Many fish make for big news
Thursday, October 1, 2009
They are here — the fish, the fishers, a lot of them.
It’s the biggest news of the week, if you rank stories by how much outside attention is drawn to our region. Tens of thousands of steelhead trout are muscling their way up the Columbia toward their rendezvous with destiny in the Wenatchee, Icicle, Entiat, Methow or Okanogan. These are anadromous trout, salmonids, officially a threatened species, protected by the full weight and effort of government, and this year there are more coming home than most people expected. There are so many, in fact, that the state has sent out the call to anglers to help exterminate some of them, and the anglers appear eager to do their part.
This is quite a change. Back just 15 years ago, in these parts there were barely two steelhead to rub together. In 1995, a dreadful year, only 1,750 were counted at Rocky Reach Dam. This year, so far, the count is over 25,000. Nearly 8,000 of those are wild, naturally spawning fish. The remainder are headed for hatcheries, but still legally protected.
This is a run that, by some accounts, is supposed to be trending toward extinction. The steelhead themselves appear not so worried. The total Columbia Basin count to date is 585,000 at Bonneville Dam, which makes it the second-highest run since 1938, the year of the river’s first dam. About 28 percent of those fish are listed as wild, the remainder from hatcheries. The record run was 630,000 in 2001. A great many of these fish are headed for Idaho, past the Snake River dams to the supposed fisheries desert. Some 178,000 have passed Lower Granite Dam, the last barrier. More than 43,000 of those are wild fish. Compare that with alarming runs of 5,000 fish or so in the 1990s.
This comes as a bit of a surprise, but salmon and steelhead seem to be full of surprises. The experts estimated this year’s Columbia steelhead run to be about 358,000 fish, about what it was last year, and still well above the recent average. They were way off.
Explaining this appears to be extremely difficult for fisheries scientists. Good ocean conditions appear to be the best guess. But it’s not working for everybody. In contradiction, this year’s fall chinook salmon run appears to be a slight disappointment. There have been 270,000 chinook pass through Bonneville so far, fewer than last year, below estimates and below the 10-year average. The record run is 610,000 in 2003.
Numbers count in the mysterious world of salmon and steelhead. The worry now is that there are too many hatchery steelhead mixing it up with their wild and evolutionary superior cousins. So the state Department of Fish and Wildlife has released some interesting rules. Catch those steelhead, they say, and don’t let them go. There is a limit of four hatchery steelhead per day per fishermen. Hatchery fish have their adipose fin, the small fin between the dorsal and tail, clipped off in their youth to make them identifiable. The catch is, if you land a hatchery steelhead over 20 inches long, they must not go free. “Anglers on all rivers will be required to retain any legal hatchery steelhead they catch until the daily limit of four is reached.” Wild steelhead, with their adipose fin intact, not only have to be released immediately, they can’t be removed from the water, even for the ritual photograph.
There is a slight irony in this, in that the hatchery fish under the death sentence are protected under the Endangered Species Act, too. So we have a protected species threatened with extinction that is too plentiful, so the state enlists citizens to kill them, because it will help another threatened species.
Don’t be bothered by it. The rivers are full of irony.
Tracy Warner’s column appears Tuesday through Friday. He can be reached at warner@wenworld.com or 665-1163.
Comments
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Michael (Michael Michael) says...
As with anything in science, nobody makes conclusions or forms opinions on the basis of one data point. Salmonids seem to have improved over the "dreadful" and "alarming" runs in the mid-90s.
Two things about long term trends:
1) Good, honest scientists don't declare long term trends without long term data to back them up. Long term data include anomalies that, by themselves, might oppose the trend, but as with long term average temperature increase, the decline in salmon populations is a real trend.
2) Let's not forget the amounts of money and effort that are going into fish population restoration and protection. Wouldn't it be a shame if those efforts actually started to show some effectiveness and we really are seeing a reversal of the trend?
Finally, I am as baffled as you by the hatchery vs. wild catch policies. I think the biology and ecological impact of the hatchery populations are poorly understood and need further research.
October 6, 2009 at 11:01 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
joanne (joanne saliby) says...
I love the ironies in the world..and in the World. Great one, Tracy. I missed this previously. It brightened up my morning.
October 12, 2009 at 8:55 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
mavulous (mav ulous) says...
>The rivers are full of irony<
The only irony in all of this is man's bloated ego in believing that he is so intelligent that he can create laws to master his world at the expense of his fellow man. The Endangered Species Act is one such prime example and the next big boondoggle will be man's feeble attempt to address climate change--again at the expense of the common man struggling to make a living. The most likely reason that salmon are making a recovery stems from the fact that the oceans have been cooling--not warming--for about the last ten years! In spite of what we've been led to believe about climate change, the truth is out there for those willing to do research and discover it for themselves. Unfortunately, I am of the opinion that the masters of deception within the environmental movement will do anything and everything they can to continue to deceive the American people on this very issue and why shouldn't they? Their funding--read livelihood--is at stake!
At the risk of being redundant--since I posted this same link yesterday in another discussion on this website--here is an excellent article discussing the facts that few are even aware of when it comes to global warming/climate change:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/na...
While we're at it, let's take a look at the sea lion population. Remember those lovable buffoons of the sea that we included in the Endangered Species Act? They're the same hogs that gorge on salmon, steelhead, and delta smelt, which, btw, are also all on the Endangered Species list. You see, if we put 'em all on the Endangered Species list then we will virtually guarantee that we will all become victims of our own good intentions--all at the expense of the taxpayer and the common man. The environmental movement has taken their cause too far and they will continue to do so until public opinion finally gives them a formal dressing-down.
Enjoy the sea lion video and remember that each one of those hogs must consume 8% of its body weight just to survive. That equates to 80 pounds of endangered salmon, steelhead, smelt, etc. The onlookers in this video seem to think these creatures are 'oh so cute'. All I see in this video is nature out of balance because environmentalists forced the laws onto the books because they thought they knew what was best for everybody else--again at the expense of the taxpayer and the common man. We have now come full circle and an entire movement is now dependent on our tax dollars and continued special interest funding just to keep their jobs at our expense. Oh yeah, the sea lion video:
http://www.marketwatch.com/video/asse...
October 12, 2009 at 11:22 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
mavulous (mav ulous) says...
Correction to the last paragraph above. It should read as follows:
Enjoy the sea lion video and remember that each one of those hogs must consume 8% of its body weight in fish every day just to survive. That equates to 80 pounds of endangered salmon, steelhead, smelt, etc., on a daily basis.
October 12, 2009 at 2:35 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )