something else.

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/protecting-critical-value-nearshore-habitat


More than 95 percent of the most valuable nearshore habitat in Puget Sound is gone and is especially scarce in the south Sound, according to an analysis by the Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration Project. Scientists described it as a “dramatic change in the historic occurrence [of] these once-prominent nearshore ecosystems.”

Fewer than one percent of Puget Sound Chinook salmon juveniles that migrate to the ocean each year survive to return as adults. That means that already imperiled populations continue to decline. There are also repercussions for other species such as endangered Southern Resident killer whales that depend on them for food.

Nice cut and past job there, Hank, I mean illahee. Good read being the only difference though.

It’s a death by a thousand cuts, however the most limiting of factors by far is habitat. While predation does it’s damage, taking predator control measures (removing cormorants or pinnipeds) may allow a few more fish to survive in the immediate, but won’t translate into any sustained increase in numbers over time. It hinges on what the given habitat is capable of providing and holding (carrying capacity) at that time.

It’s the same reason why “just plant more fish” won’t work either. But there seems to be no shortage of people who struggle to understand this as well.


Steamy

How many rivers/waterways with man made obstacles need to be listed before understanding that is part of the problem to the benefit of the predator? Whether it's the power dams on the Columbia, The Hood Canal brdg. the flood control dams on PS and GH rivers and the straightening dikes below them that came with. All contribute to a significant increase of salmonid predation.

All I have been saying if we could start NOW with some region wide predator control/management, we WILL see an increase in overall numbers, to at least give the fish a fighting chance during all the other negative current environmental issues facing them. Everything else said, it WOULD achieve the quickest results. Whether the law makers and the public have the stomach for it is another question.

My point is until fisheries science does a 180 and and starts listing predation as a limiting factor for stock abundance demanding we control predators is just whistling in the wind.
Why not address the issues they do list?

Water quality

Large woody debris

Stream complexity

Back channel alcove over wintering habitat

Folks have been talking about salmomid predation for decades and in fact the predation of steelhead is listed as one of the factors in the NMFS approved PS steelhead recovery plan. The problem that no one has been able to get around is the lack of public will to address the issue.

Other issues to consider would be altered hydrographs whether from hydro production, land use practices or climate change.

Stream channel instability

excessive sedimentation

curt

This discussion and the other related ones them past month (years) all have the common theme of making steelhead and salmon ecosystems the way they used to be, restoration. Ecosystems are dynamic, they are always changing and no management scheme can force an ecosystem into a previous state. The three broad categories of ecosystems are freshwater, ocean water, and terrestrial. North Pacific salmonids depend on all three and over a large section pf the earth. These systems are changing and at a rapid pace. Human activities causing climate change, and the introduction of persistent organic pollutants (POP’s) and plastics into the environment are drivers for the rapid pace of change.

Using steelhead as an example climate change in the freshwater environment is causing flooding and river changes on a large scale. Attempts to prevent damage from flooding does nothing to improve steelhead habitat. In the marine environment most steelhead smolts migrate directly offshore to regions of the Pacific of a particular temperature range. There is a warm water line that defines their southern range. As ocean waters warm that line move northward and a glance at a globe will show that as the southern boundary move north the total area of suitable marine habitat shrinks. Steelhead are a minor salmonid species. As their marine habitat decreases they have to compete more with pink and chum salmon and they are at a handicap.

Concerning pollution and plastics, they are everywhere in the environment. POP’s are endocrine disrupters, they can limit reproductive success and cause genetic damage. In the marine environment they are at low levels but plastics concentrate them on their surface as much as a million fold. As all of the plastics in the ocean are broken down to micro particles the surface area increases as the size of the particle decreases. The micro particles and the pollution they concentrate become part of the food chain. When we talk about marine derived nutrients cross out nutrients and substitute pollutants, not good.

We can discuss management failures, better manage schemes, or any number of other ideas but until the real cause of the change is understood little will happen. Climate change, POP’s, and plastics are all a product of the fossil fuel industry and that is going to be with us for some time.

I'll take flooding as an example. If the rivers had a functional floodplain capable of handling a 150 year "naturally" then floods wouldn't be a problem. If we watersheds capable of retaining rain and snow rather than running it off fast, the fish would be happy. We know what the fish need in the ecosystem; we just don't intend to provide it as there is money to be made.

WN1A . A very insightful post that expands the conversation. It's almost like the West Coast Steelhead are the canary in the coal mine for the salmonid system as a whole. We have fd up it's environment all the way around to a point of where we are now. POP's and PFAS and all the other plastic/chemicals man has introduced to what we thought an ocean environment that couldn't be affected are now catching up to us. Since the second industrial revolution in the early 20th century all the crap has caught to us. What's the future?

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/chemistry/age-plastic-parkesine-pollution#:~:text=The%2020th%20century%20saw%20a,fully%20synthetic%20plastic%20in%201907.

I would hope that we still could still have an available opportunity to in river fish CnR statewide, whether hatchery or wild, that's in my DNA. I don't want to kill and eat them anyway. I think we have come to the point of the rest of the worlds approach to managing the experience. Permit limiting fishing only. It's inevitable from a management perspective. Not a happy discussion for the rest of society that believe, "I have a right to fish public land if I buy a license". Truth of the matter is, the fish can't support that anymore. With all the crap that's in the ocean it makes one wonder if any fish is "Healthy" to eat any more.

I truly believe that in 10yrs there will be next to zero viable steelhead fisheries left in Washington State. If you want to catch steelhead go to Oregon, Idaho, NorCal, or Great Lakes. We all know we are past the tipping point, although if society made a huge effort to get habitat back in balance and manage predators, we could potentially turn the tide, alas, that ship has sailed, SO..... could DFW or the tribes pen raise steelhead innthe salt and release them in rivers for sport? Sounds good to me!

My prediction is that steelhead fishing will be severely limited on rivers where wild fish are the main draw (Sol Duc, Hoh, even the Nooch) with very liberal seasons (no boat or bait restrictions) on the banner hatchery rivers. (Cowlitz, lower Bogie, maybe even the Hump.)

Still shocked that we ended up with a season at all on the coast. Really miss my beloved Nooch, however.

Seeing some positive Steelhead reports from Oregon. Talk is more fish around early than past seasons. Maybe it may not be as bad as first thought. My coast trip was cancelled from the cold, so I know little that has been going on. There was a good group of fish that came in with all the early high water at the Bogy hatchery, but don't have any reports since everything dropped in.