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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 2019
Banned fi sh trap returns as sustainable way to catch salmon
Old idea revived
in Cathlamet
By CASSANDRA
PROFITA
Oregon Public Broadcasting
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Y
N
a way for gillnetters to catch
more fi sh again. But other
gillnetters don’t see it that
way.
“The gillnetters are still
convinced this is an enemy
of theirs,” Peterson said.
“There’s no ifs, ands or buts
around town that I have bro-
ken ranks.”
Jim Wells, with the com-
mercial gillnetting group
Salmon For All, said gill-
netters are fi shing strategi-
cally in certain areas at cer-
tain times when they’re less
likely to catch protected fi sh,
and the anchored fi sh trap
can’t do that.
“Once a trap is installed,
it’s there,” Wells said. “If
things change in season you
can’t be fl exible.”
The fi sh trap naturally
catches more of the fi sh in
the river, Wells said, so the
small fraction of wild fi sh
that don’t survive could still
add up to a lot of fi sh.
United States
Coast Guard
N
TE
PA
like himself to catch more
fi sh.
He used century-old
blueprints to build an exper-
imental version of the fi sh
traps his grandfather used
in the early 1900s. It was a
fi shing method that pulled
huge hauls of salmon out of
the river, but it also pitted
commercial fi shermen using
gillnets against canneries
and other fi sh trappers.
“The fi sh traps were not
looked on with high regard,”
Peterson said. “The gillnet-
ter on the Columbia River,
he put a lot more heart, soul
and manual labor into what
he did to catch his fi sh than
what a fi sh trapper did.”
But since the fi sh traps
were banned to prevent
overfi shing, Peterson said,
times have changed for
non tribal gillnetters. Now,
they’re the ones at risk of
getting banned as new pol-
icies have severely reduced
their share of salmon.
“It’s been a long, long
dry spell,” he said. “And
you can’t live on looking
at a gillnet boat. It has to be
utilized.”
Peterson thinks bring-
ing back fi sh traps could be
ing policy and discuss their
options for commercial fi sh-
ing going forward.
Johnson said it’s too soon
E
When Oregon and Wash-
ington state started look-
ing for alternatives to gill-
nets, Blair Peterson saw an
opportunity for gillnetters
Cassandra Profi ta/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Fish trap operators can pick out the hatchery salmon for
harvest and release the wild salmon so they can return to
their spawning grounds.
tecting wild fi sh.
A new policy launched
by former Oregon Gov. John
Kitzhaber in 2012 moves
gillnetters into side chan-
nels and gives recreational
boats more time to fi sh on
the main stem of the river.
But so far that plan hasn’t
paid off as promised for the
gillnetters.
“The policy has basically
failed from a commercial
perspective,” said gillnetter
Greg Johnson, who sits on
a salmon advisory panel for
the Pacifi c Fishery Manage-
ment Council. “The policy
has to be modifi ed or we’ll
go out of business.”
This year, the state of
Washington had planned to
replace gillnets on the main
stem of the river with alter-
native gear that would catch
hatchery fi sh and release
wild fi sh unharmed.
But those methods —
including the fi sh trap, as
well as other options like
purse and beach seines — are
still being studied and may
end up costing more money
than they make for fi sher-
men. Oregon and Wash-
ington state fi shery manag-
ers are meeting this week to
review Columbia River fi sh-
ES
Friend or foe?
Cassandra Profi ta/Oregon Public Broadcasting
An experimental fi sh trap on the lower Columbia River has repurposed an old fi shing method in search of a more sustainable
way to catch salmon.
PR
About half the salmon
swimming up the Colum-
bia River come from hatch-
eries — most of which are
raised to be caught by fi sher-
men. The rest are wild. And
many of those salmon are
protected under the Endan-
gered Species Act.
For years, Oregon and
Washington state have been
searching for the best way
to catch more hatchery fi sh
while letting the wild fi sh
return unharmed to their
spawning grounds. Now,
one group says they’ve
found it.
Fish traps were banned
on the Columbia more than
80 years ago. But advocates
with the Wild Fish Conser-
vancy are revisiting the idea
as a new, sustainable way
to separate hatchery salmon
from wild fi sh.
At a site near Cathlamet,
Washington, about 40 miles
upriver from the mouth of
the Columbia, Wild Fish
Conservancy
biologist
Adrian Tuohy stood hip deep
in water in a cage just below
the surface of the r iver.
He turned a crank that
funneled a mix of hatchery
and wild fi sh from a holding
pen into the cage. The fi sh
were corralled in the river by
a wall of netting, stretched
across a network of pilings
that reach out about 30 yards
from the bank. Now, they
were swimming around him
— so close he could pick out
the hatchery fi sh one by one.
He pulled out all the fi sh
that were missing the sec-
ondary fi ns on their backs,
called the adipose fi n. That
fi n is clipped from hatchery
fi sh. Then, he opened a door
in the underwater well so the
wild fi sh — with the telltale
fi ns on their backs — could
swim back out to the river.
“And the fi sh swim out
for the most part untouched,”
Tuohy said. “That’s the
beauty of this gear, in con-
trast to other gear types,
is you’re able to success-
fully release threatened and
endangered fi sh unharmed.”
So far, research has found
about 95 percent of the steel-
head and 99 percent of the
C hinook salmon released
from the fi sh trap survive.
That’s far better than the
percentage of fi sh that sur-
vive being released from a
commercial gillnet — or the
tangle net that doesn’t catch
fi sh by the gills.
And that’s a key factor
on the Columbia, where all
fi sheries are limited by pro-
tected wild stocks. As soon
as a fi shery reaches the cap
for impacting wild salmon
and steelhead, it has to
shut down. So, having less
impact on wild fi sh would
allow fi shermen more access
to hatchery fi sh.
to tell whether fi sh traps will
offer a cost-effective solu-
tion that other gear types
haven’t. Until the research
and analysis is complete, he
said, he’s not ready to switch
gears.
Kurt Beardslee, execu-
tive director of the Wild Fish
Conservancy, says trapping
fi sh would be a new way to
keep hatchery salmon from
reaching wild spawning
grounds where they cause
problems, and it could also
offer a boost to commercial
fi shermen.
“All this is doing is offer-
ing them an alternative,”
he said. “We see fi shermen
suffering because they can
fi sh so little. With this fi sh
trap, you can fi sh longer and
this gear can be certifi ed as
sustainable.”
However, the traps are
expensive to build. The Wild
Fish Conservancy estimates
the cost of building one at
$90,000. So to make them
pay off, whoever builds
them will probably end up
like all the other fi shermen
on the river, wanting more
fi sh to catch.
D
BY
HAR
VE ST C AP
I TA
O
L C
M
Fishing policy debate
The trap is just one option
in a long-running policy
debate over how to let both
non tribal commercial and
recreational fi shermen catch
hatchery salmon while pro-
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