The tribes see a fish is a fish is a fish, except when wild fish can be used to constrain land use or NT fishing. WDFW doesn't, I believe, really know what to do because of the political pressure from above to satisfy the Tribes and go to appreciative uses.

Like Rivrguy says, we have to really reduce fisheries, especially any all mixed stock fisheries, protect the food base, bring predators into balance, and restore habitat and water quality.

As if that isn't enough to consider we have to admit we have too damn many people here now and refuse to deal with that issue at all.

It won't be too many more decades and CA, AZ, and NV will tap the Columbia for water and they will have the political power to do it;.

Tug, disagreement is fine when it comes to opinions, but do we disagree on facts? This reminds me of how complex civil legal cases are laid out. Two lists are made: Facts in Agreement, and Facts in Dispute. Then the parties bring evidence supporting why their version of the facts in dispute is correct. Then the judge and his or her advisors get to wade through the evidence and decide what version of the facts in dispute is legally correct.

I don't want to write a book here, but I think there is a lot of evidence suggesting that WDFW's science has improved over time. That's consistent with the nature of science; it tests that which isn't understood to bring improved understanding to technical issues. Hatchery fish health has improved as a direct result of bringing knowledge gained through science to better methods, diets, and policies that increase fish survival in hatchery environments. Is there something to disagree with here?

You allege regarding wild fish that ". . . there really aren't any." Scientific evidence says that is wrong. First through electrophoresis and then with DNA for the last couple decades or so, we are able to identify the genetic make up of fish populations. And while a lot of native wild populations have disappeared, more than one might expect do continue to exist. They continue to exist because for whatever reasons, they weren't harvested to extinction - like many were - and because some of them spawned in places and at times that separated them from hatchery fish. What, specifically, supports your contention ". . . that there really aren't any?" I don't see how it can be scientific evidence. I've heard that there are people who are "science deniers," who don't believe in science, as if science needs to be believed in. Are you one of those?

Do you disagree with me about having hatchery fish spawn with wild fish? Again, evidence says that is not good for the wild fish. It may or may not affect the hatchery fish, but that is another story. I'm trying to understand what you disagree with.

You refer to "failed salmon management," and I agree that is a good description of management. Part of that problem, IMO, is the legislative requirement that WDFW promote and manage for commercial salmon fishing, and WDFW takes that to mean NT commercial salmon fishing. IMO, the legislative requirement or its interpretation needs to be changed. It is impossible to supply two commercial salmon fishing fleets (T & NT) with a significantly declining resource, but WDFW just keeps trucking along and at this rate will one day find that they have one salmon management biologist for each harvestable salmon. Crazy, ain't it?

Even 30 and more years ago, over half the salmon harvest in WA state consisted of Fraser River sockeye. That's right! Harvest of WA salmon had fallen so low that most of the in state catch consisted of Canadian salmon. That should have been a major wake up call. I think NT commercial salmon fishing should be ended. It is no longer a productive industry; it costs more in resource harm and management costs than it is worth to the state's economy. On average, the treaty fishery is large enough to harvest most surplus salmon, when there are any. And the number of "surplus" salmon is a legitimate topic for debate. More fish on the spawning grounds is environmentally beneficial.

I'm not going to argue about the quality of the upper Skokomish as salmon habitat. I think we both agree that we should allow fish to make whatever use of it that they can.

Rivrguy, I think we pretty much agree. While development pressure in the Puget Sound region will continue to be relentless, I think it is possible to retain quite a bit of the remaining productive capacity of many basin river systems. I look at the Skagit system over the last 30 to 40 years - we've lost a little, and we've gained a little, but I think overall it's capacity for salmonid productivity hasn't changed much. Look at the Nisqually, at the southern end. It's one of the most intact river systems in Puget Sound. It's major liability is that its salmon and steelhead have to run the longest predation gauntlet of any of the rivers, but its freshwater productivity is quite good.

We could give salmon a better chance by letting more of the wild fish survive to spawn. And WDFW is on the wrong side of that equation. Hence, you see me posting in your Chehalis River thread and others: "Defund WDFW." Truly, I do think we should have a fish and wildlife agency, but we should have an agency that is more responsive to the resource and to the constituents who fund the agency.

Somewhere in Briton they have a sardine ( or some fish ) that was harvested for several hundred years then collapsed so restrictions to rebuild. Did not happen because you can drive any living thing to the brink and then stop but the damage is done it does not recover. Good habitat is great but if you do not address what the root cause is, harvest for salmon, then it is window dressing. I think that is Tug's point. We have had the knowledge for some time for habitat and harvest.

Rule number one to stop exstintion of anything............ you have to stop killing it!!!

From observation and tribal hatchery operations here on the Green River, the wild spawned Chum and the hatchery plants seem to mingle and spawn quite nicely together, and the runs have grown and remain pretty strong.

Although this winter the HH dam’s huge water releases at the start of the flooding events likely pushed a lot of them into the weeds and fields until the water dropped.


Too bad the Wild Pinks took it in the shorts however. We’ll see how they fared in a couple years. Too bad They have no safe hatchery Creek to run up and hide from the deluge.


Now it looks like the stream based Steelhead brooder collection begins in earnest , with floats and boats starting to poke about. The late timed run has begun.

In looking at the impacts of hatchery fish genetics on wild fish I believe there is a continuom from least culture to most. Simply collecting eggs, incubating on surface water, and releasing the fry should have the least impact. Next step up is short term feeding. Beyond that is holding and feeding for a year or more. Another big impact is incubating and rearing on (generally) warmer ground and spring water.

So, the hatchery chum and pink should show the least impact while steelhead should show the most. Kinda like what we see...........

28 gage, are you saying the WDFW is doing a brood stock program for the green river fish (steelhead) ?
If so YES ! Need more of that where it can be done. Works in Oregon and elsewhere.

Salmo,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. There is much of what you said that I agree with. I think that too much of salmon management is governed by values and not science. The value side says that we must do everything to conserve the wild fish. The science side says we can rebuild our fish runs so that we can fish more. The history of our salmon abundance is hidden from a lack of historical research. Many years ago Fisheries had a director named Milo Moore. It was said of him that if he found a mud puddle he would plant fish in it and WDF did that. I believe that this was a foundation, including ensuing years of evolution and survival of the fittest,that has formed the base for what we now call most of our wild fish. They are wild because they spawn in the wild and have adapted genetically to succeed in their specific habitat. I would really like to see a comprehensive list of streams that have hatchery salmon and wild salmon and their specific genetic differences.

The Green River did not have a pure strain of wild Chinook in it prior to ESA. Hatchery fish plants had been plentiful. I think the tribe planted too. There was a head-scratching meeting at WDF to wonder about how to define wild fish. It was decided that anything spawning upstream of a certain point (I believe it was Soos Creek if I remember right) was now considered wild. I was at the meeting (1986?) because salmon management wanted increased enforcement on the upper Green. Those were in the days when bios worked with enforcement.

Tug, I think the values at the Washington Department of Salmon are that there must be commercial salmon fishing at all costs, even to the detriment of the salmon resource.

I remember Milo Moore; quite a character. He hated fish biologists. His interest in fisheries science was limited to the science that supported his personal narrative for salmon hatcheries. It should be noted that Milo was a principal in Moore - Clark, the company that manufactured fish food and sold it to state, federal, and private fish hatcheries. To say that Milo has a conflict of interest would be putting it mildly. But this is a side story.

Hatchery coho and Chinook were planted extensively, especially coho. Just because the hatchery fish were stocked nearly any place reachable with a hatchery truck doesn't mean that hatchery genetics mingled with the local wild stock. The reason is natural selection. In those habitats where the genetics of the hatchery fish were not well suited, they survived poorly or not at all. Consequently and not surprisingly, the genetic material of the wild stock dominated and persisted, even in the face of stocking hatchery fish. Most of this type of stocking was with coho fry that had been fed at the hatchery for only a couple weeks. So the exposure of those coho fry to hatchery culture was mostly artificial spawning and egg incubation.

I like to call coho the "plastic, elastic salmonid" because they are quite adaptable. The usual reason for low survival of these hatchery plants was because too many fry were stocked in too small a place for them to disperse well. Ten or 20 thousand fry can't all live in one small pool in a creek. The second reason is that wild coho fry already lived there, and the wild fish could out compete the hatchery fish. Nonetheless, many of those hatchery coho fry did survive and contribute to the "natural" outmigrating smolt population the following spring. This method was practiced at many hatcheries and was particularly intense in the Chehalis River basin where it was moderately successful. In those cases, there is no genetic difference between the wild and hatchery coho. In others, like parts of the Skagit basin - up the Suiattle drainage, where many coho smolt at age 2 instead of age 1 - the hatchery coho didn't survive and are not present in the wild coho genetic profile.

Oh, and about how those hatchery genetics are tracked. The Green River hatchery at Soos Creek was the first state salmon hatchery in Puget Sound, dating to around 1905 if memory serves. (No, I wasn't there; I just read about it in Dept. literature.) Consequently, when WDF built another hatchery, rather than go to the hard work of collecting local broodstock and taking the time to develop a locally adapted hatchery strain of fish, they would just drive to Soos Creek and get a gunny sack of fertilized eyed eggs at the existing hatchery and take them back to their new hatchery. And that is why Green River Chinook, and GR coho to a similar extent, are the universal hatchery donor stock throughout Puget Sound and Hood Canal hatcheries.

All this is to say that, while we don't have a comprehensive list of streams that have ever been stocked with hatchery fish, because record keeping was sloppy at times, we can identify where hatchery fish have been stocked - and survived - through DNA sampling and analysis.

For ESA purposes, after consulting with the state and tribes, NMFS defined wild salmonids at those fish whose parents spawned naturally in the natural environment, without regard to whether those parents were of natural or hatchery origin. Whether that's a good definition or not can be argued until the cows come home, but for now it is the legal standard defining wild fish. Not native fish, but wild (naturally produced) fish.

Regarding when bios worked with enforcement, prior to WDF and WDG (WDW) merger in 1995, many of the WDG biologists were both science and enforcement. A lot of them were card (and gun) carrying LEs. So yeah, I guess they worked together. At WDF they were always segregated. Just agency cultural differences I guess. That and WDG wasn't as well funded (no general fund money), so having a biologist who could do fish sampling one day and hunter success checking and enforcement the next day was an advantage.