OK that's marginally encouraging... but you gotta remember that chum have little reliance on the riverine environment beyond adequate spawning gravel. They leave the stream almost immediately after becoming free-swimming fry. Since they spend so little time in-river, there are few instream selection pressures affecting the natural juveniles beyond surviving chance catastrophes during their incubation in the gravel. Virtually all the selection takes place in the marine phase of their life cycle.

This is one species where the artificial boost in egg-to-fry survival from being coddled in a hatchery actually makes sense.

In contrast, the genetic integrity and fitness of other salmonids which are held in the hatchery's holding ponds for a prolonged period of time prior to release (steelhead, coho, chinook, sockeye) will certainly suffer from the domestication effects of being raised in captivity.

Slabhunter,

WDFW isn’t the culpable party when it comes to the status of Stillaguamish Chinook. WDFW controls harvest, and harvests have been heavily restricted for 30 years. The only additional harvest reduction available would be to totally close the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound to Chinook retention year around, and that wouldn’t save many Stilly Chinook, while precluding the harvest of many other hatchery Chinook. Chinook habitat in both the NF and SF Stilly has been trashed beyond usability, mainly from forest practices, and WDFW had zero influence on that during the time period when the damage occurred.

Driftwood,

Why should the Tribe spend its money on restoring the Chinook or the habitat when it wasn’t they who destroyed it? The habitat was legally trashed under both state and federal forest practices in effect at the time.

FNP,

The Stillaguamish Chinook may not be in a recovery mode; perhaps they are simply on life support. It’s too soon to know. What we do know is that without the wild Chinook broodstock program the Tribe has operated on the NF for about the past 25 years, the NF Chinook would very likely be gone by now. This program simply extends an existing practice to the SF Chinook. NF Chinook were returning less than one recruit per spawner when the Tribe began its wild broodstock program in the early 1980s and trending toward extinction. The hatchery offspring most likely are less successful in natural reproduction in the natural habitat. However, those spawners, even with their lower reproductive effectiveness, are more successful than not having any natural spawners at all. All anyone can do for now is to continue the broodstocking program until such time as enough natural habitat recovers so that some naturally spawning Chinook can consistently achieve a greater than one recruit per spawner. As far as I know, this program is the last stand between Stillaguamish Chinook salmon and extinction.

As Aunty mentioned, it appears that ESA listed Hood Canal summer chum have been recovered via short term hatchery intervention. The population initially declined due to a combination of habitat degradation and over-harvest, especially the latter. The short term hatchery programs have been discontinued. The Quillcene population seems to have recovered to the point of producing a harvestable surplus the past 3 or 4 seasons.

Your comments about what salmon really need in order to recover are exactly correct. The first has been in place for 30 years. The only meaningful harvest reduction left would be to totally close Chinook fishing off the coast of BC/Van. Is. and the Gulf of Alaska, and we know that ain’t happening. The second, well, I mentioned above that the habitat is trashed and will take years to recover. When it does, so will the Chinook, if there are any left.

Hatchery intervention probably has less effect on stock genetics than for Chinook, coho, or steelhead due to the limited freshwater rearing phase. The only way to know if it can be successful with these species is to try it. And the techniques for doing so are changing. The folks at Long Live the Kings in Hood Canal, working with people from WDFW and NMFS are re-writing the book as it were, on salmon and steelhead recovery using conservation hatchery techniques.

GBL,

The Great Lakes salmon and steelhead runs simply aren’t relevant to the Stillaguamish Chinook situation, but thanks for reminding us that salmon are abundant elsewhere.

PUG,

The lack of tribal self sufficiency is a complex subject worthy of its own thread. I could contribute some information, but I’m really not qualified to discuss it extensively.

Blue Water Pro,

Yes, the Stilly Chinook might be done. The fact is, we don’t know. What we do know is that if these measures are not undertaken, then the option of preserving them for future generations is definitely lost. Given that choice, I favor the Tribe’s program.

Aunty,

You could very well be right. Maybe that’s what some folks at the policy level think. I don’t know. They don’t share their inner thoughts with me. But I can tell you that many fish biologists with the tribes, state, and federal fish agencies are as committed as humanly possible to recovering salmon and steelhead populations, either with, or sometimes without, the agencies’ support.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

The Dungeness River has had some success in using a captive brood program to put Chinook back into the system. They started with eggs taken from redds with the fish raised in freshwater captivity for their entire life cycle. When ready to spawn, the eggs were taken and the fish were held to yearling status before release from the hatchery environment.

If I remember correctly, the run numbers were in double digits of spawning pairs when the project started. Now the returns are in the low hundreds of spawning pairs. Considering the parents of the releases never saw salt water, I'd suggest that there are some things that don't change the saltwater survival and return "desires" of the fish.

Supplemental egg take is occuring to provide a cushion against egg loss due to winter flooding.

Steve

Thanks for your feedback. If the unsupplemented run's production is hovering at less than replacement level due to the crappy habitat, the priority in restoration efforts should rest on habitat improvement. If what you say is true, it sounds to me that managers have instead opted yet again for a techno-fix during the past 25 years that the tribe's "life support" hatchery program has been in place. That is more than 4 complete chinook life cycles in the intensive care unit!

To expand on that medical analogy, yes, we can keep a patient on artificial life support for 25 years as well.... a ventilator to do the breathing, a pacemaker to keep the heart pumping, pressor drugs to maintain blood pressure, and a surgical feeding tube directly into the stomach to keep the patient nourished while his mouth is stuffed with techno-tubes. But if the underlying systemic cause for the patient's cardiopulmonary failure is not addressed, it's completely futile. Better to just pull the plug than to keep investing $10,000 a day on an effort that will NEVER make the patient better! If we did that for 25 years, that's 10,000 x 365 x 25 = $ 91.25 million dollars!

As far as the genetic and reproductive fitness issues are concerned, they are easily discounted when managers observe a short-term stabilization or rebound in abundance. They see fish coming back, so it's all good. As I think about it, the only way the hatchery makes up for the natural production deficit (recruit ratio less than 1) is by churning out more spawners to make up the difference. But as you'll see, that can be an unsustainable model.

Let me illustrate with an imaginary depleted run on the River Zip which has been trashed by logging. Everyone knows the habitat is crap, but let's pretend that no efforts are made to improve habitat and that habitat-limited production in the river is fixed, neither increasing nor decreasing.

In round numbers, let's say the depleted run has a 500 fish baseline and the $hitty habitat limits productivity to a recruit ratio of 0.8 (4 returning adults for every 5 spawners). That means if we do nothing, the return on those 500 spawners would be 400 recruits. Now let's put a broodstock program in place that takes 50 pairs of fish to artifically boost production. Let's say this hatchery is so good that it's recruit ratio is 2 (two and a half times better than natural).... meaning for every spawner they mine from the wild run, they get two back!

In the first year of operation, the hatchery would take 100 fish and 400 would spawn naturally. The hatchery would bring back 200 fish and natural production would bring back 320 for a total of 520 fish... a marginal gain of 20 fish or 4%. At that fixed rate of "recovery" it would take 18 years to double the run to 1000 fish.

But wait.... you can't assume the overall production will remain constant because as more and more hatchery fish are allowed to spawn naturally, the productivity from natural spawning starts to fall off due to diminished reproductive fitness. In the steelhead studies at Hood River, reproductive fitness is reduced by 15% in the first generation alone! In other words hatchery fish that are one generation removed from their wild brethren are only 85% as productive. So in our little fairy tail, where wild production in the $hitty habitat is only 0.8, the expected "natural" production from the returning hatchery fish would be only 0.68 (0.8 x 0.85).

Now let's go back and apply that misfit decrement in production to the hatchery fish in our hypothetical example. 200 of the 520 recruits arising from the original brood year were hatchery-produced, 320 were naturally produced. If all of them were allowed to spawn, they would bring back (200 x 0.68) plus (320 x 0.8) = 512 fish. In other words, in the second generation the marginal gain in productivity will be only 12 fish or 2.4% more than the baseline population of 500.

But since our hatchery is going to operate for more than just one generation, we need to cull out another 50 pair of wild fish for broodstock. So in that next generation, total production would be as follows:

(and yes Curt and Steve, I realize that I'm simplifying here because the fish actually come back in staggered age classes which makes the real analysis much more complicated, but regardless this exercise is still instructive)

the 100 wild broodstock fish brought into the hatchery would bring back 200, the 200 hatchery fish spawning on the gravel would bring back 136, and
the remaining 220 wild natural spawners would bring back 176.

Total production from that second generation would be 512 fish... in other words the fish just replace themselves.

Run the same analysis in the third generation and you get 200 fish from hatchery production, 136 fish from hatchery spawners, and 170 fish from wild spawners.... for a total of 506 fish.... a net loss of 6 fish or 1.2%.

Run the same analysis for the fourth generation and you get 200 fish from hatchery production, 136 fish from hatchery spawners, and 165 fish from wild spawners... for a total of 501 fish, a net loss of 5 fish or 1.0%.

Run the same analysis in the fifth generation and you get 200 fish from hatchery production, 136 from hatchery spawners, and 161 fish from wild spawners.... for a total of 497 fish, a net loss of 4 fish or 0.8%.

In that fifth generation all the gains from hatchery supplementation have been erased, and even with the wild broodstock hatchery program in place, the entire population is technically no longer self-sustaining. However as you can see in this example, the marginal loss with each generation does diminish, and so by the 10th generation, the losses are down to just one fish per generation at a population of about 485 fish. From there, it's just a downhill slide, albeit at glacial speed, toward extinction where every last fish counts, even the ones that are "inconsequentially" harvested in our non-selective fisheries.

I guess that's better than a baseline 20% loss per generation. If we do nothing in this example the population shrinks down to about 50-60 fish after the 10th generation. Clearly, both strategies lead to extinction... one is just so much slower and more painful to watch. The only way out of that death spiral is an increase in natural productivity. As has been said repeatedly by Lichatowich and others, you just can't have "salmon without rivers". In the end game, it's all about productive habitat... DUH!.... now there's a revelation!

As Steve said, he'd rather see the "conservation" hatchery in place while we grapple with the habitat issues.... last ditch artificial life support for our dying patient until we are willing to address what's really killing him. But let's be honest about it... the hatchery isn't "conserving" jack$hit. It's only delaying the inevitable until genuine conservation.... namely habitat restoration in this example.... can bring some semblance of natural productivity back to the system.

OK... I made an error there. That second generation of hatchery production does NOT break even. That second run thru the hatchery actually results in a net loss 8 fish or 1.5 % of the 520 fish it started with.

For clarity, my hypothetical scenario actually shows how the "conservation" hatchery is no longer self-sustaining as early as the second generation of fish.

Nice summary blue water.

FNP, while I see your point about the numbers of fish, I think that something more to the point is in order. You get there, but in a mapquest kind of way. Someone that is going to hear that argument and have the power to do something about it is probably going to have about as much knowledge about salmon as a nun does about the latest hip hop artist. Maybe a more simple approach like the fish tank for example. The fish can only grow so much based on the size of the tank. And if you dont clean the tank then it gets dirty, if it gets dirty then fish cant survive. If fish cant survive then we lose our population.
Maybe something like that. Kind of being a smartass there but I couldnt pass it up, sorry.

FNP,

I agree that it's only a conservation hatchery if it actually conserves the fish. Given the experience the Stilly Tribe has had with the NF chinook over the years, I'm inclined to think that the Hood River steelhead reproductive effectiveness values don't apply to summer chinook like these. If they did, the run sizes they have achieved would not have occurred, although I can't verify that without the data.

Maybe it would be kinder to just pull the plug. The Stilly most likely will never recover to be premium chinook habitat. However, I think it can recover to the point that it can sustain a chinook run. Considering that, I'm unwilling to tell those folks that they shouldn't try to conserve the population.

BTW, those costs are atypical, and I wouldn't expect that $/fish to be operable over the life of the project. Obviously, the Tribe has been doing it the last 20+ years for a lot less. The project was started on a shoestring by some biologists with a strong "can do" attitude.

Sg

I re-ran that same analysis giving the hatchery the benefit of the doubt that it could achieve a consistent recruit ratio of 3:1.... nearly four times that of natural production. (BTW, even my beloved Kenai River with intact habitat and chinook escapements harvested down to MSY is incapable of that consistent level of production.)

Again the other parameters remained the same... 500 fish baseline population, 100 wild brood fish taken for the hatchery, recruit ratio for wild spawners = 0.8, and recruit ratio for hatchery spawners = 0.68.

The boost the hatchery provides in the first generation is an impressive 24% bumping the return to 620 fish. However, the reduced fitness of hatchery spawners quickly erodes those gains in subsequent generations. The second generation gains are whittled down to just under 10% at a return of 680 fish, and by the fifth generation those gains are down to only 4% with a return of 797 fish.

After 10 generations, returns to our mythical river have only bumped up to 880 fish, and the hatchery's boost to total production has diminished to only 1%.

After 20 generations it more or less reaches a steady state at a return of 915 fish with a marginal gain of 0.1%, or about one fish per generation.

Not much of a gain after 20 generations... and at what cost?

And even if the hatchery were to quit while it was still reasonably ahead... at say, the fifth generation... the production from those 797 fish returning in the next generation would only be 577 fish. That's because the 100 wild fish that are no longer taken for broodstock would only produce 80 natural recruits instead of 300 hatchery recruits.

So even with the benefit of a remarkable recruit ratio of 3:1, running this hypothetical conservation hatchery for a time-limit of five generations would only yield 77 additional fish to the return after the hatchery ceases operations.

That's the nuts and bolts of it folks.

Again it will be up to managers to decide whether that type of investment is really worth it. For me it really all depends.

Getting back to my medical analogy with the critically ill cardiac patient in the ICU. Let's say what he really needs for a cure is a heart transplant. Spending $10,000 bucks a day on extraordinary life support to keep him on the ventilator, pacemaker, pressor drugs, and tube feedings would be reasonable.... but only if you were certain a donor heart was soon on its way.

Pretty pointless if it's not.

Without sounding like a skeptic of your numbers theories and hypothesis, where do all the numbers for the analysis come from? More specifically in regards to the amount of return per spawning fish. All the numbers and what not are a mind boggling brain teaser for a simpleton such as myself. I only ask because I am totally unaware of the source for the information that is provided to form the theory. Being an optimist about the salmon and their recovery has made me want to be skeptical of the grim story your telling.

I may have missed this somewhere in the middle of trying to sort out what you were saying and break it down to my level of understanding. But is there any sort of compensation for the fact that after the first generation of returns come back that the next one is actually a native stock. Thus bringing the number of return per spawn fish up slightly to the .8 from the .68. This may be a mute point since all the numbers are less than 1 which is bad, I am just curious.

Being cautiously optimistic about the whole thing I think that given the oppurtunity to be left alone and not harvested for a while that these, and any other run of fish, could and would make recovery. These fish have a survival tool that has helped them go on as long as they have, and I dont think that they have lost it in the midst of all the hatchery spawning. It may take a little bit but I think they can do it. That is unless their number is just up and we are doing all this in vain. I certainly hope not.

FNP,

I greatly admire your energy to run the calcs. Two other variables that should be included come to mind, and there are no doubt others. First, although the returning hatchery fish that spawn in the wild have reduced fitness, each subsequent generation from them that remains in the natural environment improves in fitness. At least that is the present theory. And it's probably true, given that natural runs have resulted from hatchery stocks in the past, fortunately before we knew so much about their reduced fitness (t.i.c.). Second, with each passing generation of chinook, the habitat suitability improves slightly in productivity. It's not a specific steady trend line, as backsliding occurs, only to be followed by several years of higher quality conditions, etc. We have seen this on Deer Ck, the NF Stilly tributary that hosts the native summer steelhead. But for this habitat phenomenon, native Stilly summer runs might be a thing of the past as well.

Francis, your analysis could well be the most accurate portrayal of the final outcome. However, pulling the plug eliminates future options. The "conservation" program preserves options, even if only for a while. Given that choice, what would you do? If these chinook were your "family" for instance?

Sg

All of the numbers I made up for the River Zip were hypothetical, but were meant to be representative of an ailing chinook run much like the one being discussed in this thread.

I chose 500 fish because that sounds pretty depressed, but yet still enough of a critical mass that some potential recovery is still possible. Reasonable?

I chose a recruit ratio of 0.8 for wild spawning because we are talking about habitat that is so unproductive that it does not even allow what few returning spawners left to even replace themselves in the next generation. That means a number less than one. I did not want to choose a number less than 0.5 or else folks would accuse me of being far too pessimistic. Halfway between 0.5 and 1.0 is 0.75, but I wanted to be just a wee bit more optimistic than middle of the road, so I chose 0.8. Still reasonable?

I gave the rationale for the recruit ratio of 0.68 for hatchery-born spawners... they spawn with less success than wild-born fish. The Hood River project shows that naturally spawning (one-generation-from-wild) hatchery steelhead show only 85% of the reproductive fitness as their wild-born siblings. No data like that is available for salmon, but it seemed reasonable to apply that same percentage of reduced productivity... 0.85 x 0.8 = 0.68. Are you still with me?

I chose 100 fish (50 pairs) for the hatchery broodstock because that's sort of a minimum critical mass to make a hatchery project worthwhile... it would yield about 175,000 eggs (3500 per female). Moreover, I did not think it wise to risk more than 20% of the available wild run to a potential hatchery SNAFU. Sound reasonable?

I assigned the hatchery project a recruit ratio of 2:1 in the first scenario, and then for kicks, a ratio of 3:1 in the second scenario. I thought I was being pretty damned generous. To give you an idea of chinook recruit ratios in a healthy drainage with near-pristine habitat and no directed commercial harvest, recruit ratios for Alaska's early run Kenai kings have ranged from 0.53 to 3.89. For the past 21 years, escapements have averaged 11.4K while returns have averaged 15.9K.... that's a recruit ratio of 1.39.

I gave the returning progeny of hatchery-born parents the benefit of the doubt by assigning them with reproductive fitness equal to wild. In essence, I conveniently erased any negative hatchery-induced effects in the second generation. The recruit ratio of 0.68 was applied only to the fresh crop of hatchery-raised spawners... 200 fish each generation in the first scenario and 300 fish each in the second scenario. All of the naturally-produced spawners were assigned a recruit ratio of 0.8 even though a significant number of them had hatchery-raised parents. Still with me?

So in each of the scenarios I painted, the return from each generation was the total of three components:

1) Hatchery production resulting from 100 wild brood fish. The hatchery production was always constant, either 200 or 300.

2) Production from hatchery-born spawners. This was also constant, either 136 (200 x 0.68) or 204 (300 x 0.68).

3) Production from wild-born spawners. This figure would change with each generation depending on the number of naturally-produced spawners available.

In the first scenario, the combined production from all three components promptly resulted in a net loss that got progressively smaller with each passing generation until hitting a near-steady state at a total return of 485 fish after 10 generations. At that point the run was effectively losing a fish per generation.

In the second scenario, the result was a net gain that got progressively smaller with each passing generation until hitting a near-steady state at a total return of 915 fish in the 20th generation. At that point the run was only gaining one fish per generation.

And yet, one gill net will screw up the worth of the calculation above for generations.

It does make sense to me, more so now than ever. I hope that I am not coming across as an azzhole when I keep asking you for the numbers and what not. Just trying to get an understanding of the situation. I know that sometimes I lack the tact that gets my points or questions across without sounding like a prick sometimes. Thanks for the breakdown. Lets just hope that the outlook is a little more promising huh?

FishFirst.org

Cedar creek. Dead creek. 32 fish.

Add fish boxes
add eggs
add carcass nutients
add root wads
add spawning gravel
add set backs to dairies
remove culverts
remove gillnets


expect up to 17% return
2003 expected return 30,000 native coho. exceeding 28 pounds

cost? ask fishfirst.

LB
That would do it!

Exactly!


The power of production (or lack thereof) rests on the habitat!

Good habitat drives the recruit ratios to something bigger than one... that's what makes the population grow. Quit raping what's left and work on improving the stuff that's been trashed.

Habitat restoration is the ONLY thing that will allow this run to recover. That's where the effort and $$$ needs to be invested.

No rivers... no salmon.

No gillnets, more salmon. Your habitat is worthless when one net set can wipe out that fish run you worked so hard to get back to the river.
Until the nets are gone, you are wasting your time. No matter what you do, it will be wiped out when there is just enough fish to net them out without any regard to what it will do to the run.

GBL,

From your past posts I understand you're obsessed over river gillnetting, so it's probably a waste of bandwidth to remind you that no one gillnets the Stilly for chinook. Gillnets are not now, and never have been, the proximate cause for the declining abundance of Stillaguamish chinook salmon. The condition of the habitat is so poor, it simply doesn't support chinook at a productivity level that allows the fish to even replace themselves. The gillnets you obsess over have nothing to do with it.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

SalmoG & FNP, it is really a pleasure reading your reports and discussions. It has opened my eyes somewhat, but still have hard ... about the nets in the rivers, seem to me they could use traps or fish wheels and pass on what is not wanted or in jepordy. Still remember the Indian on the Solduc taking a dark steelhead maybe headed back to the ocean for another run, tossing it on the bank and saying throwback and walking away. I relilze that the traps would be more work intensive, but what the hey, they should do there part for conservation. I relize they do more than most of us know, but waste will always be a big sore spot. Chuck G

Salmo-
Not sure how long you have lived in this State and I am not talking ONLY river nets. If you go out in the straits, bays and harbors during any run of Fish other than Steelhead, you will find some type of commercial net fishery out there both Indian and non-indian.
Yes I am obsessed with nets as all the talking and habitat restoration is worthless until they are gone.
My 53 years in this State and watching every type of netting has pretty much made my opinion what it is and I bet you anything it will not change until the nets are gone, we have 40 years of data to support it.