https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article290479554.html
This mean mo hatchery fish without lawsuits??

“This historic funding is being dispersed through self-governance which means that it is directed straight to the Tribes.”

Lisa Wilson is really good at stealing taxpayer money. They use the money to get more control of the government. If they wanted to fix hatcheries they would of already done so.

Jake Dogfish posted, " If they wanted to fix hatcheries they would of already done so."

Not really. Every good businessman knows that the best way to fund any project is with "other people's money."

Not only that, Salmo, but at least in WA it used to be that if you threatened to close a hatchery or reduce production the Leg would fall all over itself to provide more funds so the agencies could do their pet projects and still produce fish.

Perhaps the funniest, or saddest, was one session where all funding for each hatchery was a line item. That meant it could only be spent there for the purposes enumerated in the item.

Hatcheries are, or used to be, sacred cows in the Legislature. And that worked well for WDFW.

It did. But I found the line-item action fun, because once money got there it went lots of places other than "intended".

One might also opine that it will be harder for WFC and other organizations to attack tribal hatchery operations. My biggest concern is that those fish required by Federal law to be fin-clipped actually are clipped. Who is monitoring and enforcing that not so little nuance?

I do know that the historically, the Quinault tribe clips the adipose on only 10% of there Steelhead smolt plants. Not sure about Salmon? Not that it matters for Steelhead anyway, because those rivers may never be open for recs to fish again. I have heard many times, the Tribes see a harvestable fish as a fish, hatchery or wild, so marking does not matter to them.

Also, marking fish allows for selective fishing. When the sporties harvest marked fish selectively, it actually can reduce the tribal harvest when they fish non-selectively. Do they really don't like selective fisheries.

Unfortunately, not marking hatchery fish precludes them from being harvested during a marked selective fishery so those released by recreational fishers move to the next group of fishers.

That takes me back to the question of who is and will be monitoring those hatchery operations to be sure they are conform to Federal law?

Get into some really good weed there, Larry??

Once. After a full day at the last Diamond Cup and an evening at the State Line tavern. One and done.

FYI - Over 900K unclipped tribal hatchery coho held in acclimation pen(s) in Elliott Bay in conjunction with the Port of Seattle. Not speculation; confirmed by the Port.

Why unclipped??

You can keep unclipped coho in Marine Areas 10 and 11.

Wouldn’t it be great if all those unclipped coho stayed in MA 10……
SF

At one time there was an effort to use net pens to keep coho and Chinook in PS. The delayed-release program. Seems to work rather well at keeping them in-Sound. The fish, since they never went to ocean, were rather small. Also, there would need to be a good food supply even for the smaller fish. I think, if memory serves, that the fish were released in the latter part pf summer and really seemed to enter the fishery in winter as about 12" fish and growing.

Late May or early June is when most of the net pen delayed release coho are released now. The winter and spring rezzie fishing lately hasn’t been nearly as good as it used to be, especially over the past four years or so.
I’m glad I got to experience the resident blackmouth fishery during its peak. What a fun, productive fishery. Too bad it is gone now.
SF

Wouldn't it be even better if all hatchery origin fish we clippped and available to all fishers?

Yes, as I noted in a previous post in the WDFW Director Bulletin thread when you asked about net pen projects with unclipped coho.
I have nothing against hatchery fish and believe they should all be clipped. Unfortunately, fish know no boundries, so once those unclipped net pen fish cross into MA 9, they are off limits to us except for the last week of September.
So, how do we go about achieving getting all hatchery fish clipped?
I personally don't ever see it happening with the players involved.
SF

It will only happen when there is sufficient pressure for conservation at selective fisheries by all users is mandated in mixed-stock areas. For salmon, it will also require the agreement of AK and Canada otherwise what's the point?

Why would Alaska or Canada need to be involved with getting fish clipped in a local net pen coho fishery?
SF

Because when the coho hit Canada (they do share PS) an non-selective fishery will reduce the benefits.

Since we are talking about unclipped net pen coho, does anyone know what percentage of them actually end up leaving the sound and spending time in the straits or ocean?
There are large amounts of unclipped net pen fish released as far south as MA 13.
SF

There should be large amounts of CWT data from the various net pen releases. CWT data is what the catch distributions are generally based on.

But, there are two types of net pen releases. One is delayed release which is/was designed to produce an in-sound year around fishery. The other is a more normally-timed release that is designed to just produce more ocean-migrant smolts than could be done simply rearing in freshwater facilities.

I think the federal law that you are referring to here (and other places in this thread) only applies to tribal releases when the hatchery program is paid for by federal funds. In the case of the Elliott Bay net pens, I'm pretty sure that this program is paid for by a settlement agreement and not federal funds, therefore they would not be subject to that requirement.

How's that law going to work in the future if the Tribes get that pot of money for faculty maintenance and upgrades? While the specific program (feed, staffing) may be paid from outside sources if the infrastructure of the facility is upgraded might that count?

Can't say since I can only remember the generalities of the old law and know absolutely nothing about which tribal facilities may have access to the maintenance money.

The only one I remember reading about was Lummi's Skookum Creek. It is apparently falling apart. I remember visiting it with Doc Donaldson's class in fall of '72. He was really psyched about their aquaculture program, both there and in the net pens in Lummi Bay.

It is amazing to me, but probably shouldn't be, that the operators of hatcheries put such little effort into maintaining them.

There are a lot more that need a serious investment. Many of the old ones were built on a shoe string to begin with. Some of the newer ones, which are now 30 - 40 years old, have been badly neglected.

Sad. "Deferred maintenance" seems a constant theme everywhere.

Why raise Coho in pens and not Chinook? The PS Blackmouth program back in the late 70's early 80's was very successful. I would rather catch a 8-12# Chinook than a 4-6# Coho any day.

ESA most likely was a big driver. Can't get the pen fish to home very well. The second issue is that salmon which rear in PS were accumulating a lot of toxins and should not be eaten very often. Based on what I read about the SRKWs the toxin issue is still there.

The main reason reported by WDFW for discontinuing the PS blackmouth program was that it created a big problem for 50:50 treaty: non-treaty harvest sharing. ESA would also be a driver, given that the hatchery Chinook would stray and spawn naturally where they weren't supposed to.

That's true, Salmo, but the kept the toxicity under wraps, too.

From pg. 9 of the below report:

"As discussed previously, much of the delayed-release program production was accomplished in saltwater net pens due to lack of available cool-water summer rearing space at hatcheries. During on-going evaluations of hatchery programs, the WDFW determined that survival of delayed-release yearling Chinook salmon had significantly declined (order of magnitude) along with the contribution to the recreational fisheries (Figure 4). Additionally, there were concerns about straying of adult Chinook salmon from the net pen programs and the domestication effect of a non-native life history (yearling vs. zero age at smolt migration) to ESA-listed natural populations. Ultimately, in the early 2000’s, WDFW made a shift to support the release of Chinook salmon subyearlings directly from hatcheries using PSRFE funding, and the use of saltwater net pens for yearling releases was discontinued."

Because of relatively low rates of contribution to catch (a combination of lower survival rates and reduced fisheries because of ESA limitations) the cost of producing one Chinook in the catch was/is significantly higher than producing one coho in the catch (roughly 7 - 20 times more expensive to contribute one Chinook to catch). Pg. 10 of the linked report shows the smolt to adult survival of net pen Chinook over time. Pg. 17 of that report shows some cost analysis for various Chinook and coho programs. But, there were others that were not evaluated in this report that ended because just a couple of handfuls of fish were caught from programs releasing 20 tons of fish. Chinook are also more difficult to rear in salt water than coho and disease problems at some facilities caused those programs to be terminated.

...In addition to the other issues pointed out above.


HSRG Final Report to PS Sport Fish Enhancement Oversight Comm, 2018

I guess there must not be any ESA listed Coho stocks in Puget Sound for all the net pen Coho to be a problem straying and spawning? And another thought? Having millions of small coho around during other PS rec fisheries, raises encounter rates, to potentially shut fisheries down, even if adult returns are over projections, possibly providing extended seasons. One thing all this does is increase terminal returns. Maybe in river seasons and limits can be increased providing opportunity?

I don't believe any PS Coho stocks are listed, so no concern. Yet. Give WDFW time; we'll get there with coho too.

Logical salmon management should be based on extreme terminal fisheries where the abundant stocks have separated from the rarer. Mixed took fisheries are what leads to ESA.

I believe it was several factors to include ESA but as I recall there was a big Departmental hue and cry about the cost to produce each of those resident blackmouth that was harvested. A cynic might suggest that the decision was made and then the bean counters went to work to justify it.

What they didn't look at (and that same cynic would say purposely) was the value of that fishery per fish harvested.

Another factor was the increasing number of pinniped predators eating those sub-legal blackmouth calling Puget Sound home.

One aspect to add in was that by the mid 00s, if not earlier, yearlings released south of the Narrows had beyond poor survival. Something was going on for the fish that left Deep South Sound, and that was where some really big operations were (Squaxin, Percival, Coulter). To my knowledge, WDFW never did more than actually identify that there was a problem.

They do now have chinook net pens at Point Defiance.

The acclimation pen project at Point Defiance finished its third year at that location after a couple of years at Narrows Marina. It is a collaborative effort under the umbrella of Northwest Salmon Research and includes SAMI School, Metro Parks Tacoma, Puyallup Tribe, WDFW and Puget Sound Anglers Gig Harbor(PSAGH).

This year there were about 100K Chinook; half from the Tribe and the other half from WDFW. All those fish were clipped and both groups had some which were coded wire tagged.

PSAGH provided the labor to put together the net floats and place them at the Marina then install nets and avian predator barriers and after fish release reverse the process. Members also participated in the three a day feedings so fish were in great shape when released.

Hopefully someone will be able to gather return data to determine what improvement in adult returns are achieved by these fish versus those released into the river.

In the early 70s there was a large number of harbor seals using Gertrude Island in McNeil Island's Still Harbor. I am sure that those animals were the nucleus for rapid growth in South Sound after the MMPA came into law. Maybe not the only factor but certainly a significant one.

Problem with that idea is that the anadromous cutthroat south of the Narrows are doing fine and increasing. Maybe the seals only eat migrants...

A big mistake that people have made with hatchery programs over the years is that they just assume that they will be successful. As Carcassman pointed out, there has been, perhaps still is, a severe decline in survival of yearling releases in S. Puget Sound that started in the late 1980's. At that time, as I said, there were some programs that were releasing over 30,000 pounds of fall Chinook yearlings and only contributing 20 or so fish to catch and escapement. It made no sense to continue these programs as they were basically just flushing fish down the toilet. So I would suggest a more accurate statement would be "Hopefully someone will be able to gather return data to determine IF there is improvement in adult returns by these fish versus those released into the river."

It will be interesting to see if any try to return to the pen location, providing some good king fishing off the dock. I caught one there years ago that was fairly good sized. It was caught off the fuel docks right after dusk on a glow in the dark buzz bomb. I had to gill it and throw it up on the dock. We were having a church picnic and I was able to run back after about 10 minutes with the fish.

As Oncy says, dealings released out of Minter returned fewer fish than fingerlings released at the Muckleshoot hatchery on the White. Same stock, but one went through the Narrows. In 00s and into the teens the acoustically tagged steelhead smolts had really low survival to open ocean when the originated in the southern Sound. Further north they did better.

Again, to my knowledge, all that was done is collect that data and not look into a reason.

At one point, I understand that Squaxin (and perhaps the State) were planning on marking a group of fish, barging them past the Narrows (I can't remember the destination) and releasing them there to see if there would be any difference in survival. I have seen reference to this several times, but don't know if it actually happened and what the results were.

They did it in 2016, though I never heard the results of the study.
If I recall correct, some were released at the Narrows, near Vashon and others at PNP.
SF

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLxY0nONkTw

https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/01969/wdfw01969.pdf

I know there was a push to barge steelhead smolts out into the Straits but I don't think anything came of it.

I see from the one page description of the project that they might modify their release locations based on acoustic tag recoveries in 2016, but no indication of when the actual transport may have occurred. The youtube video says the spring of 2016 as a start and it shows fish being transported and released apparently at Vashon. The one pager was not "published" until 2017. The release sites evaluated were going to be Squaxin Is., Vashon, and Pt. No Pt.

Since they started this in 2016, it would have been with brood year 2014 coho that would have returned as adults in 2017, seven years ago. Some results should be available in those 7 years, but I can't find anything about this project other than the one pager whose link is above.

Way back there was an issue about the proper stock to use in the Westport pens. It was thought by the locals that the Satrap stock would put more fish in the sport fishery than the Hump stock. So, the locals paid for CWTs. When it became time to look for returnees WDFW didn't have the money to go looking; so they didn't.

Just possible that there were no funds to monitor for the returning fish. At least a cynic would think that.

What years? I might be able say that on the Satsap way back , had huge returns, and great fishing.

The Westport Net Pen coho stock comparison study used CWT groups from 1988-90 broods. One Humtulips code was matched against 2 Satsap Springs CWT groups. Overall adult survival was best for the Humptulips groups but that was partly due to better escapement accounting. For 1988-89 broods, the Satsop groups contributed slightly more to "Grays Harbor Estuary" sport. For 1990 brood Humptulips had a much higher contribution. IMO there isn't a clear standout.

My recollection is that the hypothesis was that by releasing fish closer to the ocean they would improve returns. There were several release sites north of the Narrows.

The word I heard was that there were no improvements hence no efforts to move into a bigger effort. One has to wonder if the testing should have been over a longer time and/or if the sampling methodolgy and analysis was sound.

Most of the time studies seem to be short, a couple years. Long term studies are what is needed because no one year is "normal" or "average".

I read a summary of the studies that were done on a single island in the Galapagos, looking at evolution among two or three species of Darwin's Finches. Essentially, one conclusion is that of they hadn't studied the island continuously for the 20-30 years they would have come up with incorrect conclusions. It took that length of time to actually see what was going on with all of the environmental changes going on, too. It was the Grant's, a husband and wife team, that did these studies.

I would add that one of the strengths I saw in Fraser sockeye management in the 80s was that every week we not only reviewed the current data but looked at all the historic (this went back to 1890 in some cases) information to see just what the current year best looked like. So, when decisions were made, the decision makers couldn't claim ignorance or "we didn't think of that". Obviously time consuming, but the fish were doing well then.