Reading thru many of the individual hatch programs described in the 2004 HSRG report, I understand that one of the key recommendations of HSRG is to designate a specific objective to a hatch program. Is it for harvest? Conservation? Both?

I believe the nomenclature is all WRONG.

At its core, conservation means the sound utilization of a resource to prevent its depletion. Ironically, exploitation of the resource is inherent to the conservation mantra. But that exploitation entails responsible use, stewardship, moderation.... so that the exploitation can go on in perpetuity. Without the ability and privilege to use the resource, what's the point of conserving it? Without exploitation, it is no longer conservation, but instead, simply preservation.... a "look but don't touch" museum piece sort of paradigm. And don't get me wrong, preservation and non-consumptive use is just fine for a lot of things, if that's the ultimate objective.

But that ain't the case for salmon. The whole point of conserving them is to sustain our ability to exploit them... to catch them, eat them, you know, to mess with them.

WDFW's philosophy creates an artificial dichotomy between exploitation (harvest goals) and conservation (escapement goals). As if they were mutually exclusive, either or but not both. In truth, the two are inextricably linked.

I've posted numerous times that a hatch program is either for harvest or for conservation, but NEVER both. I now believe that assertion to be in error. Sound harvest REQUIRES sound conservation principles.... you simply can't have one WITHOUT the other.

Instead of harvest vs conservation, if there's going to be a dichotomy in the hatchery arena, it should be harvest vs recovery. It's either going to be operated for harvest OR it's for recovery, but NEVER both.

You see, once you've designated a stock depressed, then by definition it's in need of recovery. That recovery may take a multi-pronged approach, and a recovery hatchery MIGHT be one of those prongs, but then again it might not. If recovery is the objective, then NONE of those hatchery fish should be made available for intentional harvest. In essence, no hatchery fish should die.

On the other hand, if the objective is to create additional harvest opportunity, then EVERY effort should be made to gain maximum harvest access to those fish within the constraints of protecting other non-target stocks that would be impacted by the fisheries doing the harvesting. To the extent that it's practical, beyond egg-take requirements.... ALL hatchery fish MUST die.

Mutually exclusive, black/white, one or the other but NEVER both.

Your thoughts?

Interesting post Doc but a couple of things to chew on. All hatchery fish do die the question is where and how. With a integrated stock the hatchery returns should mirror the wild escapement %. The current WDF&W management is that these are wasted if not harvested prior to reaching the hatchery but I would propose that is incorrect. They are the sport fishers opportunity which by the very nature of it is a inefficient harvest mechanism. The true value of a paper fish be it hatchery or natural production is not necessarily when it is dead. The sport fishers inefficient methods of harvest have great social and economic value in the effort of just trying to catch the fish. That a salmon returns to the hatchery rack and then is removed is not necessarily wasted and it will most certainly die.

The ever evolving nature of salmon management is challenging as hatcheries built many years ago may or may not fit the current guidelines. Take the Huptulips hatchery that lacks a weir so straying is a problem in the case of Coho but not the case with the other 4 facilities in the Chehalis Basin. In all cases the returning salmon will die it is question of where and how.

You can have exploitation and conservation at the same time on a stock. You said it yourself, preservation is non-exploitation period, and conservation is exploitation with boundaries.

A couple of things.

Once upon a time (appropriate start) all fish were wild and there were plenty for all. Now, that will never, ever again be the case. Even if the rivers under study were shut down completely to accomplish a "wild fish only" arena, the runs will not run to the numbers they once were because the life cycle exposure to "take" prior to river-return cannot be policed.

Secondly, Tribes make their own rules and their interest alone is "a fish is a fish", and "If you don't kill 'em I will. It's my right."

Good thoughts Doc, but I would offer a different perspective.

The terminology is correct, but the goal of the hatchery program may change as the fish respond, or not.

Clearly nobody can harvest fish that are not there. If a river is so critically low in spawning adults (for whatever reason) that the stock cannot be restored in a reasonable amount of time then a 'conservation hatchery program' is considered a potential means to help the stock recover. Is this ideal? No. Is this biologically sound? Maybe, depending on the origin of the hatchery stock. Will it help put spawning adults on the spawning grounds where none exist now? Yes. Will this put eggs-in-the-gravel and marine derived nutrients into the river? Most definitely yes. Will it be successful in developing a self sustaining population of salmon where none exist now? Perhaps, but the jury is still out.

In almost all cases, conservation hatchery programs do not mark the juveniles. They are indistingushable from wild fish. That eliminates harvest by recreational anglers, but not Tribal or commercial folks. The idea is that by not marking the fish, more will show up on the spawning grounds. However, that greatly exaggerates the success of recreational anglers. In reality, the folks on this BB (like me) are not effiecent enough to make a dent in most salmon populations. Can't say that about the other users however.....

However, once a conservation hatchery program successfully establishes an appropriate number of spawning adults, the program should change. The juveniles should be marked, and the contribution of the hatchery and the habitat should be estimated. This last step is very important. At some point in the process, fish managers MUST know how many of the returning adults are coming from the hatchery and how many are being produced in the watershed. Too often, this step is not taken. Perhaps because some folks don't want to know. As long as the adults are showing up in harvestable numbers, they're happy.

But that's where your observations are correct. At some point, if the conservation hatchery program is successful, it needs to change to a harvest program. The hatchery juveniles must be marked, hatchery adults should be kept seperate from the wild fish, and the habitat needs to be restored or protected to maintain whatever level of production is occuring in the watershed. And yes, all hatchery fish that are not needed for the adult broodstock should be harvested, kept seperate from the wild fish, and used for marine derived nutrients throughout the wateshed.

On the run but one thing to add. If your perspective is PS or Columbia or Coastal the parameters are different. In looking at what Francis put forward what would apply to PS would be totally inappropriate to the WA coast or Columbia. My perspective is the coastal region which varies massively from the Willapa to the North Coast. In looking at hatcheries and the utilization one should recognize that it is different from watershed to watershed. A good example is GH & Willapa, side by side but totally different for a wide variety of reasons. Within GH even the Humptulips and Chehalis differ greatly in what / how / HSRG requirements is possible, then add the QIN & NT Commercial to the mix and it becomes increasingly difficult to impossible manage for conservation.

Not mutually exclusive nor black-and-white. The world, including the world of hatchery produced fish, is complex.

I have a sub-basin project where the desired outcome is naturally self-sustaining coho. The run was very depressed, and we have used hatchery produced fish to recover it. This is a hydro project, and while juvenile out-migration is much improved, it is not perfect. Furthermore, these fish are subjected to whatever pre-terminal and terminal area fisheries the adjacent stocks of coho are subjected to. What it has come down to is that about half the time the stock could sustain itself without hatchery supplementation. And the other half it comes up short on wild fish escapement without the supplemental hatchery fish, and even sometimes with them. The upshot is that complete recovery without the supplemental hatchery fish does not appear to be an option. Without those hatchery fish in some years, the wild stock will begin slipping back to a depressed status.

I can think of several other salmon and steelhead populations where hatchery supplementation provides harvestable fish, or extra harvestable fish in some years, and are a critical insurance policy for long term sustainability in others.

Sg

CohoAngler, good post......I have questioned the lack of "record keeping" by the commercial fishing fleet. In Region 6, they do a estimate,.....put a WDFW bio on a NT gill net boat, count the number of hatchery/wild fish......then multiply those numbers by the total gill net boat fishing that day/tide. A number is reached, might be low, high, could it be right on???? don't think so. Is there a chance that wild fish are "over netted", I think so.......Estimate is not the way to count fish.......NT gill netter or fish buyer, should be held accountable......If you can't do the job, right, then get out of that livelihood.

excellent post. I think you have to make some hard definitions to clearly state a purpose. I like the recovery moniker better than conservation....as you clearly state conservation should be part of any program. Harvest programs tend not to be used in recovery purposes because they may use weird broodstocks, but people will use roundabout wishy washy logic that they are keeping harvest off the natural stock, and are actually therefore conservation programs. Fine, but this is why conservation is a poor term, especially when you see its synonym: supplementation. I mean what is supplementation? Is is for supplementing harvest, or spawners, or both, or maybe mortality associated with habitat effects? Terms are extremely important as they evoke context, precision, and even emotion associated with people's interpretation of them. I like your suggested terminology.

Yes. It SHOULD change.

It should be shut down.

Mission accomplished. The hatchery has essentially worked its way out of a job. And it should be celebrated!

At that point, conservation takes the driver's seat so that a GD hatchery is never needed for that population again.

All it takes is a bit of discipline.

Good discussion.

"All it takes is a bit of discipline". Well said Doc, but once we've built something, folks want to use it.

Once we've established a healthy stock of salmon, the folks who like to catch and eat salmon (like me) normally what to partake of said resource. Restoring a wild population of salmon is great, but if we cannot harvest it, the stock become a museum piece. You said it best:

"Without exploitation, it is no longer conservation, but instead, simply preservation.... a "look but don't touch" museum piece sort of paradigm. And don't get me wrong, preservation and non-consumptive use is just fine for a lot of things, if that's the ultimate objective."

Most wild salmon populations cannot withstand the level of morality we impose thru harvest (commercial, tribal, recreational, high seas, etc) or habitat loss. So if we were to rely strictly on wild populations for harvest, recreational anglers annual limit might be 2-3 per year.

I'm not arguing, just pointing out that once a stock has been restored, imposing self-discipline to ensure a very low to zero harvest mortality has not been feasible. People want to harvest salmon, even though it might take the fish stocks right back down to where it was. Look no farther than the Elwha for a prime example (e.g., Chambers Creek steelhead).

Don't get me started on that one..........

The original post is a very good statement of what many tribes have been trying to say to the state as we develop joint plans and the tribes don't want to adopt HSRG recs hook, line, and sinker. Thank you. I hope you can find a way to find common ground with the tribes on these issues.

The last post above is also right on. I do believe that we have guidelines for those types of programs that give the parameters for when they would end. We refrain from calling them "GD hatchery fish," though.

You really believe that might/could work on the Chehalis/Humptulips river systems????? Just asking!!!!

Two Dogs, I would be very interested in seeing what types of guidelines the tribes have for operating hatchery programs, but I can't seem to find a reference that tells me what those are. A set of low risk hatchery guidelines was developed by the PS co-managers and attached as an appendix to the Puget Sound Chinook recovery plan, but when asked about implementation, most tribes have backed away from those guidelines. Could you please share with us the current hatchery guidelines for integrated and isolated harvest and recovery programs, as well as when you would expect state and tribal programs to meet those guidelines?

An interesting discussion1

As Salmo g points this fish business is pretty complex and I find it pretty obvious that across the landscape the "one size fits all approach" is likely doomed to failure in most areas. Instead within some broad guidelines tailor crafting programs for individual basins/stocks is more likely to achieve broad success.

I would suggest the following as someadditional principles for consideration as part of the mix as programs are developed if indeed the goal is to achieve substantial wild fish production.

1) Surplus escapements at hatchery racks are not management failures but rather the cost of mix stock and wild fish management.

2) It has always been difficult for any user group to separate their desires from the needs of the resource. It is very important that those users desires be considered but they can not be allowed to trump the long term wild resource needs.

3) I would throw another type of conservation/recovery hatchery program as a potential alternate approach. That would be a wild brood stock program with significant production but only for a single fish generation. The program would then be suspended for at least a generation (longer if escapements are above a pre-determined threshold) repeating as needed. This will allow every generation of hatchery fish will have parents who all have gone through the natural selection process. I don't see this as much of an option for steelhead (long term freshwater rearing) but a viable option for something like sub-yearling Chinook.

4) Finally folks need to keep in mind the dominate factor limiting most of our depressed anandromous stocks is NOT hatcheries or even harvest but degraded habitats and an extended period of low marine survivals. That does not mean that we can ignore hatchery issues; just we need to keep them in some sort of context.

curt

Thanks Smalma, but check the first sentence in bullet #4. I think you missed a "not" just before "hatcheries".

cohoangler -
Thanks - correction made!

I hear this general thought repeated by numerous professionals on this forum, and I have often thought that I should comment, so now I will. I believe that statements like this are gross generalizations and very mis-leading. The fact is, we will never really know the exact effect on natural populations of many of our hatchery programs particularly some of the programs that have been in operation for over 100 years. For some populations (Puget Sound Chinook for instance) these long-standing programs have produced natural spawners that have had little influence from the natural environment for nearly thirty generations, and while we will never know the exact impact this has had (since we didn't start monitoring this stuff 100 years ago) some genetic models developed by very reasonable scientists suggest that the impact can be quite significant. To cite one example - In a risk assessment modeling project for the Bonneville Power Administration, some very good fisheries scientists including Drs. Busack, Currens, Mobrand, and Pearsons, relying on a comprehensive survey of 44 scientists with expertise in genetics and practical knowledge and experience with salmon culture, developed a fitness model (FITFISH) to look at the potential effect of different types of hatchery programs. In the case that I described above, where hatchery programs have operated for a long time with most of the spawners being made up of hatchery fish and no natural influence in the hatchery broodstock, the opinion of this group was that the loss of productivity to the natural population could be as high as 70% compared to a fully fit natural population. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that a potential loss of 70% in productivity puts the risk of some hatchery programs right up there with the risk from habitat loss. It certainly is within the same order of magnitude, and in my opinion should not be dismissed by anyone interested in recoverying/conserving (or any other term you want to use) salmon populations.

Reference: ftp://ftp.bpa.gov/pub/efw-RAMP/RAMP%20Report%20Final.pdf

Thanks for that feedback.

That really is my beef. The existing terminology and mis-applied synonyms cloud the intended objective(s)... or worse yet, defeat them altogether.

If you want to recover a run with hatchery fish, then dammit, just do it. But don't try to pull the wool over anyone's eyes that you're going to do it with a few extra fish "to spare" for harvest.

On the flip side, mass manufacturing salmon for harvest isn't necessarily a sin. But if we're gonna crank out factory fish for harvest, then let's structure fisheries to selectively target those fish and let's harvest the crap out of them. If impacts to other stocks constrain our ability to feasibly do that, then maybe we ought to reconsider the value of mass-producing said fish if they're just gonna end up uncaught at the hatchery rack.

WDFW seems to think you can simultaneously recover and harvest a run with hatchery fish. I say BS. If you do it that way, I guarantee you won't do either one very well at all, even after spending bazillions of dollars on hatchery fish. And the historical record would support that. Case after case of little to no recovery as well as case after case of harvest mismanagement allowing too many hatch fish to swim by uncaught.

The truth is that harvest and recovery are at diametrically opposed odds against one another. No if's and's or but's, the promotion of one comes at the direct expense of the other. We can either do a decent job of each in isolation, or a $hitty job of both in combination.

The historical record speaks for itself.

The "guidelines" here is in reference to supplementation or conservation programs. There are very few of those, and the point of the guidelines is when the conservation need is met the program will end. These programs are in the NF and SF Stillaguamish and SF Nooksack to my knowledge. It's true that these conservation programs happen to be run by tribes, but all the work in Puget Sound is comanagement, and therefore by "we", I mean the state and tribes. I am not directly involved in any of these programs, though, so i don't don't what the status is for these undergoing public review. But, yes, I do believe that these types of programs include guidelines for when they should be curtailed once conservation goals are met.

Regarding most hatchery programs, i.e. the ones that produce fish for harvest, I was agreeing with the concept that rather than classifying them as one thing or another, they should be placed on a spectrum in consideration of the situation in the watershed where the program is. That's what most tribes have been advocating, but due to a number of political and institutional factors, it has been hard to get the state to think on a watershed-specific basis. That's too bad because thinking on a watershed specific basis is what's needed in order to make hatchery programs compatible with salmon recovery programs. The tribes are typically involved in all aspects of salmon recovery and want to see harvest, hatchery, and habitat efforts coordinated. i am not aware of any "failure to follow guidelines" by the tribes. I thought that the original comment was inline with the idea that hatchery programs should be tailored to the needs of each watershed. If I was wrong in my interpretation of that, then I withdraw my support with apologies.