Rich Simms from the WSC forwarded this my way ... I don't have the attachment yet that has final tallies, but you'll get the gist of a very sad story for one of the Quillayute system's largest spawning tributaries.

RAIN PLEAsE!

I am writing to provide some information about a
> recent fish kill in the
> >NF Calawah River basin. Over the past summer,
> James Starr and myself
> >conducted extensive snorkel/habitat surveys over
> the entire NF Calawah
> >River basin. We focused on counting all salmonids,
> including adults and
> >juveniles.
> >
> >With the drought this year most of the stream has
> gone subsurface leaving
> >behind thousands of dead juvenile salmonids,
> sculpins, and almost a
> >hundred dead adult cutthroat/whitefish. The
> drought is not over and pools
> >are drying by the day so the total numbers of dead
> fish are still
> >increasing. I have provided an attachment that
> briefly describes what we
> >observed, including total numbers of salmonids, and
> estimates of dead fish.
> >
> >There are also a couple points I would like to
> clarify, as I expect many
> >people would have similar questions. One, could
> any of the fish have
> >escaped through migration? We estimated that the
> basin has currently lost
> >29% of the entire salmonid population. Due to the
> drought most of the
> >fish were stranded in disconnected pools and there
> was no opportunity for
> >juvenile/adult fish to outmigrate from the reaches
> that have recently
> >dried. This means that the fish we counted two and
> three weeks ago have
> >not had a chance to go anywhere else, they simply
> died once the water went
> >subsurface.
> >
> >If the weather continues for another week or so, we
> are looking at
> >wholesale losses to the entire lower 15 miles of
> the NF Calawah River. I
> >estimate that all of the surface water (excepting
> the lower .7 miles of
> >the stream which are still flowing) will go
> subterranean and that we may
> >lose as much as 80% of all coastal cutthroat and
> 65-80% of all salmonids
> >currently inhabiting the river. To make matters
> worse the NF Calawah only
> >has a few small tributaries, and those tributaries
> (excepting Pistol Creek
> >which only has a short anadromous reach) are also
> dry so there are not any
> >places for the fish to seek refugia.
> >
> >Please read over the attachment and feel free to
> contact me with any
> >questions or requests. There is simply too much
> information to put onto
> >paper right now but I hope this brief writeup helps
> people understand how
> >severely our juvenile salmonids have been impacted
> during this summer/fall
> >drought.
> >
> >My last trip up the NF two days ago left me with a
> pit in my stomach, the
> >stench from piles of sculpins, hundreds of them,
> and rotting matts of
> >juvenile salmonids by the thousands. The birds are
> doing well and recent
> >conversations with other scientists make me wonder
> about the nutrient
> >cycling of these dead creatures and the
> recolonization of the stream this
> >winter. In addition all of the caddis and mayflies
> that are hatching do
> >not have any water in which to lay their eggs so
> that is something else to
> >consider. I also thought of hyporheic migration
> for the juvenile fish,
> >but after digging down up to three feet in the
> river channel there was no
> >water in sight so the streambed is dry in the upper
> most substrate.
> >
> >I wish you all the best.
> >
> >Sincerely,
> >John McMillan
> >Salmonid Ecologist
> >Wild Salmon Center

When I was growing up, we had a similar dewatering problem in 1987.

Some enterprising individuals seined and relocated quite a few juvenile salmonids to a lower reach of the creek where there was water to avoid total loss of the brood year.

I believe this was done without the knowledge of ODFW, but I don't think they were complaining when it happened either.

I normally don't condone bucket brigades but drastic times require drastic measures.

I am all for helping doing something like transfering the fish that are left down to the main fork if that is what it takes. It doesn't look like any of us are going to be able to fish in the next week or so. Lets get some local guides togethor and go transport what fish are left. You can drive a quad up and down the river to transport them. Let me know I would be more than happy to help out.

I could be up there in a couple of hours to help.Just bark and I wil be there.

John,
I was cleaning up around the computer today and found your card[old subaru and the black lab].I was wondering what you thought about what is going on.This is the bb bourd I was refering to.

Thank god,after what has happened to the cannal tribs,I have gotten used to hiking and just looking at fish.Happy to just see one.

A good idea Pat ... I'll see if I can get a hold of Freymund and see what he thinks or if we need some sort of prermission to do this.

While I wouldn't normally condone riding up and down the river bed on a quad ... this may be an instance where you gotta do what you gotta do.

Any thoughts from others as to whether this would be a realistic option? Pro's / Con's?

Rescue of low-water trapped fish is not something we have lots of experience with in Forks

Hello All:

My name is John McMillan and I am the biologist who sent out the memo concerning the fish kill in the NF Calawah River. I see that only my email message was posted, and not the attachment with the description, observations, and numbers of fish found in the system.

Also, hello ltlcleo I do remember you from both our meetings, it is good to hear you are concerned. From our brief meetings I came away with a feeling that you are very sincere in your concern about wild fish.

I must admit that this is the first time I have ever posted on one of the fishing bulletin boards, and make clear that I am only here to provide information on this topic. I would especially like to clarify the situation and then respond to the discussion between Pat Graham and Bob Ball.

I will provide a brief background on my ONP work. Over the past five years I have conducted over 150 snorkel surveys in the Quileute/Hoh River basins, covering over 300 miles of stream. I spend over 300 days each year doing a mixture of fishing, snorkeling, and spawning counts. To complete these surveys I typically hike about 300-400 miles each year. I hope this provides some sense of the time and effort that I spend studying these river systems.

This summer we snorkeled the NF Calawah as part of a basin wide salmonid survey in the Calawah River basin. In total we covered almost 40 stream miles and hiked 110 miles in a wetsuit to cover these areas. As Bob mentioned, the NF Calawah is a very important tributary, especially for steelhead and coastal cutthroat.

As a scientist, conservationist, and fisherman, I empathize with the feelings of helplessness that can pervade our thoughts during times like these. Often our first reaction is to try and do whatever possible to help the stranded fish, such as transporting the fish or even digging in the channel to allow further migration. The situation on the ONP this summer/early fall is disturbing, but in most cases this is a very natural cycle.

According to precipitation records from Forks (period of record is from 1931-2002), this summer is the second driest on record, with only 6.25 inches of rain since July 1. The driest year occurred in 1987 when we only had 5.1 inches of rain over the same period of time. Going further back, I found that the ONP experienced similar droughts in 1935, 1951, 1967, 1987, and now in 2002. Roughly these summer/fall droughts (over our short period of record) seem to occur about every 20 years (which also roughly coincides with ocean pressure shifts (PDO) that also influence our coastal climate).

Most of these droughts probably ended in a similar fashion, loss of surface flow and a subsequent loss of juvenile/adult salmonids. For those who personally know the NF Calawah, we are familiar with the Tribal mythology of the stream that is related to the annual loss of surface water in the middle portion of the river. This year is an anomoly, as most of the lower river has gone dry. However, according to precip. records these droughts have occurred in the past and I am fairly sure the stream lost a significant portion of its salmonid population each time, yet the stream recovered.

Personally, I believe that when nature takes a course that it is best to leave nature to work itself out. In this case, most of the fish are going to die, but the carcasses of all the dying creatures are a very important nutrient source to the stream. If we tried to truck the fish downstream, it is more than likely we are saving fish that are not suited to surviving such droughts and that could have very unitended results. The stream in the upper reaches is still flowing, and that part of the stream is not going to go dry, those juvenile fish will provide a source of recolonization for the lower part of the watershed.

My suggestion would be to let the system fluctuate naturally and allow fish to recolonize. Over generations fish can respond relatively quickly to climatic shifts and allowing these fish to die will help that process of adaptation. It is clear that humans have affected the global climate and the prolonged drought this year maybe related to the syndrome we have labeled "global warming." If our climate is shifting, then the future of salmonids, in streams like the NF Calawah, is dependent upon the fish generating a population that is best suited to surviving these types of droughts, whether that is through earlier run timing so they can get to the headwaters where the streams don't go dry or a later entry timing so that the fish don't become stranded in the drying portions of the stream.

I hope this helps. I wish you all the best.

Sincerely,
John McMillan
Wild Salmon Center

Thanks for the insight and recommendations John.

A question for you. While Mother Nature has certainly done stuff like this previously ... these events happened in a timeframe where the fish were not managed to harvest as many as possible up to a point of having just enough to keep things going in future years (that is if you have true faith in the fisheries models).

That being said, what are your thoughts on these fish being able to make a comeback when there are fewer fish returning to the watershed than would naturally occur without the harvest? Do we need to allow more fish into the watershed to help in the recovery of the year-class stock that is affected by this?

It's kind of the opposite of a naturally-occurring hardships that fish can face to from to time in these streams (ie - floods). But once again, it's something that our fisheries models don't take into account when setting "acceptable harvest" levels.

Thoughts??

I would be pretty concerned about the effect on the likely already overcrowded conditions in flowing sections of the lower river if we somehow managed to transport all these fish there. This is analagous to having a pasture that will support 100 cows - if you put 200 in there to try to save the 100 in another pasture that "dried up", you run the lilely risk of starving them all to death. Yeah, Ma Nature looks pretty cruel at the moment, but think about this - with El Nino coming the ocean is not going to be unable to support as many fish. The ones that will survive are going to have to be real big and healthy when they enter the ocean next year. When we finally do get rain, there will be little competition for food and space in the river, therefore, the few big healthy smolts that survived the drought to enter the ocean next year will likely survive, whereas if we let a bunch of sickly smolts out there it's belly up for most of them. So perhaps Mother knows best.

John-
Thank you very much for your thoughts on this sad subject and thank you for providing us with the info,

If possible, could you email the attachment to me at ryanpetzold@email.msn.com ? Thanks!!

Secondly, my thoughts follow along the same line as Bob's.

I can understand 'letting these fish be' because it makes sense...natural selection at its finest! BUT...like Bob said, these fish are not facing the same hurdles they did when these droughts took place several generations ago.

They are facing overharvest from both the Natives and sporties (The Calawah gets hammered on a daily basis by a couple 'kill everything' guides during the winter). ...and all the other problems our present day wild salmonids are facing that we are so familar with.

It seems that drastic times call for drastic measures...the very least that can be done is impart on a no-kill fishery on the Calawah in the upcoming winter/springs to protect its wild steelhead...especially the winters of 2005, 2006 and 2007 when these juvenilles would have returned as adults.

thats shocking to read that about the fish kills. thanks for putting it up. wish I could help more. Ben

John,

Thanks for commenting, the attachment that was sent with the email message above was empty. The email from Bakke did not have your email address attached so I could not reply and ask you to resend the attachment. FYI, Bakke also told me he could not open the attachment eithier, so you might try resending the attachment, thanks again for the great work.

Thanks for the chat yesterday John ... it sounds like we may need some more restrictions on many of the species down the road to bounce back from this.

According to my talks with John, it seems like the cutthroat really took the brunt of this. The locals that have been up there whacking them (they are C&R only there) aren't going to find much their next time up. Hopefully, they'll leave the area alone now to recover!