The smolts trucked to San Pablo Bay will be placed in net pens operated by the Fishery Foundation of California for acclimatization and then released into the bay. When salmon smolts released by the California Department of Fish and Game have been placed in the acclimation pens, smolt survival is five times what it would have been if the fish had released directly into the river, according to Dick Pool, owner of Pro-Troll Fishing Products.
"They have accommodated our request and will truck 1.4 million smolts around the California Delta to the acclimation pens in San Pablo Bay," said Pool. "The first batch of 400,000 fish will move on April 23rd. These fish will join 17 million smolts being trucked by DFG from the state hatcheries to the release pens. We hope these fish will provide a good base for rebuilding the stocks in the ocean."
The program occurs at a time when Central Valley salmon stocks are in a state of unprecedented collapse. Although water exports from the California Delta and declining water quality, combined with bad ocean conditions, are regarded as the key factors in the collapse, fishing and conservation groups are trying to improve hatchery release practices so that more salmon will survive and return to spawn as adults.
For two years, 2005 and 2006, the DFG's salmon smolts weren't placed into the pens. During this time, the mortality among salmon increased dramatically as the unacclimated smolts were decimated by birds and predatory fish after being released directly into the bay. This undoubtedly contributed, along with other factors, to the Central Valley salmon collapse.
Fortunately, Nels Johnson, outdoor editor at the Marin Independent Journal, last year prodded Assemblyman Jared Huffman to conduct an investigation of why the pens weren't being used, resulting in the decimation of stunned salmon smolts as they were dumped into San Pablo Bay without being acclimated. Johnson and fishing groups pressured the DFG to make sure that the highly successful acclimation pens were used in future releases of salmon smolts from state fish hatcheries.
A portion of the smolts to be released by Coleman Hatchery will have coded-wire tags to identify them as part of this experiment. As these smolts are harvested or return as adults, fisheries biologists will be able to determine the rate of return of these fish.
"This release strategy increases the likelihood that these fish will return to the upper Sacramento River as adults to contribute to the upper Sacramento in-river fishery, and return to the hatchery in sufficient numbers to perpetuate the runs and the programs," according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service press release. "Another important goal of the hatchery is to contribute to the ocean sport and commercial fishery. Coleman NFH contributes up to 100,000 Chinook annually to the ocean fisheries as well as thousands of fish for the fisheries in the Sacramento River."
A number of organizations, including the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Allied Fishing Groups, Water4Fish, the Coastside Fishing Club, the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, and Representative Wally Herger are supporting Coleman Hatchery's experimental salmon release program.
While the acclimation program will greatly assist the survival of hatchery smolts, it is crucial that anglers and conservationists concentrate on pressuring the state and federal governments to dramatically improve conditions in the Bay-Delta Estuary and Central Valley rivers so that both wild and hatchery fish can thrive. The salmon crisis will only be resolved when state and federal water exports from the Delta are decreased to below 5,000,000 acre feet per year, when the State Water Quality Board finally regulates agricultural water pollution, when dams and other obstacles to fish migration, wherever possible, are removed, and when the state and federal governments finally mitigate for all of the losses to our fisheries caused by their water projects.
For more information, contact Dick Pool, Pro-Troll Fishing Products, 5700A Imhoff Drive, Concord, CA 94520, (925) 825-8560, Fax (925) 825-8591, email
rbpool@protroll.com website
www.protroll.com.
