I heard several presentations about current steelhead research, some such as the Hood River broodstock program and the UW Forks creek hatchery - wild studies have been discussed in this forum before. A presentation by a WDFW employee who has been assigned to develop a model for steelhead management was interesting. The traditional models used for salmon management may not be valid for steelhead. Most of the models assume that all spawners die after spawning yet it seems that a healthy steelhead run may have around 20% repeat spawners. The common measures of smolt to adult return ratios and even escapement are clouded by the varied life histories of steelhead. A good example is , in the past few years it has been estimated that up to 75% of the spawning males in the Yakima system did not migrate to the ocean. A study that looked at genes in the brains of male Atlantic salmon at the smolt stage ( I don't understand the science but it has been published ) found that staying in the river was the true genetic behavior and migrating to the ocean was not. The concept of steelhead residuals may be the true genetic behavior and migrating to the ocean may be driven by environmental factors.

During the meeting there were numerous talks about salmon recovery, the director of WDFW, the King County executive, two senior NOAA Fisheries people, and the director of the governors salmon recovery office in the first 3 hours. During the course of the 2 1/2 days listening to people from federal and state agencies, universities, NGO's, tribes, and consulting firms one thing stood out. Everyone involved is serious about what they are doing and everyone needs funding. Unfortunately the numbers of people involved in planning, reviewing plans and programs, issuing permits and administering programs requires a big part of the available funds. Salmon recovery, and now Puget Sound clean up, is becoming a major industry. One of the last speakers of the 2 1/2 days said that over the past several years 23,000 projects, at a cost of several billion dollars, have been carried out in Washington to recover salmon. Very few of them have had any measurable results. It is not encouraging.