Survive the Sound- a Long live the Kings project

I met Jacques White, PhD who is the executive director at LLTK this week, and we discussed this project for a spell. Posting up some information on how you can sponsor a Steelhead smolt this spring in the Survive the Sound interactive game that is currently accepting sponsorship for outmigrating smolts this spring.

Check out the contest details here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb14216599.htm

Sponsor a fish here: https://www.survivethesound.org/home

I'll be sponsoring a fish and reporting it's name and progress here, as well as observations during the contest.

If any of you decide to sponsor a fish, it would be fun to compare progress here once the contest starts!

Post up if any of you decide to participate!

So my Sponsored fish is "Puget Pounder". release date set for may 8th and this is a Nisqually fish....looking forward to seeing how he does!

In. My smolt is "Jet." Hails from the Skokomish and claims to always be on time. We shall see....

This is a really cool way to get people to support much-needed projects that WDFW can't or won't fund.

I am wishing Puget Pounder good luck! He'll need it with a 78% mortality rate!!

Here is a link to their preliminary report as presented to the Commission in August 2015:

http://wdfw.wa.gov/commission/meetings/2015/08/aug0715_06_presentation.pdf.

The Puget Sound Recreational Fishing Enhancement Program and the Squaxin tribe are collaborating on a study whereby tagged coho are being released at several locations leading out of South Sound
to Admiralty Inlet to ascertain if predation decreases the further out the fish are released (and presumably the comparative differences).

And then there is the recently released report on a Canadian study which shows the extent of harbor seal predation on Chinook in Puget Sound; twice what Orcas consume and six times what fishers take. Here is the abstract:

http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfas-2016-0203#.WObC2zvysdW

Again, I wish Puget Pounder well as he faces a truly hostile marine environment called Puget Sound.

And I also wish that NOAA would take ownership of how this predation adversly impacts the potential recovery of ESA listed salmonids and push Congress for changes to the MMPA.

Used to be real active with a LLTK project here when the Wishkah hatchery was going.

fp

Been hangin' on to that shirt a while, eh?

Thanks for ponying up and participating, I appreciate it.

Great idea!

My family will sponsor one fish each. . .the ladies have Fishy-McFishface, Fin-E-US and Bubbles from the Skok, and I'm pulling for Twitch from the Nisqually.

Go Twitch!

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I've got Bruce from the Skok.
SF

I got that unpronounceable Skawel smolt.

8 fish so far, shaping up to be a great side contest here on PP.

"Sharkbait" leaving the Nisqually.

Merman is my fish!

I am in for Sgt. Snackbar but I was really disappointed when I realized I could not name my own fishey as I had already planned on C. L. Snack. Well, Sgt. Snackbar is close. Granddaughter at Western will be notified she has her own Nisqually fish to follow: Sushi.

By my choices am I projecting a negative outlook on short term survival? No doubt!

The data on smolts is very interesting. Mortality, at least in all the studies I looked at, was highest early in the individual's migration. Loss rates were highest in the first few kilometres of migration. It is as if the fish, when it converts from a stream resident to migrant faces new challenges, new predators, etc. that take a while to learn. Once learned, survival per km is better. The loss was also rather equal, on a per km basis, for hatchery and wild.

That said, there was a real problem for fish having to pass Tacoma Narrows on the way out. White River Chinook, released as yearlings from Hupp/Minter survived at a lower rate than fingerling White Rivers released from the MIT facility on the White. Conventional wisdom and management models tell us yearlings survive way better than fingerlings.

I still maintain that while this tagging data is great and much needed it tells us only what is happening today. We know that OVERALL marine survival appears to be down but just because the number leaving the Straits is low does not mean that in-Sound mortality is the problem. Unless there is some old data on in-Sound survivals.

Plus, for steelhead, I have asked and asked and nobody on the Pacific Coast was able to provide me with a good data set (real, not indexed escapement, whole brood-year ages) where the R/S even equaled 1. Repeat spawners are critical. We do know that if the smolts are younger, a stream produces more so the same stream will produce more age 1 than it can age 2 and so on. So, as we keep stream productivity low, we produce fewer smolts form the same habitat. A downward spiral. Fewer smolts, fewer repeats, ...............

I've got Willy.
Free Willy!

Sea Slough is ready to rock and roll. He will be a 20 pounder in 2020

Sushi and Sgt. Snackbar survived initial release and are heading downstream. Should be plenty of water to flush them out quickly. Appears there have already been some fatalities amongst the participants......

Sgt. Snackbar is reportedly alive and well just off Anderson Island's Devils Head. Watch out Snacky - seal country!!

Sushi on the other hand is reluctant to continue downstream. Is there a problem??

So far so good. “Shark bait” has made it out of the Nisqually into the saltwater.

My smolt is alive, but he seems to be reluctant to head too far north. Seems like the first thing this project will teach me is that smolts don't all make a beeline for the ocean when they out-migrate.

I'd be interested to see where the other Skok smolts are on the map, to see how far they are spread out and how far they have ranged so far. I know my smolt is closer to the estuary than he was yesterday morning.

Sea Slough is in South sound trying to figure out which way is the ocean.

Beyond developing a "school" there doesn't seem to be a way for legitimate smolt sponsors to see how their fishey is doing compared to others. That is, unless I missed a feature. Anyone with better insight??

‘Shark bait’ is not among the living after traveling 16.67 miles.

Puget Pounder cant find his way out of the nisqually. But he is eating bugs and enjoying all of the uber expensive engineered log jams & habitat restoration projects.

NO! No No No! It just can't be - and Shark Bait was sooo young and had such a great future ahead of him.

Has the coroner listed a cause of death? Chronic sealitis? Cormorant gluttany?

I would send a donation but just rec'd my Visa statement including a $50 charge to support Sgt. Snackbar and Sushi.

My condolences Lucky. (Lucky??)

Maybe Puget Pounder and Sushi have a thing going there in the river.

Thank you for your condolences Larry B. The poor little guy was ambushed close to shore after coming in from deeper water.

He will be buried at sea shortly after movement from the predator scatatorium.

RIP Shark bait.

Bruce from the Skok is one eager beaver.
He has traveled over 69 miles and made it past the Hood Canal Bridge, which some seem to think is a barrier to fish migrating out of the canal.
He is currently just south of Foulweather Bluff.
SF

May be good timing......there were Orcas around the South end of Whidbey yesterday. If lucky (Sorry Lucky) they will cut down on the seal population.

Gone but not forgotten. Would you like to share Sgt. Snackbar? Help get you past your loss??

One of our four, Bubbles, bit the dust south of the Hood Canal Br. Two others are streaking through the Canal, and Twitch is hanging out around the Nisqually Delta, not sure what to do.

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We have a school of about 20 fish at work. We can track each other's fish, and I think it's correct to say that it's a little more fun to be able to compare and contrast. Generally speaking, seems like the Nisqually fish are more prone to failure to launch, while the Skok fish really tend to get after it. I chose Willy because he was big. He died, fast. One of our fish is Flashy--an appropriately named smaller smolt that apparently has gone over 100 miles (not in a straight line: hit the bridge, went in reverse, then turned around to give it another shot). As of yesterday, we had only a few fatalities and about 2/3rds of the alive fish are moving along pretty well.

Skawar (sp) is taking his time lolly-gagging down the Nisqually. He should reach the estuary soon unless he plans on becoming a resident trout. At just under 9 miles, he's slower than the average smolt that's traveled 23 miles and hit the Sound.

My fish also went in reverse, about mid canal.
I wonder how common that is?
He racked up some additional miles on his journey odometer by doing so.

Edit...
Just got an update.
Bruce turned around again and it headed back towards the bridge.

SF

Jet is about mid-Canal today, about 9 miles further from the estuary than yesterday. It's too bad we only get one daily update; it could be very interesting to see where the fish go between updates. I get a sense that they do a lot of backtracking so far.

Thank you, but I am now following my ghost fish for the rest of the 12 day trek.

It is interesting regarding the progress of other fish reported.

The 'map your fish' feature shows where the smolt goes between updates, provided it swims enough to generate that data. Flashy from the Skok is now at 130 miles and the map shows him twice swimming up to the Bridge, failing to push through and then retreating back down into the canal. One other fish map (can't remember which one) shows the smolt dipping into a side channel, then it figures out that isn't right, and it heads back out into the main channel. The map doesn't work with Internet Explorer but works fine on an iphone.

I should have sponsored a fish! Sounds like fun.

It also sounds like some of these little guys behave more like fledgling birds than fish. Leave the nest; go back to the nest; venture a little bit further the next time then back to the nest again. Repeat until they are confident enough to make the big trek into the big blue. Pretty cool if you ask me.

If they do this program again, I'm thinking of getting together a "school" at work and maybe make it into a friendly workplace competition. Maybe we could also pool our resources here and get a PP "school" up and running?

Just received the update on our two Nisqually fish.

While Sushi was slow getting out of the river once he hit the salt he made a quick trip to just off Gig Harbor and apparently became seal lunch. R.I.P. Sushi.

Sgt. Snackbar on the other hand has made several trips from Anderson Island to the Narrows and back again. He lives!! (for now)

RIP Bruce of the Skok

Status: Dead
Speed: 0.95 mph
Distance: 89.72 miles

Jet (Skok) is still alive. Appears to be right at the Hood Canal Bridge. Looks like he has aborted no less than four attempts to swim past the bridge thus far. Must be some scary things happening near that bridge....

Sorry Stonefish!

Puget Pounder is now off Anderson Island after loitering in the Nisqually all week, seems to making a b-line towards the Narrows.

The bridge was not designed to allow fish to swim past it, if those fish swim in the upper 3 meters of the water column. Major design flaw!

Design flaws can be mitigated. Top ten solutions:

1. Fish friendly culverts could be installed in the bridge pontoons

2. Smolts could be trucked from the south side of the bridge to the north side.

3. Fish feeders could be retrofitted along the south side of the bridge. Fish could be fed to maturity; whereupon, they could return to their Hood Canal stream of origin.

4. Bridge span could be opened for fish passage twenty hours per day.
Car usage could be limited to an AM and PM peak travel period of two hours each.

5. A catch and release smolt fishery from the bridge could be established. Anglers would be required to "catch" on the south side of bridge, and "release" on the north side. Selective gear rules only. No license required.

6. WDFW could use seals, sea lions, and cormorants to train smolts to dive under the pontoons of the floating bridge.

7. In keeping with the core principle that no fish can be wasted, native and non native gillnetters could be allowed to set nets with one inch mesh off the south side of the bridge.

8. Escapement numbers for salmon/steelhead in Hood Canal rivers could be lowered.

9. The bridge could be demolished following a ruling favorable to fish by the Ninth Circuit Court.

10. ...............................................................(your call)

Sorry so many smolts are being lost so soon. It's fun following their progress.

Sometime over the weekend, in the vacinity of the Hood Canal Bridge, Jet went down. Another "Ghost" follower here.

RIP Puget Pounder. Dead At Tacoma Narrows over the weekend....


I have one friends fish, SalmonElla, who make great progress over the weekend and went from Mid hood canal all the way out to off Ediz Hook. Looks like she might make it.

Sgt. Snackbar, a NIsqually fish, has traveled 91 miles since release and hasn't made it past the Tacoma Narrows. What's up with three or four round trips between Anderson Island and the Narrows? Just along for the ride (tidal flow)? Or maybe he heard about his schoolmate Sushi who made it to the Devils Triangle (Gig Harbor, Pt. Defiance, south end of Vashon) and became steelhead sushi - probably for a seal.

Hang in there Snackbar; catch that strong outgoing at night and make a dash for more open waters.

Yeah, not too sure how I missed all of this. I would have been all over sponsoring a fish!

Bummer.

But yeah, organize a PP school for next year. I'm in!

Forty-eight fish released and now into day 8. Of the original 48 there have been 31 fatalities (65%) while 17 are reported as still alive (35%).

Not sure how that is broken out between Nisqually and Skok fish but losing roughly 2/3 of them in 8 days is appalling.

From a study validity standpoint does having the internal tracking device make those fish more susceptible to predation?

Of my family's 4 fish, 3 are now toast. All three Skok fish are dead, and the one Nisqually smolt is still alive, but hasn't moved too far.

Bubbles bit it the first day or two as previously reported, not far from the Skok mouth. The other two Skok fish made a lot of progress. The Skok bridge appears to have been a serious barrier to passage for one of them. Fishy McFishface bounced off the bridge twice, and once migrated all the way back to the Skok mouth! The third time got him past the bridge, and out Admiralty, but alas died in the eastern strait, near Smith Island. Fin-E-Us, the third Skok fish blew past the HC bridge on the first try, and made it as far as Port Angeles, where he died of unknown causes. Is there a way to know how?

The only survivor so far is Twitch from the Nisqually, who has only gone 59 miles at this point in the journey. He got past the Narrows bridge, went up Colvos, and is now lounging around the south side of Bainbridge Isl. Doesn't seem to be in a hurry.

Very interesting study, fun, interactive, and hopefully informative. Thanks all for reporting on your little dudes. . .it's been fun for all of us fishbadgers to play along,

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Well, the good news as of this morning's update is that Sgt.Snackbar remains alive.
The bad news is that he is now back to Anderson Island's Devil's Head having traveled over 100 miles and he is essentially right where he first hit salt water.

So, is he actively feeding and becoming bigger and stronger before venturing further north and out to the ocean? Or is he simply a low achiever on an extended "three day cruise" subjecting himself to additional risks as his peers leave him behind?

The way this is going Snacky will still be hanging out waiting for a Tee Time at Chambers Bay when LLTK ends its program and reports.

Not sure how I will handle not knowing.......

These tags have been implanted in steelhead smolts for more than a decade. Plus a wide variety of other salmonids and fish.

There is no way that I know of to assess the impact of the tags because you can't monitor the non-tagged fish in the same way. At least some of the fish have been recovered as adults with the tag still in.

Lots of searun cutthroat and anadromous native char have been tagged and monitored through the sound.

One of the first surprises I saw with the results was the loss of migrants all over the place, for all species. The rate of loss, per km migrated, was highest for the shortest migration. That is, early in the migration they get hammered.

Long time ago, we clipped coho, steelhead, and rainbow as they left a small lake on their way to sea. Then, recaptured them 5km downstream. Lost about 10% or more in that short trip.

While Sgt. Snackbar is reportedly still alive his travel history appears to have another possible story line......that is, dead and flotsam moving back and forth with the tide.

That raises a question as to how smolt are determined to be dead?

And does the transmitter implanted in an eaten smolt continue to be recorded by the sensors? If so, does that give some hint as to the identity of the predator?

The tags broadcast as long as the battery lasts. They have been recorded in Great Blue Heron, for example. A smolt is "dead" when it does not pass the next downstream line of receivers. In some cases, they can get by one line and are recorded at the next. Plus, a smolt may decide to remain in FW for another year. Battery dies, it survives and smolts, but would likely be considered a mort from the year before.

As with all stuff biological, you need years of data, consistently collected, to detect trends. This "one year of data and we have what we need" does save money but is stupid.

No doubt that more data using the same processes provides for better analysis over time. That said, even first year data has some value in evaluating a hypothesis such as in this case - huge early mortality.

The real questions will be what are the primary causes and what, if anything, can/will be done to mitigate them (biologically and socially/politically)?

Huge early mortality compared to what? That is the question. We know that lots of steelhead smolts die. We don't know what the "old" situation was because we didn't measure it.

The creek I worked on, where we trapped and marked all smolts and adults, looked like it could produce 1500 steelhead smolts. The stream looked like about 100 spawners filled the rearing capacity. 100/1500= 6.67% smolt to adult survival to first return. Or, put another way, 93.3% post-smolting mortality.

We also observed that less than half the adults coming back had been marked as smolts. While some could have been from below the trap, a lot had to be strays. Then, add in repeat spawners. In many places in the steelhead's range you get 20-30-50-even 90% repeats. All the repeats lower the smolt to first spawn survival below the 6.67% from above.

So, based on what I have seen in steelhead coastwide, the loss of more than half the smolts before they hit Bonilla-Tatoosh; even the loss of 2/3 or more, does tell me that there is a big problem in the Sound.

Maybe there is, but in other parts of the range they seem to cope well with what have to be low marine survivals.

Would the quick death in the salt, with little meandering lean towards a predation problem? Would the ingestion lead to a quick battery death as compared to death on the bottom and a slower consumption by scavengers? I, also, would love to know what we can find out about the deaths, as that should reveal a ton of information.

They die just as fast is freshwater. It is possible, and probably has been done, to look for the tags on seal haulouts, places where birds like cormorants defecate.

Quick death in the salt could simply be response to salt; they had issues. I think the assumption, though, is that losses are primarily predation.

On the stream I mentioned the loss could be explained by one or two Great Blue Heron or a River Otter. So, trying to find the one predator might be hard.

In Oregon, they did document that a huge chunk of steelhead smolt loss in a bay occurred around a seal/cormorant congregation site. They were alive upstream of it, not present below.

As of today, a whopping 6% of the tagged smolts are still swimming. Maybe there is a problem here....

Well, sadly Sgt. Snackbar has been reported dead but the details are confusing. The official report indicates his tag has not moved for two months hence presumed dead with tag on sea floor (seal poop). Conflicting with that information is that he was shown as having made 4 1/2 round trips from the Devil's Head sensor arrays to those at the Narrows after having reached salt water.

I think this warrants an Independent Counsel investigation!! Is Sgt. Snackbar really dead? If so, when and by what cause?? Or is he happily swimming past Neah Bay under an assumed identity?

Sobering...

And Twitch gets sealed near Bainbridge. All four fish from the Badger family are goners.

Puget Sound. . .tough row to hoe!!

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DAMMMMMMMMMM.....

Gross understatement!! 94% dead in the first 14 days....gonna be a long, tough two years.

That jaw-dropping juvenile mortality rate speaks to the importance of fecundity in getting a population past that life history bottle neck.

On the Keogh they showed that, by decreasing smolt age they increased smolt numbers. Consequently, the run went from non-self sustaining to self sustaining.

Initially, they decreased smolt age by a combination of fertilizing and in-stream habitat improvements. Then, they sustained the nutrient level through spawning salmon. Whenever nutrient levels crashed, smolt age immediately increased.

The above is physical evidence... good evidence that escapement goals must increase as habitat is improved (if we hope to see a "return" on our investments).

I recently had it explained to me that the reason we don't necessarily need to increase escapement to benefit from habitat improvements is that fewer spawners will be more productive spawning in more suitable habitat. I'm sure there's truth in that, but it ignores the other, critical piece of what makes up fish habitat in the otherwise relatively sterile PNW streams: a lot of salmon carcasses to keep nutrient levels high enough to support future generations.

How much longer can we ignore the elephant?

We will ignore the elephant until extinction. You are right that the intent is to make each spawner more productive so we can maintain harvest and lower the goal. I know folks in WDFW who have essentially told the public that.

Note, too, that whenever we remove a barrier to migration the EG is held constant. Essentially, improved productivity.........

Alright boys, what's the attrition down to?

Anybody still got a horse left in the race?

This is a thinker thread to be sure so I would like to throw this in. The world of unintended consequences or how we altered things with out knowing. The best example I know of is Willapa Chum ( hang on a minute / breath ) which met it head on. For years a friend of mine could watch the interaction between predators ( birds in this case ) and out migrants. Then the hatchery production was restricted which good / bad depends on ones view but the out come was bad. Why? Well now all you had was the natural production out migrating and all the birds and others still there feasting on just the much lower natural production so bad is all one can say to the end effect.

The natural order has been altered beyond repair to reach a goal of recreating the natural order and in many ways somewhat like a house of cards that if you start changing things around in the world of fish it tends to have a cascade effect, downward. The inability to make adjustments to the big picture is driven by harvest and MSY which restrict the ability to recognize and react to a situation as it develops because out the gate MSY is about maintaining harvest at all cost. Then this if you harvest the food chain top to bottom just what does one think is going to happen? More fish at the top & bottom of the food chain? Nope all go down which is happening on steroids in PS.

Bottom line is be it Steelhead or any fish really everything is co - dependent so the attempts to save this stock or that stock will have some success in the short run but usually fail long term big picture because you cannot harvest the food chain top to bottom. You cannot build like crazy even with good practices because in the end the accumulative damage that is many times unseen will lead you to the world of unintended consequences.

Note to self: Put soap box away.

That is some interesting insight riverguy, and something that does not seem to have been addressed anywhere. So, if the department suddenly stops planting smolt, like they did on the Snoqualmie system, without first reducing the predator rate, the natural balance is offset. Predators that feed on 250,000 hatchery smolt suddenly see their food train gone. That first year everything left gets hammered. What might make it worse is when a system has staggering migration rates and pumps up several species and leaves the other untouched. Does anyone have a time table for the migration rates of different species? While it may seem odd, perhaps releasing steelhead at the exact same time as another species may encourage them to flush out quicker and face less individual pressure. Perhaps the lower stream quality, along with smaller plants of steelhead, leads to an outward migration all at once that allows a larger predator pool to take advantage of a feed source when it naturally low. An artificially high predator pool being fed by hatchery chinook and Coho and large pink and chum runs, surviving the rest of the year by wiping out whatever is left available.
There are a ton of different outcomes that come to mind when I think of the implications of an out of balance ecosystem. Something that should be considered when looking at release dates and outward migration. I can easily see how a complete cutoff of a hatchery run could instantly doom a wild run.

Is there anyway they could try doing the several of these releases next year and see how much difference timing and smolt size matters. Also, perhaps taking a few and transporting them out past the sound. I know it takes money but perhaps it can be raised based off the current results.

The website (https://www.survivethesound.org/home) has a fairly detailed report on each fish.

When they cut off the survival monitoring only 5 of 48 smolt were still considered alive; two from the Nisqually and three from the Skok.

It will be interesting to see how this is integrated into the ongoing bigger study. Also, keep in mind the efforts by the Squaxin tribe and PSRFE group to release marked coho at different points progressively closer to the Strait to try and determine if by doing so they can increase returns by avoiding predation from South Sound to, say, Port Townsend.

Not buying that hatchery smelt help wild smolt. Predators will leave/die if not enough food.

While predators (and their current high populations) are not totally the result of hatchery smolt production I believe the point being made is that in the short term should there be a huge decrease in hatchery smolt those predators would impact wild smolt at a much higher rate than currently being experienced.

To the extent that those hatchery smolt are critical to the predator population their removal would ultimately result in a decrease in predator numbers (along with adverse impacts on other potential food sources).

Ultimately there would be a new balance........but at what cost to those wild smolt?

Thanks, Larry. That was my thoughts on the short term consequences. In the long term everything does balance out, but the damage to a specific run could already been done.

Another major concern of what could be occurring in the sound is that the effect of large releases from hatcheries on the Nisqually, Minter Creek, Chambers Creek, Puyallup, Deschutes and the Squaxin Tribe, along with the current large numbers of Pink and Chum smolts naturally occurring , is causing an artificially high number of predators to survive. If one outward migration comes through alone and in low numbers, it could easily be decimated by these predators, while the bigger hatchery releases would survive fairly good. Very little could be done to prop up these little runs, other than finding some way to create a higher food base during their outward migrations or trying to time them to go out with other migrations that have higher numbers.

It seems odd to me that the smolts released were so easily zoned in on by the predator base (if that is what ultimately killed off the steelhead). In a normally balanced ecosystem I don't think that would happen.

A valid question would be whether those sample hatchery smolt actually experienced a higher attrition rate than (a) other non-surgically altered hatchery smolt released at the same time and (b) wild hatchery smolt outmigrating at about the same time. And if not, what is the variation and why?

Where this is going to get really interesting is when the Orca folks push harder for Chinook to feed the Killers. Maybe pitting Orca lovers against seal lovers. Wow, I'd pay to witness that face off! Just hope we don't end up paying for Chinook and then being told sorry, need'em for the Killers.

HOLY CRAP! Only 5 of 48 smolts made it past the SJdF! That's a 90% mortality rate!

Hood Canal fish are basically toast right at the floating bridge. My guess is that the hatchery selects for good surface feeders and the dam things don't have any instinct to swim down deeper to get around the surface obstruction... so they mill about the surface at the bridge til they get eaten by birds.

OK... never mind. I re-read the LLTK webpage and these were WILD acoustically tagged smolts.

The obscene mortality could certainly have been surgically induced. Then there's the issue of an acoustic transmitter pinging away like a homing beacon for any potential predator making it easier to target would-be meal.

Damn shame ANY way you look at it.

One problem I have with the acoustic results is we have no baseline. We have smelt-adult.

Let's say that you got 10% smolt-adult for steelhead. 10 out of 100. So, say you lose 80% to Bonilla Tatoosh. If half of those return as adults you have your "old" 10% but you know most of the loss is in the early time in the Sound.

I do know of a wild coho run that was getting 10-20% smolt to adult back to rack after all the fisheries. For them, losing 80% in-Sound would mean they all had to survive in the absence of fishing.

I really don't know if that in-Sound mortality is high, or not. I do know, though, with steelhead, that nobody has been able to show me a local wild population where the R/S for a brood from spawn to first return is even equal to 1; they are all lower. Means two things, repeat spawners are required and marine survival isn't that good as a base.

Bringing this back up to the top.
I received an email from LLTK today.
Please send emails supporting the additional funding.

Thanks,
SF

https://lltk.org/action-tell-state-legislators-save-washington-state-fish/

Thx for reminder, sent to my 3 legisllators.

Emails sent. Thanks.

Ditto.

We re-upped for 6 kamikaze smolts this year with this program as Christmas presents to the fam. More data points,

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