Dams removed, what is going on???? The following address takes you to many videos, some as the dams were being removed, up to a more current time frame.

What I found interesting was the use of "sonar" to record the fish passing up the Elwha river. Alaska uses sonar to determine fish passage but when I've asked the question on PP, was basically told the cost is too great to be used here. Maybe sonar has been tried in this State before????, I don't know that but can see a positive result with faster information, as to numbers of fish, passing up river.

Seems to me, that the Elwha River, might be a proving ground for more effective ways to monitor fish????

http://www.nps.gov/olym/learn/nature/restorationoftheelwha.htm

It was great to see the fish actually swimming up past the past remains of the 2 dams. A project well done...

Thanks for a bit of light during a period of dark days, Drifter. The Elwha project has given us a lot of reasons to smile. I agree with your thought that it seems an ideal proving ground for a lot of things we've been interested in trying.

As regards sonar for counting fish: A problem I can imagine arises with sonar is that, especially during periods of low water, fish seem to cycle in and out of the river with the tides. They also seem to move around the rivers somewhat even after committing to the freshwater, but that's probably less common. Couldn't counting the same fish multiple times result in significant overestimates of actual run sizes? Is there a fairly reliable way of perhaps locating the sonar equipment past some sort of "point of no return," past which few fish are likely to turn downstream again? Perhaps multiple stations, at various points along the migration path could serve as checks?

FF02:

Have no answer to the low water bit, tide water would be a problem, in and back out.

Be interesting to test fish passage at say in the Wynoochee, at Black Ck. or the Satsop, above the old Hiway bridge or the Humptulips above any netting.

Actual it would be interesting to get results from the Elwha River and how its working there....not sure if that project was tribal or WDFW or other.

The folks managing the Fraser have used sonar for decades to count fish. There are a number of problems, none of which are insurmountable but would easily defeat use here.

Sonar counts everything that goes by. You can set it to count certain sizes of fish but how will it tell a sockeye from a pink from a chum from a coho from a chinook jack? There are very few times when only one species passes through. They used the in-river gallant fishery, which essentially swept the river clean, as determining quantification.

It counts fish passing, but not direction. One year, the counts overestimated the sockeye by 750,000. That made for a nice 4 hour purse seine fishery and the high pucker factors when the total number isn't materialize.

The sonar works in the river, after all the popular fisheries. In other words, it confirms, or blows away, updates and forecasts that have already been fished on. As with the current scheme, the only one left to close is the next-in-line, the in-river people.

If it costs anything it will be too much. WDFW was looking at sonar a decade ago, at least and may have even tried it out. Memory is fogged.

Sonar counters add or subtract so fish up add one. Fish down subtract one.

Biggest problem with sonar is apportionment of total passage by species. Hard to differentiate chinook from coho from pinks from steelhead

This has proven to be quite enigmatic even for the bios at ADFG. It's not nearly as exact as most of want it to be.

Thanks for the great link DW!

Here's another video someone shared with me..

https://vimeo.com/137199265

"I think it's fair to say we got some pretty cool footage"

With today's technology I've often wondered why our fish runs are not monitored with devices such as sonar. Based on the responses above it sounds like it would not apply to all situations, the tidewater and salmon issue being the obvious. Why not implement sonar for winter steelhead during periods when fish are migrating one direction and not sloshing back and forth like a tidewater humpy? Seems like it may not be the all around solution, but may have a niche in certain applications?

At least in the past, winters entered streams in November, December, and January. They are co-migrating with coho and chum. Coho are going upstream in numbers into at least January in some years and areas. Still, sonar for winter steelhead would be a great step forward because you could have the counts before any fishing needed to occur.

they used sonar on the Snohomish for a few years to count smolt passage. not sure when the time frame was... I would guess 8 years ago.

I think that it was used in conjunction with the in river trap they run above Monroe (I would bet there is one someplace on the Snoqualmie also) to see if the smolts were dieing in the river in excessive numbers. but I never found a report of findings.

The biological and physical parameters on many of our rivers are such that the error factor from sonar estimates would be such that folks would serious question whether attempt such estimates makes economic sense.

CM mentioned the winter steelhead entry time to our rivers. For the Skagit wild winters that entry timing based on test net information ranges from late October through early June. During that period there are also significant numbers of Chinook, coho, chum , and bull trout using the same river with significant size overlap with steelhead. Sort the target hits by species would be challenging.

At the same time the river flows would typically vary from 8,000 to more than 50,000 cfs with some years the peak flows may exceed 150,000 cfs.
In addition the average daily flows by month vary considerably over the period that wild winters are entering the river (not even considering the summers). The also is the issues of daily river flow fluctuations of 18 inches or more as well as the dynamic nature of the river channel.

Curt

I agree with Curt about the multiple species, flow, etc. Yet, they can do it on the Fraser which has more fish, the same species, and lots more water. I suspect, though, that it can be justified economically by the value of the sockeye runs...........

Heck, the Stat quit counting Lake WA sockeye when the runs got to small. Fortunately, the Muckleshoots took over.

To add on to the cost question, back in the day (and probably still now) the Fraser managers had daily scale data from fisheries from AK to the river, genetic analysis, test fishing data from 10-20 locations/boats, the sonar- and there may have been two locations for this, counts at Hells Gate ladders, and escapement estimates. All in real time.

That takes staff, money, and a commitment to act on the information as it comes in. Meaning a fishery might open, close, and open again depending on data.

Further, the management was by stocks or stop grouping rather than species.

There are lots of reasons sonar is not widely used. Cost, feasibility, species ID, detection efficiency, and practicality are all limitations. There is no one size fits all device for monitoring fish passage.

Cost is the primary reason sonar and PIT-arrays are not used on every system in the PNW. Not only is there a substantial initial cost, but there are large on-going costs for additional staff, materials and maintenance.

Additionally, the few grant sources that are suitable for funding modern monitoring equipment are highly competitive. At the end of the day, a grant proposal for sonar or PIT-tag technology is going to fall to the bottom of the list when competing with habitat restoration projects or marine survival studies unless it is highly integrated with fulfilling multiple management plan goals and sponsored by multiple management or research entities. To meet this criteria requires years of effort, coordination, justification and collaboration. This is difficult to achieve when fisheries biologist and managers are already stretched extremely thin.

I believe that there is plenty of room for re-prioritizing of activities. Way too many staff are involved in NOF. Too much money is spent on planning rather than on management.