CalTrout News
The Central Valley is the only place on Earth with four distinct runs of Chinook salmon (fall, late-fall, winter, and spring). Each run was adapted for different conditions and had multiple independent populations that spawned in different valley tributaries. The damming of virtually every Sacramento and San Joaquin tributary resulted in catastrophic losses of spawning habitat…100% of winter run, 90% of spring run, and 60% of fall run (the only run that relies primarily on the valley floor) spawning habitat is above dams. The pre-dam, Central Valley “diversified portfolio” of runs reached upwards of 2 million spawning fish per year.
From 2009 thru 2013, total returns for all four runs combined ranged between 70,000 and 150,000 fish—only 5% to 7.5% of average historical abundance. Today, the winter and spring runs are listed under the Endangered Species Act (in 1990 and 1998, respectively), and the late-fall run is small and in decline. In recent decades most salmon returning to the Central Valley have been fall-run fish and are overwhelmingly (estimates as high as 90% in some years) of hatchery origin.
The decline of California’s wild, fall-run Chinook salmon populations has been driven by dams, loss of floodplain rearing habitat, and a Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in steep decline. But, it’s also important to recognize that the plummet in wild fish populations has been both obscured and exacerbated by massive hatchery production. Although they may look similar to wild fish, hatchery salmon are, in a very real sense, domestic animals bred for hatchery conditions, but sadly unfit for survival in rivers.
Currently, a mix of five state and federal operated Central Valley hatcheries, release more than 30 million Chinook smolt each year irrespective of the adult return rate of hatchery fish. And, while hatchery production is at an all-time high the number of wild spawners and commercial fisheries yields have plummeted to all-time lows.
Practices like trucking salmon from hatcheries to estuaries, increase the likelihood that adult fish will not return to the hatchery where they were born, but rather stray, often spawning in other rivers where they interbreed with wild fish. It is not uncommon to find fish born at Feather River Hatchery spawning in the American or Mokelumne River, and so on. The past 60 years of Central Valley hatchery production have resulted in replacement of multiple natural populations adapted specifically to the unique conditions of their home rivers with a single “lowest common denominator” hatchery population, thereby greatly increasing extinction risk.
Endangered salmon populations greatly complicate delivery of water to human needs like agriculture and drinking water. The tens of millions of dollars spent annually to produce salmon in inland hatcheries are dwarfed by the hundreds of millions spent to deal with the environmental, regulatory and legal consequences of having produced those same fish. What one hand gives, the other takes away: the publically funded fish hatcheries undermine the publically funded wild salmon recovery efforts. This piecemeal approach to fisheries resource management is not economically viable. Nor is this strategy viable for avoiding extinction.
It need not be this way.
In the long term we can better manage salmon to have both more fish caught in our commercial and sport fisheries and to recover self-sustaining wild populations in the Central Valley. Given the impacts of the current drought on river fish habitat such as low flows and unfavorable water temperatures (not to mention an increased risk of predation), we can understand the desire for a short-term measure like trucking which can increase ocean catch. But, in the long run, to put California salmon back on California tables and revitalize fisheries, while simultaneously recovering wild populations, we must move away from the obsolete, counterproductive hatchery practices that have put us on our current spiral towards extinction of both salmon and salmon fisherman in California.
We’re in agreement with our partners at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences that a comprehensive re-thinking of hatchery management must be undertaken in California. Ideas to consider include …
1) Geographically isolating wild fish from hatchery fish by relocating hatcheries downstream, closer to estuaries. This will improve smolt survival, resulting in increased catch of hatchery fish in ocean fisheries while simultaneously reducing interbreeding between wild and hatchery fish in rivers. Some success with this approach has been seen in other states.
2) Protect wild fish genetic stock by requiring hatcheries to use broodstock with life history characteristics like migratory timing that would minimize dilution of wild California gene pools.
Trucking may help for a year or two in a time of dire drought emergency but if California is to ever revive a consistent and thriving commercial and recreational fishery and resilient populations of wild salmon it will require new thinking about hatchery practices.
8 Comments
[…] Time to rethink hatchery management: California Trout writes: “The Central Valley is the only place on Earth with four distinct runs of Chinook salmon (fall, late-fall, winter, and spring). Each run was adapted for different conditions and had multiple independent populations that spawned in different valley tributaries. The damming of virtually every Sacramento and San Joaquin tributary resulted in catastrophic losses of spawning habitat…100% of winter run, 90% of spring run, and 60% of fall run (the only run that relies primarily on the valley floor) spawning habitat is above dams. The pre-dam, Central Valley “diversified portfolio” of runs reached upwards of 2 million spawning fish per year. … “ Read more here from California Trout: Time to Re-Think Central Valley Hatchery Management […]
Want to learn more. The Califormia Nevada Chapter of the American Fisheries Society will be hosting a workshop on hatchery reform Thursday, March 27th at 1PM at the Embassy Suites Hotel in old town Sacramento.
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We seem to be compounding the problem to restore what was sustainable. We are also adding the fact about the need of water sources, since the Sierra skirts have been heavily logged! currently there is clearcutting and 100% old growth gone. Sustainability tends to maintain all ages species so these old tree created a forest ecology that was in symbiosis with the salmon and trout.
Clear cutting on the Sierras will accelerate effects of climate changes, since ice shed is lost by not having vegetation to hold it in place. Water is key for the Sierra natural Fisheries.
Check out this blog:
http://sierraclearcutting.wordpress.com/
Good luck!
Luigi
First we need to do a better job managing the Water we know we have and when we are heading for drought conditions we have to save those thing that can’t vote to save themselves. We need to make sure we take care of Nature first and man will have to do a better job conserving for his needs. We never seem to consider anything except ourselves first. We also need to have more environmental courses taught in schools before anyone can graduate from any grades. People need to think more about what makes our planet beautiful. It isn’t profits to buy more and consume more. When we lose our fish stocks it won’t be a place worth living in. The world at present has to many people with needs that can’t be fulfilled. Let’s slow down and begin to enjoy what we have before it’s gone.
Could CalTrout provide some of we scientifically unwashed peasants with a bibliography of peer-reviewed articles demonstrating the genetic inferiority of hatchery salmon? It sometimes appears there is very little difference between the type of thinking that currently is coming out of Davis and that prevalent in Munich in 1933. Again, hey, I’m just a guy that has fished in California for six decades, but it sure seems to me that there is a certain type of true believer out there who wouldn’t mind plotting a krystal nacht for hatchery fish. Like the man said, you can’t go home again – we have 40 million people in this state, we’ve all gotten into Heisenberg’s picture, no matter how far you have to truck the damn salmon. And, please, no responses to this with phrases commencing with “Good science”. A scientist will say just about anything you want, if you pay him enough money – just ask Edward Teller.
I have been fishing salmon in the Gulf of the Farallones for 30 plus years.Except for the loss of the adipose fin, I can’t tell the difference between hatchery fish and wild ones in terms of fight, size, appearance or taste. I agree with Mr. Bachus. The above article offers no solution to the degradation of habitat. I support trucking of hatchery smolt.
I understand Peter and Shel’s desire to have fish to bonk. I do it too. But I think the absolute dependence on hatchery fish is short-term thinking. If hatcheries are “all that”, then why did the “salmon ranches” back in the 70’s and 80’s fail miserably. These were basically hatcheries in a bay…they raised babies, released ,the smolts, and waited for the adults to come back to be harvested. Easy money! I don’t know the details, but I suspect it was just not cost-effective. We could probably assume we spend a lot of our tax dollars on hatchery fish with a poor return on our investment. What if we took those dollars and invested in repairing and protecting the rivers and let those salmon do what they do?
By the way, there are lots of studies that show the negative effect of hatchery fish on wild fish productivity. You can Google and find some of those.
And fisheries scientists are working on finding better ways to condition those hatchery brats so they do bite and fight better.
Also, I fish the Deschutes a lot, and I catch more wild fish than hatchery fish even though they are less than a third of the numbers in that river. My friends also make that observation. Wild fish are just more aggressive due to their “childhood” conditioning.
And…one of ODFW’s goals it to keep hatchery stray rates below 10% in order to reduce the genetic pollution that hatchery fish bring into play.
That said, I do think we will need hatcheries for another century in rivers that are just too hosed up to produce fish. But we should start working on making the healthy rivers wild fish only rivers. At some point we will be able to harvest those gems again.
Cheers,
Mark