Add fuel to hatchery fire

Here's a story about some scientists that claim their study was ignored. Pretty interesting.

Hatchery fish don\'t counter extinction, scientists say

There's some fodder in there for Bush bashing, but let's try to stay focused on the real issue. I think this can help some of the people like Grandpa that are trying to fight the NMFS.

And Rob, this isn't enough reason to close all the hatcheries either.

This is becoming more and more standard among governmental use of scientific advisors and commissions, not to mention their very own biologists and ecologists within their own agencies.

I'll shy away from Bush bashing, because this practice of establishing a commission to scientifically justify past practices and the maintenance of the status quo is prevalent among both major parties, though perhaps more within the GOP, and even more with the current administration.

I've been hearing rumblings and rumors lately that WDFW is a bit bummed that the HSRG (Hatchery Scientific Review Group) is going to declare that their hatchery programs have been pretty much run willy nilly with no standards for performance or monitoring of success, and that the original plan of actually using HSRG's recommendations to revamp hatchery programs may be relegated to "trying some of them on one hatchery" to see how it works.

I applaud the courage of these scientists to come forward and make it public...and if their findings are not going to the administration, but to the regional adminstrators of NOAA Fisheries (Bob Lohn), then I guess we'll have to pick up the ball and pass it around among the folks who need to hear about it.

I think that the PNW public does indeed think that salmon recovery is important, and I'm sure they would be interested in finding out how much $$$ is being spent to NOT get it as things are going now.

Can you guys imagine what the Columbia River may look like if the billions spent there on salmon enhancement had been used to decommission a dam or two and protect habitat in the tributaries where the fish can still get access for spawning? I'd guess there would be a lot more wild fish.

Fish on...

Todd

Here some more about this issue!
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.co...m&date=20040326
Salmon panel goes public in dispute over hatchery fish
By Craig Welch
Seattle Times staff reporter

Days before the government faces a court deadline on whether to remove federal protections for eight Northwest salmon runs, a scientific panel says its advice on ensuring the salmon's survival was censored and all but ignored.

Nine months ago, the advisory panel said, it tried to tell fisheries officials that when determining the vitality of salmon stocks, they must count only wild salmon, not the inferior hatchery salmon, which are bred like "zoo animals."

Not only do the hatchery fish compete with wild stocks, they are inept at reproducing and are being released in such great numbers that they mask critical habitat problems that must be addressed if wild salmon are to stage a comeback, the panel said.

"That was deemed as being unacceptable, and we were told to take it out of the report," said Robert Paine, chairman of the panel, and a University of Washington zoology professor. "We felt our report was being censored."

Paine and five other scientists were selected by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to independently review the science behind the agency's efforts to restore salmon and steelhead runs.

While fishery officials dispute the censorship allegations, the panel turned to the international journal Science, which will publish its findings today.

"The scientists decided to publish in Science to make sure the policy implications reached a wide audience ... ," the panel said in a written statement.

"The science is clear and unambiguous; as they are currently operated, hatcheries and hatchery fish cannot protect wild stocks," Paine said. "We know biologically that hatchery supplements are no substitute for wild fish.
"It's time for NMFS protected our national legacy ... ."

The dispute demonstrates the delicate task of balancing science, public policy and emerging case law in salmon recovery.

And it comes as the NMFS is scrambling to respond by Wednesday to a petition filed by Washington developers and farmers who went to court seeking to remove Puget Sound chinook and seven other fish stocks from protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The standoff over hatcheries has been brewing for years. Then came a ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan of Oregon.
In September 2001, Hogan found that the NMFS, in analyzing Oregon's coastal coho runs, included data on hatchery and wild salmon populations.
Hogan ruled that when it came to applying the Endangered Species Act, the NMFS must take into account the hatchery fish and wild stocks.

Because the agency used a similar approach in listings for 27 stocks of salmon and steelhead from Southern California to the Canadian border, developers, farmers and ranchers elsewhere demanded the endangered-species rules be removed because recent salmon runs — thanks to hatcheries — have been robust.

"We have record returns of salmon all over the Northwest," said Timothy Harris, general counsel for the Building Industry Association of Washington, which petitioned to delist Washington salmon runs. "It's outrageous to say they're in danger of being extinct."

After Hogan's ruling, NMFS officials set about crafting a new policy to deal with hatchery fish. While many experts have urged the agency to redefine the troubled wild stocks to exclude hatchery fish, it has balked.

Environmentalists and some scientists said the agency is bowing to political pressure, attempting to make it easier to remove salmon protections.
"I think there are elements of the (Bush) administration who see this as a get-out-of-jail-free card," said Chris Wood, a former Clinton administration official, now with the conservation group Trout Unlimited. "If we just continue to pump out a bazillion hatchery fish, we don't have to do all the hard things — deal with dams, depressed habitat — and we can delist the fish."

In July 2003, the advisory panel sought to get the NMFS to rethink the issue of hatchery stocks.
"The science all points in the same direction," said panel member Ransom Myers, a biologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. "You simply can't create a wild, self-sustaining animal by artificially creating it in a zoo."

But the panel's message fell on deaf ears, its members claim. NMFS officials made it clear, they said, that their recommendations were inappropriate for their official reports because they went beyond science into public policy.
NMFS officials — including the director of salmon science at the agency's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle — maintain they never tried to stifle the panel.

John Stein, NMFS salmon scientist, said the panel was asked to review the government's scientific strategy for dealing with West Coast salmon and steelhead recovery. The panel's advice on how to deal with hatchery fish was a policy position, and those are generally dealt with by a different group at the agency.

"There's a place where science stops, and policy and everything else starts, but there's no bright line," Stein said. "A suggestion was made that it would be more useful to us to have the good technical analysis that they did as one report. If they wanted to comment on other things, it was felt, that's their business. But keep the really strict scientific stuff separate."

Brian Gorman, a NMFS spokesman said, "I think the notion of censorship is a misreading of what we said. We never told them they couldn't. I think we made a suggestion."
Myers and Paine see it differently.
"The panel was encouraged to publish on its own," Paine said.

Said Myers: "It was clear that our advice on this wasn't welcome. My interpretation is that someone has been told to get rid of all these listings that are such a nuisance to property owners."

NMFS officials repeatedly denied that charge and said it would be wrong to expect wide-scale delistings of threatened salmon stocks.
Gorman also acknowledged that the federal agency envisions hatcheries helping with salmon recovery, not replacing wild stocks.
Scientists for years have argued that while hatcheries can produce salmon, there is scant evidence that the fish can procreate and help rebuild struggling wild runs.

In the Puget Sound area, the tens of millions of hatchery chinook aren't even expected to successfully spawn. All but 17 percent are released primarily for fishermen to catch; the rest are used to try to help rebuild runs.

In the north fork of the Nooksack, in the early 1980s, for example, wild chinook populations dipped to 150 to 300 fish a year, so biologists tried augmenting them with hatchery fish. Two decades later, more than 5,000 fish return, but almost all but a few hundred are hatchery fish.
"We have a lot of fish, and they're spawning, but their children aren't," said Bruce Sanford, who leads chinook recovery for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. "I don't know anywhere where it's worked for chinook."

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com
Salmon protections challenged


In 2002, the Building Industry Association of Washington, the Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners, the Columbia-Snake Irrigators Association and the Skagit County Cattlemen's Association argued that eight Northwest salmon stocks had rebounded sufficiently and no longer required protections under the Endangered Species Act.

The groups went to court, arguing the government had violated the law by not counting hatchery fish when assessing the health of the stocks.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, having already lost a similar federal court challenge in Oregon over the endangered-species listing of coastal coho, agreed to reconsider the status of the eight runs by Wednesday.
The salmon species under review are:
Puget Sound chinook
Hood Canal chum
Snake River spring/summer chinook
Snake River fall chinook
Upper Columbia spring chinook
Upper Columbia steelhead
Mid-Columbia steelhead
Snake River steelhead

Todd, I admire your restraint, but I'm mad as he**. I needed no further motivation to get this bunch out of power, I'm hopeful that Bush supporters can see through the murk to understand what this gang is up to. I need to point out that this Administration backed off of a campaign promise to reduce CO2 emissions because the whole global warming thing was based on "junk science". Doesn't disregarding their own scientists conclusions lead us to take this report as junk science?

This PP community has been really good at staying out of the contentious political commentary lately - and I think that is, on balance, a good thing. And if Jerry and/or Bob wants to remove this post, I will accept it and keep my mouth shut. However, after this last week, with the 9/11 commission, this article has pushed me beyond the limits. Thanks for allowing me to vent.

Man, this is getting old. Once again I promote the concept that planting fry from river specific wild stock will accomplish what everyone would like...more wild fish. Commonly accepted data says, "Hatchery fish don't know how to reproduce." Duh.......try asking, "Why?"! Could it be because they are hatched in a tray and held in the hatcheries so long that any wild influence is lost?

"But too many die when they are planted as fry." Too many compared to what? Planting as dumbass smolts? So what? Certainly a much higher percentage of fry will survive than those wildly spawned in river gravel.

I know I'm being a pain in the butt on this, but I'm convinced it IS the answer.

Fun5,

If they were planted as fry, the expense required to gather fish to mine the eggs and milt, fertilize them, grow them to fry, and plant them would be spent to get a return that is almost as low as the same percentage if they were allowed to spawn naturally in the river.

While the hatchery fish that return may be of a much better quality than those that are released as smolts, there are two problems with it.

For one, they would be enormously expensive, relatively speaking, because the expense incurred would have almost no better return, if better at all, than if we let Mother Nature do it for free.

Secondly, they wouldn't be clipped, and that would make it impossible to differentiate between hatchery and wild fish, which besides not making much sense biologically, since we couldn't truly evaluate what the wild run is doing, but would be illegal under existing law.

Fish on...

Todd

I agree with you Eddie on this whole Bush thing (especially after this 9/11 stuff). Its getting to the point that anything that comes out of this administrations mouth has to be put under scrutiny to determine if it is true.

Todd, my good man, I do hope at some time that you and I get a chance to fish together. I say that because I have no doubt that you are one of the "good guys" and I appreciate what you have to say, even if I don't whole-ly support it.

I'm not sure about the cost to hatch and then replant fry, but at least part of the lengthy cost of feeding fish until they reach smolt stage would be no longer necessary.

You say the survival rate to return would be lower than when planted as smolts.....OK, I'll agree. But then with smolt plants you are talking about hatchery fish which have been domesticated to the point that they would just as likely approach a seal to be fed, or a sea gull, etc., as they have never known enemies.

Fry would have the advantage of learning in a natural environment ,i.e., their native river, before going to sea. (I'm even thinking that hatching them in gravel beds in a hatchery might even instill in them spawning characteristics as well.)

Would planting them require special considerations? Of course. They would require dispersal, as opposed to just dumping them in the river. (Although the Bull trout and gulls would love that technique.)

Now I'm not sure what the hatchery personnel would do with all their spare time, since there would be no fish to mother for months at a time, but that's not a concern, is it?

Biologically, clipping fins would be BS as well, since the fry only hatched in a protected environment, and were not raised there. I know, it's not legal....but changing the verbiage to exclude hatching as being the same as hatchery-raised could take care of that problem.

Methinks that there is a reluctance to change long established practices....even for the betterment of the fish.

Fun5Arces-
The relative successful of fry plants is really dependent on the life history of the fish we are working with. Fish like chum, pink and sockeye salmon that migrate almost immediately downstream after emerging from the gravel can do pretty well with fry plants and egg boxes. However fish that spend extend periods of time in the river (coho and steelhead) do not. To have any success with steelhead one needs to scatter the fry extensively - at least one study found that if the steelhead fry did not find a rearing niche with a 100 yards of so of the release they just disappeared.

When look at the boosting the production of a fish like steelhead that spend several years in freshwater many factors limit the population production. Most typically the population bottle neck is not getting out of the gravel but rather finding habitat(s) to survve low flows during the summer/early fall as well as winter floods while all the time finding enough food and security from predators. That is why so many of us keep yapping about habitat.

Actually the planting of wild steelhead fry as a hatchery stategy to boost natural populations is not a new idea. In fact it was the main strategy for nearly 50 years. Typically what was down was that a productive stream was trapped with a weir. The returns adults collected, spawned and the resulting fry released at the trapping site and other areas. These types of programs typcially last 4 to 8 years when the stream's steelhead would disappear and the hatchery effort would move to a new local. While the basic idea intuitively seems sound experience has shown that it rarely produces much in the way of returns (for the reason above).

It was not until aobut 1950 when the state biologist finally figured out the to be successful in producing significant returns of fish they needed to be planted as smolts (6 to 9 inches long) in the spring (late April to early June just like the wild fish). It was the success of this program that fueled what many ocnsider to the heyday of steelhead fishing - the late 1950s and 1960s.

Tight lines
S malma

Fun5,

For all the things you've said that I agree or disagree with, I have no doubt that this is one of the most correct statements I've heard anyone, not just you, say on this subject.



Fish on...

Todd

This article reminds me of Dave Vedder's old closing signature line. It went something like this:

"As scarce as the truth has become, its supply is vastly in excess of its demand"

NMFS or NOAA Fisheries (or whatever they want to call themselves tomorrow to avoid accountability) should hang their head in shame.

And this nonsense of counting hatchery fish as part of the population of concern is absolutely ludicrous.