Category Archives: Hatcheries

An Opportunity Missed?

Posted on by

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released 400,000 Winter-Run Chinook salmon smolts from the Livingston Stone Fish Hatchery into the Sacramento River near Redding. But according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Steve Martarano, “The release won’t occur until we see a significant increase in density and flow in the Sacramento River. It’s based on a rain event.” 1

Last year Reclamation released some water from Shasta for the “event” (Figure 1). This year there was no such an “event” (Keswick release) (Figure 2). The real question is whether they missed the “real” flow event in January (Figure 3) when storm flows from Cow, Cottonwood, and Battle Creeks downstream of Redding brought flows near Red Bluff to 10,000-40,000 cfs. Why didn’t Reclamation and the Service coordinate release of water from Keswick and the salmon smolts at Redding in late January? Shasta inflows in January reached 40,000 cfs.(Figure 4.) Such a release would have also helped the wild salmon emigrate from their spawning reach at Redding to San Francisco Bay and the Ocean.

Keswick Reservoir releases into the upper Sacramento River near Redding in winter 2015

Figure 1. Keswick Reservoir releases into the upper Sacramento River near Redding in winter 2015.

Keswick Reservoir releases into the upper Sacramento River near Redding in winter 2016

Figure 2. Keswick Reservoir releases into the upper Sacramento River near Redding in winter 2016.

Upper Sacramento River flow near Red Bluff winter 2016

Figure 3. Upper Sacramento River flow near Red Bluff winter 2016.

Shasta Reservoir inflow during January storms

Figure 4. Shasta Reservoir inflow during January storms.

Fishbio confuses yet again – this time it’s California Salmon Hatchery Programs

Posted on by

The new internet “journalism” and “science” forums bring out fisheries issues for debate in an open forum in a timely manner. No longer do we have to wait for the peer-reviewed reports and papers to come out two or more years after the fact. I subscribe to all that I can find – blogs, newsletters, and websites. Two of my favorite blogs on California Central Valley issues are Fishbio’s Fish Report1 and UC Davis’s California Water Blog.2 For news and information nothing beats Mavens Notebook.3

A recent Fishbio post focuses on the problems with hatcheries.4 As in most posts (even mine), there is room for debate.

Their post begins with a discussion of the increasing reliance on hatcheries after 150 years of development in California. It fast-forwards to the present dependence on hatcheries for sport and commercial fisheries. It relates the recent recommendations of the California Hatchery Scientific Review Group:

  1. Define hatchery production goals in terms of the number of salmon that survive to age 3 in the ocean just prior to harvest, instead of setting goals based on the number of juvenile salmon released;
  2. Cease transporting and releasing juvenile salmon outside their river basin of origin;
  3. Improve monitoring and evaluation of hatchery operations; and
  4. Improve coordination of operations among hatcheries (CAHSRG 2012).

The Fishbio post then takes us subtly off-course with: “As a result of technological improvements and, possibly, human preferences to spawn the largest and fastest growing fish, salmon are growing to larger sizes faster in the hatchery environment, which has resulted in a new life-history type (springtime releases of “advanced smolts”). These large, young fish did not exist earlier in the time series, but they now dominate the type of fish released from state-operated hatcheries.”

While the state hatcheries do raise some “advanced” smolts for release into the Bay in late spring for the commercial fishermen, these fish are “advanced” only in the sense they are reared longer in the hatchery to a larger smolt size with greater chance of contributing to the commercial fishery along the coast after release in the Bay. The vast majority of the 30 million smolts raised in Central Valley hatcheries are “normal-sized” 3-inch April-May smolts, which in many cases are actually smaller and later ocean-entry than the wild salmon that enter the estuary as December-February fry-fingerlings and enter the ocean as smolts in March-April a month before their hatchery counterparts.

The post ends with a critique of hatchery practices: “Another marked change in hatchery practices occurred around year 2000, when fish began to be stocked at similar sizes in similar locations at similar times of year…. With long overdue, detailed hatchery information now freely available, more informed stewardship of California’s iconic salmon population is now possible.”

The fact is that stocking has become more diversified than ever. Millions are released at the hatcheries and in the mainstem rivers below hatcheries, often coincident with storm flows and good Delta conditions. Millions are released over the spring months directly into the Bay. The “advanced” smolts are usually released in June. In wet years, more are released in rivers, and in drought years, more are released in the Bay. Winter, Spring, Fall, and Late-Fall Run smolts are released at different times and places. Each hatchery has its own schedule to maximize use of the common resources (e.g., personnel, trucks, pens, ramps, etc.). Hatchery programs are now more “informed” and better managed and coordinated than ever before, and making concerted efforts to continue to improve.

Without the hatchery efforts in the past decade of drought, there would be few salmon left for sport and commercial fisheries. One of the greatest challenges for California fisheries management in the next decade is to continue to improve hatchery practices while also restoring wild salmon runs, so that the wild fish are not only kept from extinction but also contribute substantially to sport and commercial fisheries.

More on Mark-Selective Steelhead Fisheries

Posted on by
Don Beyer and many others are concerned with the recent movement to limit hatchery production and mark-selective fisheries of Steelhead in the Puget Sound and Columbia River regions in Washington State. At the center of the debate have been proposals to eliminate hatchery programs on rivers with wild Steelhead.1 Typically, WA Steelhead fisheries focused on winter hatchery fish (adipose fin clipped), with catch-and-release of wild non-clipped fish in winter and spring. In recent years, popular mark-selective and wild catch-and-release fisheries have been shut down on rivers in WA with seemingly healthy populations of wild Steelhead.2 Will NMFS extend these strategies to California?
Steelhead Catch Photo

Recent catch of a hatchery Steelhead in the lower American River in Sacramento. (Photo by T. Cannon)

Marking of Hatchery Fish for Selective Fisheries

by Don Beyer

Salmon and steelhead hatcheries have been in existence for decades along the Pacific coast. The purpose of these hatcheries has been to maintain or improve fisheries for sport, commercial, and tribal interests. They are also a key factor in providing mitigation for habitat losses due to water resource projects such as dams, urbanization, land use alterations, and pollution which have negatively impacted wild fish populations.

Hatchery fish are utilized for food consumption by not only humans, but by marine mammals (e.g., Orcas, seals/sea lions, porpoise/dolphins), birds (bald eagles/ospreys/herons), and other fish (e.g., bull trout), many of which are protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), Marine Mammal Act, or other similar Federal acts. The sport fishing industry that has developed over decades around fish resulting from hatchery programs also has a very large economic impact involving millions of dollars.

As a result of the ESA and its efforts to protect non-hatchery raised salmon or steelhead, it was difficult for fishermen to distinguish between hatchery and non-hatchery fish and it appeared that harvest would need to be strictly curtailed or eliminated. To resolve this challenge, hatchery fish were required to be clearly “marked” so that they could be differentiated from non-hatchery fish. The most widely adopted approach has been to remove the adipose fin (a small non-functional fin near the tail of the fish) in juvenile fish before they leave the hatchery to migrate to the ocean. In this manner, if a fisherman caught a salmon or steelhead with an intact adipose fin, they were required to carefully release the fish (even if the season was open for that species). This approach (termed “selective fishery”) was to allow fishermen to continue fishing while protecting ESA-listed salmon or steelhead. Without this approach, the sport, commercial, and likely tribal fisheries would have ceased to exist. It took many years in all Pacific coast states, along with the efforts of many people, to get the selective fishery approved and implemented.

Other approaches are also being undertaken to minimize or eliminate interactions of ESA and non-ESA listed fish. For example, in the past, steelhead from Washington state hatcheries were released at the hatchery and often at other locations either upstream, downstream, or even other river systems. To minimize potential interactions with ESA-listed steelhead, this practice has been minimized to releases only at the hatchery. This takes advantage of the exceptional homing abilities of adult hatchery fish to return to their place of origin (i.e., the hatchery), thus reducing the interactions with non-hatchery fish.

Without the adipose-marking of fish, current fisheries would not be able to continue because fish protected under ESA could not be differentiated from hatchery fish. As such, a major food source for humans and other ecosystem components (e.g., those mentioned above) would cease to exist along with the loss of a major industry dependent on hatchery production. Without selective fishing, the only possibility for a return to a harvestable level of fish would be for ESA-listed species to recover to a level of sustainability that includes harvest. This is a long-term undertaking and may not be possible in some areas where the habitat would not sustain recovery. However, in some situations such as the Columbia River system, progress is being made through recovery of habitat, improvements in hydroelectric and hatchery programs, and harvest restrictions. On the latter, the selective fishery approach has allowed a very viable sport, commercial, and tribal harvest to continue.

Yuba River Fisheries Enhancement

Posted on by

Improving Yuba River Fisheries

The Yuba River (Figure 1), including the lower river below Englebright Dam and its three upper forks and two reservoirs, provides a substantial fisheries resource. But it could provide much more.

Overall, the Yuba has a long complicated story with a colorful history that goes back to the gold rush and hydraulic mining in the last two centuries. Nearly two decades ago the CALFED program took on the Yuba fisheries as a special case.1 Options in these management planning efforts have included building a hatchery, trucking salmon and steelhead above the dams, removing dams, providing better upstream passage at dams, raising young salmon in rice fields, and enhancing spawning and rearing habitat in the lower river below Englebright Dam. Last year the National Marine Fisheries Service published its Central Valley Recovery Plan for threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead that included actions for the Yuba River.2 As prescribed in the Recovery Plan, The Yuba Salmon Partnership Initiative recently came to an agreement to trap and haul salmon above New Bullards Bar Reservoir to the North Yuba.3 The US Army Corps of Engineers and Yuba County Water Agency have also teamed up to enhance fish habitat and passage, and recently asked for public input.4 Their responsibility stems from the dams, flood control, water supply, and hydroelectric production on the Yuba River.

Yuba River Map

Figure 1. Yuba River is a tributary of the Feather River in the Sacramento Valley north of Sacramento, California. The lower river flows about 25 miles from Englebright Dam to to its mouth on the Feather River. New Bullards Bar reservoir on the North Yuba completed in 1970 is one of the largest in California, with storage of 966,000 acre-feet.

Status of Fisheries

Lower Yuba Trout Fishery

The gem of the Yuba is its lower river “blue-ribbon” wild trout fishery that extends from Englebright Dam downstream to Daguerre Dam and below, a total of about 20 river miles. The trout here are predominantly wild, except for some stray Feather hatchery steelhead smolts that migrate up from the Feather River, and for wild and hatchery trout from upriver that pass downstream from the dams. The wild trout of the lower Yuba have their own distinct character, likely derived from mixed genetics including steelhead. They grow quickly due to year-round near-optimal water temperature and to abundant tailwater insects supplemented with salmon eggs and fry. Trout survive well in the reach between Englebright Dam and Daguerre Dam in part because striped bass and other predatory fish cannot ascend Daguerre’s ladders. They are also protected by strict sport fishing regulations that limit gear, harvest, and season.

Lower Yuba Steelhead Fishery

The lower Yuba steelhead fishery is very limited, made up of small numbers of Feather hatchery strays and a very few wild steelhead. It is much the same case as in the lower Sacramento River near Redding, where wild resident trout dominate the fishery. There is no steelhead stocking on the lower Yuba, although many Feather hatchery steelhead smolts migrate into the lower Yuba and take up residence.

Spring Run Chinook Salmon

The number of spring run Chinook is also small, and is made up mostly of stray Feather River hatchery fish. Small numbers of adult spring run spend the summer milling below Englebright dam waiting to spawn in early fall. The population suffers from the flawed “summer run” genetics of the Feather River hatchery program, lack of spawning habitat below Englebright, and competition and interbreeding with fall run in the lower Yuba.

Fall Run Chinook Salmon

Abundant some years and not in others, the fall run salmon follow the trends of the Feather hatchery fall run, mainly because they are mostly Feather hatchery strays or their offspring. Like other Central Valley fall run, production suffers severely in drier years when winter flows are low and unable to carry newly emerged fry to their nursery areas in the Delta and Bay. Habitat and survival is poor for fry that remain in the rivers because of a lack of backwater and floodplain habitat and woody in-stream cover. The Yuba, like the Sacramento and its other tributaries the Feather and American, and like the San Joaquin and its tributaries, suffers from winter-spring reservoir storage of most of the dry year runoff, leaving little flow to help young salmon emigrate or to provide floodplain rearing habitat.

Recommended Actions

I recommend the following actions to help improve the populations of the target fish species to protect them from extinction, but also to improve the dependent sport and commercial fisheries.

  1. Adult Spring Chinook should be captured at Daguerre Dam and trucked above the dams to spawn. Young thus produced should be captured and transported below Daguerre Dam in wetter years or trucked to Verona (mouth of Feather River) and barged to the Bay in drier years. Spring run should not be allowed to spawn in lower Yuba where they interbreed with fall run or have their redds destroyed by fall run spawners.
  2. Spawning and rearing habitats in the lower Yuba should be enhanced as proposed in the above-described programs. Of greatest need are woody cover in low flow channels and low flow spawning and rearing habitats such as alcoves, side channels, and connected oxbows.
  3. Winter-spring flows in the lower river should be enhanced when necessary to improve emigration of young salmon and steelhead in wet, normal, and below normal water years given sufficient reservoir inflows and storage supplies.
  4. In dry years, wild fall run salmon and steelhead young should be captured in winter and spring at Daguerre Dam and trucked to Verona and then barged to the Bay.
  5. A conservation hatchery should be considered for the lower Yuba to enhance the spring run salmon and steelhead populations. Alternatively, repurposing of a portion of the Feather River Fish Hatchery to achieve this enhancement should be considered The first order of business would be to develop appropriate genetic stocks; the second would be to increase production and contribute to sustainable fisheries.

These and other suggestions are also generally prescribed in the following blog post by Dr. Peter Moyle (UC Davis): http://www.ppic.org/main/blog_detail.asp?i=1890 .

Hydraulic Injection of Salmon Eggs in River Gravels: A Promising Salmon Restoration Measure

Posted on by

There is an opportunity to alleviate salmon losses during drought years when low river flows and warm water can cause mortality of incubating salmon eggs. The technique was previously used in Alaska that proved to be highly successful in populating under-utilized salmon streams: hydraulic injection of eyed salmon eggs obtained from hatcheries into the natural environment of streams and rivers. It is currently used in some streams in Oregon. Last year, prompted by concerns over anticipated losses of salmon eggs because of warm water, this technique was proposed for the upper Sacramento River and Battle Creek using Coleman Hatchery eggs but was not implemented due to a variety of concerns by the fishery resource agencies. Prominent among those concerns: 1) the technique has never been implemented in California, and 2) it could interfere with the genetic integrity of fall-run salmon in the Central Valley. On this latter concern, as pointed out by Tom Cannon in a prior blog entry, “Studies have shown that [fall-run Chinook] populations across the Valley are homogeneous, with little or no genetic diversity, and consist mainly of hatchery fish and some natural offspring of hatchery fish. There really are no viable “wild” Fall Run Chinook populations left in the Central Valley.”1 Additionally, hatcheries such as Coleman Hatchery purposefully breed natural-origin salmon with hatchery-origin salmon to prevent domestication of hatchery stocks (USFWS 2011).

The egg injection concept is as follows. Using facilities at a Central Valley salmon hatchery (e.g., Coleman Hatchery on Battle Creek or Feather River Hatchery), incubate surplus fall-run Chinook eggs in chilled, sterilized water to eyed stage then hydraulically inject the eggs back into the river after water temperatures have naturally cooled to tolerable levels in November or December. The eggs would be injected using an egg planting device invented by Tod Jones and described by his patent and Vogel (2003) (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The hydraulic egg planting device.

Figure 1. The hydraulic egg planting device.

One objective of this approach would be to partially compensate for the anticipated loss of fall-run salmon production during October caused by deleterious water temperatures in drought years. The intent is to repopulate the river with fertilized salmon eggs originating from a hatchery but hatched and reared in the natural riverine environment. Specifically, the intent would be to reseed the river with fertilized salmon eggs to boost future ocean sport and commercial salmon catch, in-river sport catch, and salmon runs returning to spawning grounds. If properly implemented, the survival of salmon eggs implanted in the river can greatly exceed that of naturally-spawned eggs (Tod Jones, pers. comm., September 8, 2014).

In addition, this approach would help retain the diversity in spawning timing from the salmon lost during the October spawn in warm, drought years. Because salmon primarily return as three-year-old fish to spawn, loss of a major portion of the early-spawning component of the fall-run Chinook could propagate forward in time such that many future generations of salmon may not possess the early spawning characteristics. If actions are not taken to preserve the early spawning component of the fall run, the run three years hence would not only be expected to be depressed but also lack many of the October-spawning fish. Loss of the October spawning component of the fall run will unfavorably truncate the usual timing of spawning to those fish spawning in November and December. Retaining the early spawning component of the fall run will increase resilience of future salmon runs approximately every three years thereafter.

Furthermore, this project could increase the survival of juvenile salmon outmigration. Because fall-run salmon eggs laid during October incubate and hatch earlier than eggs laid later in November and December, the earlier fish are anticipated to emigrate sooner. If the drought persists, an earlier outmigration of salmon would be beneficial because riverine and Delta conditions will be inhospitable for salmon in the spring. For example, the present-day management strategy of Coleman Hatchery is to rear and release the normal smolt production in April when riverine and Delta conditions are more favorable as compared to May when the hatchery previously released salmon during the 1980s.

The egg injection technique has great promise for salmon restoration. It could save many salmon during drought years and could be an invaluable technique to rapidly populate new, presently unused areas envisioned for salmon restoration. It has now been 12 years since this project was proposed for implementation in California: Vogel (2003). It would certainly be preferable to doing nothing and could have potentially saved millions of salmon eggs in the fall of 2014 when conditions in some Central Valley rivers were lethally warm. Hopefully, a pilot demonstration of the egg injection project may be implemented in the fall of 2015 in the Feather River thanks to the cooperation of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and, depending on the outcome, a larger-scale project in 2016.

References

  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2011. Biological assessment of artificial propagation at Coleman National Fish Hatchery and Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery: program description and incidental take of Chinook salmon and steelhead. July 2011. 372 p.
  • Vogel, D.A. 2003. Evaluation of a proposal for hydraulic salmonid egg deposition. Report prepared for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Natural Resource Scientists, Inc. October 2003. 36 p.