What is going on with Cowltz NOR and HOR returns?

The following Tacoma Public Utility site has graphs showing 2017 returns for various hatchery and natural origin fish.

https://www.mytpu.org/file_viewer.aspx?id=65889

It is interesting that most natural origin species had returns comparable to the ten year average while all hatchery origin species except springers had a dismal year compared to the ten year average. Two reasons jump out but there could be others. One is that the hatchery release has been cut substantially and the other is that natural origin fish survive difficult ocean conditions better than hatchery fish. Does anyone have a good answer for the discrepancy in returns?

If the later reason is valid it has implications for the legislator and a number of fishermen who advocate ignoring HSRG (and potential ESA listings) and turning Puget Sound and Willapa bay into hatchery fish farms.

We know that the steelhead smolts at least occasionally "vanish" before release. Just how good are the release numbers, given the issues that arise occasionally?

Some readers may not realize that was a rhetorical question. The disappearance/loss of 500K summer steelhead smolt and WDFW's inability to adequately explain that phenomenon calls into question prior year release numbers. Bottom line, at least for summer steelhead, don't try to make more out of the numbers than what they are.....poor. And then there were the drought and the blob.....

A factor too is that as we reduce hatchery releases, and wild smolts continue in the toilet, that the predators will take a higher percentage even if their populations are stable. Likely that losses to predators are taking a bigger whack.

Bottom line is that they lie and get away with it. Anymore, they do not want to spend the $$ they are obligated to by building the dams. They get away with it under guise of wild fish recovery. You can thank TU for that one.

How can you be sure they actually lie? They use the best numbers they have. They may not be accurate or even close but the numbers are what they can afford to collect.

Same as estimating sport catch of salmon and steelhead. They depend on the integrity of the information provided. Give them garbage numbers, get garbage estimates.

If you have faith in TCL accuracy and even our WDFW reports, then I have some swampland in Florida I'd like to sell you. I believe the powers that be purposely inflate the numbers to appear to follow their legal and financial obligation of dam mitigation. It's obvious returns are poor because they don't put in what they show on paper. My 2 cents.

You are mixing apples and oranges in the argument. I didn't say the numbers were accurate, I said they were the best they could do at counting.

Years ago they put predator netting over a hatchery pond. Actually, this happened at many sites with similar results. Anyway, they stocked the pond with the normal number of coho. Then, sometime later in the rearing cycle they had a big die off. Why? Exceeded the pond's capacity because predation had been removing so many that it stayed at proper loading levels. At the time, the technology was fish in minus morts out left the number released. The predation loss was rather unseen; I think it was rats actually. Point being that assumptions get made and unless a new technology is installed you may be making a mistake. Lie? No. Purposefully inflated? No. Poor job of monitoring the fish. Yes.

CM makes one wonder as the pond population can be verified ( most managers do ) by how much growth off of feed fed. Growth above projections pond population below paper number. Growth below projections means the population is larger than paper numbers. It is how you verify populations. Thing is samples taken MUST be accurate. Get lazy you pay. It is very hard to loose track of a ponds population short of not doing your job.

When people are too worried about their next smoke break or to fat to waddle out and do their job this is what happens.

Pathetic that they could screw this fishery up.
Even more pathetic that they can't just out right fire the bozos who screwed it all up.

Poor ocean conditions should affect HOR and NOR fish nearly equally. Otherwise that could reasonably explain the fall Chinook, coho, and steelhead differences. I don't know what explains the Chinook and coho discrepancies, but my hunch is that 2016 wasn't the first season that the number of hatchery summer steelhead smolts was significantly less than the programmed number.

On average it's not unreasonable that natural production salmon and steelhead would experience a higher smolt to adult survival rate than their hatchery counterparts.

26363464536723527 X 0 = NO FISH

Models, models, models. They fed all that food at Cowlitz to empty ponds. Who needs data when you have the best models? I mean, look at GH and WB. First class, state of the art models.......

Right?

A model without eyes on her is worthless.

These are just graphs of 2017 counts relative to a 10 year average. They don't tell you anything about the numbers of fish released to get those returns. These are only good for one thing - TPU gauging whether or not they are meeting their adult mitigation obligation.

Survival varies annually as do hatchery release number (sometimes only slightly, sometimes hugely...as given in the example of summer sthd)

The least informative of these numbers is the wild fish at the trap. Raw numbers will not inform whether hatchery and wild fish are performing the same, better, or worse - you need rate of return/unit released to do that.

Since the hatchery fish are marked and there are some level of selective fisheries out there it is logical that fewer hatchery fish would show back at the rack.

Good point CM about the effect of selective fishing on the rate of return to the hatchery rack. However, that effect operates every year and doesn't explain inter-annual variation. Looking at those graphs, I'm not sure what purpose they serve, especially absent smolt numbers. SAR, by species, by HOR and NOR seem more useful to me. Raw count of summer steelhead back to the Cowlitz would be useful to me, since I'm there during the summer fishing for steelhead and cutthroat.

Overall, the Cowlips seems to be a system where it should be easy to know what is going on. With the hatcheries in place you should get great numbers (quality) out, the fisheries in the rivers should be well monitored so catch can be accounted for, and so on.

It's kind like Willapa, where WDFW should show just how anadromous salmonids can be managed as they don't need anybody's permission to act. In the Cowlips they have all the traps (up and down) to really have good numbers on the fish. Especially with all the effort above Cowlitz Falls, there should be no lack of good information.

How are we going to succeed in managing, much less restoring, our resources if we muck up the areas with the fewest excuses?

The Cowlitz is nearly perfect as fish accounting systems go. Natural smolts from the upper basin are counted at Cowlitz Falls and Mayfield. Hatchery salmon smolts are counted out of the raceways. Steelhead and cutthroat smolts are counted out of the earthen rearing ponds - unless they aren't. Not being able to account for an 80% loss prior to actual release is phenomenal.

Upstream adults are counted at barrier dam and Blue Creek. Even the lower basin creeks have weirs now where upstream adults can be counted and sorted. It's a nearly perfect fish laboratory setup.

Oh and so natural.
Man just keeps fondling the fish.

Every since he has.............. the fish have retaliated by dying.