Back in the day I helped feed chinook after transporting from the George Adams Hatchery to Johns Creek, Bayshore. My dad taught at Kamilche. It was natural for me to work with the Squaxin effort to rebuild the salmon here in the deep South Sound .

We had early chum as a biological filter in a pond above the chinook. I hand clipped chinook in a trailer at GA before they received cwt.

Are these extra production chinook tagged at least?

I would think that if there was additional Chinook production specifically destined to feed SRKWs that they would be unmarked. Otherwise they would be take in selective fisheries and you want to maximize the number that survive all the intercepting fisheries.

Probably not. The only thing clipping fins these days is Swammy.


Streamer

OncyT:

Thanks for the additional background info which expands upon what I generally understood.

Bottom line seems to be that the White River springer stock has been "saved"; that is, back from the brink through efforts of the Muckleshoot tribe and WDFW and both keep producing and releasing hatchery origin yet unclipped hatchery fish.

In looking at the 2023 Future Brood Document Final it shows 600,000 eggs taken and 550,000 shipped. There is a Memo notation as follows:

"Program implementation is dependent on legal authority and funding. Excess eggs taken will be made available for W.R. SP CR Recovery Program pending funding."

Do those excess eggs constitute the 50K shown in the report as not having been shipped? Whose funding is paying for the 550K? And what happens to them if no funding? Dumped??

The 50k sounds like a common buffer between egg take and the number of healthy fry for shipping to cover some unfertilized, dead eggs, incubation loss etc.

Just glancing at the Future Brood Document, it appears that nearly every WDFW program has a memo that says "Program implementation is dependent on legal authority and funding," so that comment isn't informative at all. The 50K difference in eggs taken and eggs shipped is just the normal egg loss (~9% in this case) from just fertilized (green) eggs to eyed eggs that would be shipped to Hupp Springs. The other part of the memo just seems to say that if additional eggs are taken at Minter, they could be made available for use in the White River in a tribal recovery program. Typically, if a hatchery already has its egg take and still has un-spawned fish, they would just be surplused in the round. I don't know what the current policy is regarding rounding out un-spawned fish for this population. Generally though there would never be "surplus" eggs from a population that is subject of a recovery program. A use of some sort would generally be found to prevent surplusing anything.
(Edit: Sorry, I just noticed that fry are transferred to Hupp Springs not eyed eggs, but it just represents normal loss during incubation as D.B. said)

DB/OncyT:

Thanks guys. All good info.

What remains is the question if White River springers have met and exceeded the initial recovery goal why are the ongoing hatchery fish not clipped and arguably made available for non-tribal harvest which takes us back to the initial question of biological versus political?

I think Oncy mentioned that initial goals were State/Tribal and not associated with ESA. Sound like they haven't completed an ESA recovery plan. Also, the ESA recovery plan would likely cover the whole ESU, so the rest of PS Chinook need to move up rather than down.

This (White River) was initiated before the listings; rules changed.

What CM said. That initial recovery goal to which you continue to refer has absolutely nothing to do with recovery of the PS Chinook ESU under the Endangered Species Act. Just get that "recovery goal" out of your head. The ESA is what you have to contend with now. The other difference that I mentioned (again, a recollection from some time ago) is that these particular hatchery fish have been deemed essential to recovery. That basically means that they are treated like naturally produced fish, and you can't have directed fisheries at naturally produced fish. They can be caught incidentally in fisheries directed at hatchery fish, that have not been designated essential to recovery. So...in my mind, a valid question might be "Is this (segregated) hatchery population still essential for recovery?" The answer to that would probably also answer the question about biology or politics.

(Again, my comments about the status of this particular hatchery population and what that means are based on a recollection from a long time ago. I know that there are people that are still involved with salmon recovery that view and post on this board. At least I think there are. Hopefully they can fill in the details that I no longer can. Perhaps they can also show that I am wrong. We shall see!)

I believe it is important to know what criteria is being applied so as to be able to properly understand what constraints are at play.

Your "Is this (segregated) hatchery population still essential for recovery?" question is succinct and leads to further ask if it is any more essential than other hatchery origin Chinook stocks in Puget Sound. If not, then why not clip or simply discontinue raising those as hatchery fish? Those are rhetorical; next step will be to ask WDFW.

Again, thanks for your insight.

It appears that hatchery programs for indigenous Chinook populations in the Elwha, Dungeness, White, Stillaguamish and Nooksack Rivers were all designated as "essential for recovery" by NMFS. Here is the marking status for all those hatchery Chinook populations I could find:
Elwha R.: No Ad, Otolith marked
Dungeness: No Ad, Left Ventral mark
Nooksack: No Ad
Stillaguamish: Summer - Ad clipped; S.Fork Fall - Ad clipped
White River - We already discussed.

So, it is not unknown to ad clip hatchery populations that were designated essential for recovery. As it is the only early timed Chinook population in central/south Puget Sound, there is no question that a healthy White River early (spring) Chinook population is essential for recovering the PS Chinook ESU. There is also no question that the hatchery program at Hupp Springs and the captive broodstock programs at Manchester and (more significantly IMO) South Sound netpens kept this population from going extinct and provided a lot of fish for re-introduction into the White River. The question is that now that the population in the White River is its current size, is there a need for that second program outside of the White River? The recovery plan says that the Hupp Springs program will be continued until the recovery goals for this population are met, although those recovery goals are not specified.

I admire your interest in learning more about the logic train in the Minter/White River spring Chinook hatchery programs. Cynical me thinks you are trying to find the logic train in the black hole of State/Mucklehoot/Puyallup tug of wars. Reading the recent White River Stock Profiles in the Puget Sound Harvest Management Plan and the old NOAA PS Recovery Plan, Minter Creek production is barely mentioned. At one time getting the Minter Creek/Hupp Springs program was vitally important. But the track record and reliable returns to the White River system in the last 10-20 years has made the Minter program only the insurance against a rarest catastrophe in the White. Continuing the Minter program with ad clips would still provide this insurance. IMO the tribes dont wanna clip em.

I believe that you are correct.

It's been a while since I was actively involved in White River but in the 00s there was a real survival issue for ocean-migrating salmonids that originated south of the Narrows. The survival of yearling WR's from Mnter/Hupp was actually lower than the survival of fingerlings from the Muckleshoot's facility on the White.

About 8 or 9 years ago I drafted a Jeopardy Biological Opinion (BO) for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mud Mountain Dam located on the White River (WR). That conclusion was based on project caused mortality to White River spring Chinook. As mentioned in OncyT's post above, White River spring Chinook were deemed "essential" to recovery of ESA listed Puget Sound (PS) Chinook. This was because the WR springs are the only early timed Chinook in central and south PS.

If I'm recalling correctly, WDFW began culturing WR springs at Minter Creek because a mere 8 adult spring Chinook returned to the WR one year. This program began as an effort to prevent extinction of WR spring Chinook. Some time later, the Muckleshoot Tribe came to a settlement agreement with Puget Sound Energy (PSE) regarding PSE's project impacts to fisheries resources. That settlement resulted in PSE building the WR hatchery on the Muckleshoot reservation across the river from the PSE diversion dam adult fish collection facillity.

The Muckleshoot Tribe immediately began culturing WR spring Chinook. I"d have to look up to see when these two hatchery programs began, but the upshot is that there came to be two hatchery programs contributing to the effort to prevent extinction of WR spring Chinook. As recently as when I wrote the draft BO, it was not the least bit clear that wild, NOR (natural origin recruits) spring Chinook could sustain themselves in the WR watershed without hatchery supplementation. So I think the NMFS ESA folks made the correct call in saying that the hatchery spring Chinook are (still) essential for recovery.

I think the question has been asked, but not officially answered is whether or not the WR spring Chinook cultured at Minter continue to be "essential" for recovery given the success of the Muckleshoot Tribe's WR hatchery in maintaining the spring Chinook population. I think culturing the fish at Minter remains as a "back up" insurance plan to the WR hatchery. That makes some sense because the WR hatchery has had, since the outset, some water quality problems due to the extreme high sediment load in the WR. Ordinarily a fish culturist would not build a hatchery at a location lacking a high quality water supply. Unfortunately that was not an option in the case of the Muckleshoot - PSE settlement. So here we are: a tribal hatchery dedicated to fish recovery via mitigation that will forever be plagued with risk to its water supply. It might be a good idea to continue culturing these fish at Minter - just in case. A different question altogether is whether anglers should be allowed to fish for returning adult springs near the terminal area. I think that depends on there being a surplus abundance of the fish, which is likely related to the size of the program. I don't have any information about that. It is outside my relationship to things WR spring Chinook related.

Could be why yearlings are no longer released from Hupp Springs. With the exception of only a couple of years, current contribution to the terminal area still appears to be low for yearlings, even those released from the White River.

Salmo g., there were certainly a lot of concerns about the security of fish in the White River hatchery when the facility first opened. How could you not be concerned given the water quality at that location? As D.B. pointed out though, that facility now has a good track record of being able to successfully rear those fish - large piles of glacial sediment shoveled out of rearing ponds after fish release notwithstanding. The question is whether the Hupp Springs program should still be operated as primarily a recovery program or whether its purpose should be changed to a harvest program and marking applied for that purpose. I don't believe that there is any question that WDFW would continue this program as a harvest program if they could get agreement from the tribes. These White River Chinook always had a propensity to contribute to the sport fishery, even in the days when they were actually critical to maintaining the population. So much so that WDFW even crossed the White River population with other PS fall Chinook to use in their yearling Chinook program that at one time made huge contributions to a year round fishery in the sound. (I can't say this with utmost certainty, but I will give WDFW the benefit of the doubt and say that when they did the crosses using WR Chinook that they strictly used male gametes rather than taking eggs that should have been used for the perpetuation of the population.)

Many of the managers at the hatcheries were very creative. At one time, they crossed Chinook and Coho. Planted these in ponds with no egress. What they got was a piscivorous diet from the Chinook and the desire to commit suicide on hardware from the Coho. The fish cleaned out stunted populations of Yellow Perch. We have a number of lakes that have no egress that would probably a "thinning" of the smaller species and converting that to consumable salmon.

Oncy May remember a lake where coho were net pen reared, released into the lake, and then turned loose. Over a few years of the net pen program they came close to removing the perch. We should use this knowledge.

And so quietly, Area 11 opens for coho and pinks. Looks like some effort out there. . .any reports? Sorry to interupt and talk about fishing🙂
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I heard someone mention that there were a lot of fish being caught at dock street, so I swung by Friday evening when I was in the area. I spent around an hour and a half and hooked 6 or 7 pinks. There were a ton of fish jumping and I saw what looked like a school of coho jumping out in commencement bay. I did not keep any of the fish I caught and was informed later that my wife wanted me to smoke some up. Went back on Saturday and it was a totally different story. Spent over two hours and only hooked two fish. Most people did not do that good. Very few fish were rolling and even the seals appeared to have mostly moved out. I am not sure if that means the pinks are gone, or just moved a little. From the looks of where the boats were staging both days, I would guess that they were catching some coho out in the bay. If I were dropping in a boat, I would head a little north and try to find a few more coho, and then, if nothing was happening, cruise up to commencement bay and look for some pink schools, as there should be at least a few left. There also could even be a few kings left around, as I saw one hooked off less Davis a few days ago. All that is what I was seeing from the bank, hopefully someone with a boat can give you a better answer.