New Cedar River Hatchery starts incubating salmon eggs with 8.5-million on hand


With the dedication of the newly built permanent Cedar River Hatchery complete it is time to get to work on producing salmon, and that is what the hatchery crews are doing right now.

"After a long, frustrating, and difficult journey we have finally completed the new hatchery construction project, and (state Fish and Wildlife) staff will start incubating eggs in the new facility (starting Thursday, Oct. 26)," said Paul L. Faulds, the Seattle Public Utilities Landsburg Mitigation Manager.

"Over the next two months eggs incubating at the interim ....
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/reeltimenorthwest/2016622576__it_took_more_than.html

Yeah!

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. Just kidding.

makes me want to run out and buy a 50k boat LMAO, what a joke this is.

I'm still a sucker for this project... We are ONE decision (to re-set escapement) away from having a great local fishery, and that is to re-set escapement. With a proper hatchery my gullible sense is that discussion can happen.

B

we used to go out in a 10 ft livingston with a 8 horse motor, no need for a 50k boat...

this has the potential to make one hell of a fishery, maybe even a steelhead fishery too like what used to be on the Cedar...

You do understand that lowering the escapement goal will get a fishery for maybe a few years and that fishery will get smaller over time. The recruit per spawner on that run has historically been low.

Just for sake of argument, say it was 1.25 to 1. At 350K spawners the return would be almost 440K, with 90K harvestable. At 100K you would get 25K harvest.

The system does not, at least over the last 35 or so years, work consistently well for sockeye. It would make more sense to convert the Cedar to an entirely hatchery show. Protect the N end.

Carcassman,

Is the R/S the same at lower escapements as at high escapements? My hunch is that escapements in the 100K range will have higher R/S.

Sg

But they haven't, at least as far as I have seen. The survival is driven first by instream/incubation flows in the Cedar and then some unknown factors in the lake.

Escapement has been rather meaningless in the last couple decades, if memory serves.

And, even if the R/S at 100K is 2 to 1, at 350K it would only take an R/S of 1.3 or 1.4 to put the same number in the catch.

The lower goal will give, for a while, more consistent fisheries on fewer fish.

Lowering the escapement goal will provide fisheries right away...and the hatchery will have no effect on it, either...

With the population bottleneck being productivity of the lake to grow fry into smolts, it doesn't how much more are planted, it's already maxed out.

Fish on...

Todd