Page 8
Spilyay Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon
The many benefits of the Fishers Expo
September 13, 2017
Repeat Spawners
by Jeremy FiveCrows
CRITFC Public Affairs
N early 100 people attended this
year’s Columbia River Indian Fish-
ers Expo in Hood River. The event,
hosted by CRITFC, takes place ev-
ery other year.
The expo provides Indian fishers
with information, resources, and
training that will help them improve
river safety, fish quality, and equip-
ment maintenance.
This year’s Expo was made pos-
sible by generous donations from
the Nez Perce Land Buy-back Pro-
gram, Yakama Nation Housing Au-
thority, Columbia River Fishers
Memorial Task Force, Ocean
Beauty Seafoods, Pacific Seafood,
Two Rivers Fish Company, and
Foods in Season.
The Expo schedule was filled with
workshops, panels, and presenta-
tions. A panel of farmers markets
from Hood River and Bellingham,
Washington, discussed ways tribal
fishers can access farmers markets,
and how to best prepare or process
their catch for market sales.
CRITFC harvest biologist Stuart
Ellis gave a well-attended presenta-
tion on the fall fishery and what fish-
ers can expect from it. A safety
panel discussed ways to improve
boating and river safety.
A variety of vendors, organiza-
tions, and specialists set up booths
for the Expo trade show. This in-
cluded vendors selling fishing gear,
marketing products, and fish pro-
Photo courtesy Michelle Singer/OHSU School of Public Health.
Courtesy Jeremy FiveCrows/CRITFC
River safety was a central theme to the Fishers Expo. Two youth at
the Corps of Engineers booth learned about the danger of cold water,
and how muscles cramp and seize up when exposed to it. They tried
to pick up as many of the washers and bolts in the tray of ice water
they could before the cold rendered their hands unable to grab them.
The demonstration taught the importance of wearing a life jacket to
stay afloat because even the strongest swimmer will eventually lose
muscle control in the cold water of the Columbia River.
cessing equipment.
The Yakama Nation Housing
Authority, Nez Perce Land Buy-
back Program, and Columbia River
Fishers Memorial provided attend-
ees with information and materials.
Instructors gave presentations on
fiberglass repair, engine mainte-
nance, and boat design. Attendees
also got to tour the CRITFC En-
forcement mobile response center
trailer that was parked on site.
CRITFC, the Yakama Nation
Housing Authority, and the Native
American Youth and Family Asso-
ciation coordinated to gather infor-
mation about the housing situation
and needs from attendees.
The results of that questionnaire
will be compiled to help determine
ways to proceed to address the tribal
river housing crisis.
The Expo concluded with fish-
ers getting the opportunity to meet
and share their concerns with tribal
elected officials. Representatives
from each tribes’ Fish and Wildlife
committees met with their constitu-
ents for question and answer ses-
sions.
Tribes worry about fall runs due to fires
The forest fires that have raged
in the Columbia River Gorge are
unlikely to disturb adult coho
salmon right now. But Northwest
tribal fishers are worried about
what will happen in the fall.
Tribes are particularly con-
cerned with a distinct group of
coho salmon that spawn on the
Oregon side of the Gorge, espe-
cially those that use the tributaries
of the Columbia and Sandy riv-
ers. Numbers wise, they say the
fires are not going to decimate all
Columbia coho. But for this small
population of threatened fish, it’s
a major upset.
Seth White, a watershed ecolo-
gist for Northwest tribes, said
spawning time and fall rains could
be a deadly match-up this au-
tumn.
“Because what’s going to hap-
pen is that rain is going to bring
down a lot of the ash and the sedi-
ments and the woody debris and a
lot of the other things that have
gotten into the stream from the
fire,” White said.
These fish may use nearby
streams for decades while the af-
fected watersheds recover—that’s
what happened after Mt. St. Helens.
White said some streams could take
up to 50 years to recover.
The tribes are also concerned
that several of their traditional fish-
ing sites were under evacuation or
close watch. And some tribal fish-
ers were putting down their nets to
fight the fires.
Smoke stops steelhead count at Bonneville
In addition to hatchery closures,
there was an unexpected conse-
quence of wildfires and smoke im-
pacting the region: Only “essential”
workers were allowed to be on the
job at Bonneville Dam, and that
does not include the fish counters.
Consequently, as Columbia River
fish managers and anglers were
desperately trying to monitor criti-
cally low runs of B-run steelhead,
the fish counts have been days be-
hind. Bonneville is the first dam
the fish negotiate as they migrate
from the ocean up the Columbia
and Snake rivers.
Hatcheries have been impacted
too. Oregon’s Department of Fish
and Wildlife had to evacuate the 26
employees at the three hatchery fa-
cilities in Cascade Locks as a result
of the Columbia River Gorge blaze.
The Bonneville, Oxbow and Cas-
cade hatcheries are home to some
six million fish.
Besides teams from Warm Springs at the Hood to Coast
and Portland to Coast Relays, the Columbia River Inter-
Tribal Fish Commission also had a team at Hood to Coast
2017. The team is the Repeat Spawners.
Fire forced early fish release
The Eagle Creek fire last week
forced Oregon fish officials to re-
lease more than 600,000 hatchery
salmon, some were dumped six
months earlier than expected.
Oregon’s Department of Fish
and Wildlife had to evacuate the 26
employees at the three hatchery fa-
cilities in Cascade Locks as a result
of the Columbia River Gorge blaze.
The Bonneville, Oxbow and Cas-
cade hatcheries are home to some
six million fish (mainly Coho and
Chinook salmon). Bonneville’s
Hatchery is also the home of the
Sturgeon Viewing Interpretive Cen-
ter.
The state was forced to either
release hundreds of thousands of
five to six-inch hatchery fish now
or risk losing them altogether.
Tanner Creek, one of the water
sources feeding a hatchery facility,
was “literally engulfed in flames,”
said Ken Loffink of Fish and Wild-
life. The intake pipes were clogged
with ash and debris.
“Without that water, those fish
were going to die.”
Fall fisheries: ‘poor steelhead
return due to climate conditions’
(Continued from page 6)
Modifying actions based on
abundance is a responsible way to
minimize human impacts on fish
runs, however only fish harvest is
managed this way. The tribes con-
tinue to advocate for management
changes to all human activities in
the basin that affect salmon.
“Curtailing harvest is never an
easy decision but sometimes the
only option tribal leaders have to
protect fish during low run years,”
said Jaime A. Pinkham, CRITFC
executive director.
This year’s poor steelhead re-
turn was largely due to climatic
conditions. As smolts, their
outmigration involved navigating
an inhospitable river and then en-
during poor ocean conditions. This
combination overwhelmed the
fish’s ability to handle them.
While we can’t do much on a
regional basis to combat global cli-
mate change, restoration work can
help boost steelhead and salmon
numbers and survival enough to
help them return in sustainable
numbers. This shows the impor-
tance of addressing the salmon and
steelhead’s entire life cycle as is
done in Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-
Wit (Spirit of the Salmon), the
tribes’ salmon restoration plan.
The tribes have led one of the
most successful salmon supple-
mentation programs in the Colum-
bia river basin, which is helping to
restore wild fall chinook to the
Snake River. In addition, the tribes
are conducting steelhead kelt re-
conditioning programs, in the
Yakima and Snake River basins,
which are returning wild female
steelhead to the rivers so that they
can spawn a second time. The
tribes are committed to conserva-
tion solutions including hatchery
supplementation that can build up
wild runs of salmon and steelhead
and provide a better buffer for
years when ocean and river con-
ditions are poor.
Ocean numbers yet another warning sign for salmon
The numbers of young salmon
caught off the Oregon and Wash-
ington state coasts during an annual
federal survey cruise this summer
were among the lowest recorded in
the past 20 years.
In fact, numbers were low across
nearly all the species researchers
regularly catch or observe—from
birds like the common murre to
forage fish like anchovies and smelt.
Months ahead of schedule, as a
kind of heads up, West Coast re-
searchers, project managers and
program directors decided to send
out a memo in mid-August detail-
ing their initial findings—data that
would usually be combined with
other information and put out on
a webpage at the end of the year.
The data is preliminary, but re-
searchers say it is clear many young
coho and Chinook salmon didn’t
survive the migration from fresh-
water streams and rivers to the
ocean this year, while poor ocean
conditions could impact salmon
returns to the Columbia River for
the next few years.
Brian Burke, of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s estuarine and
ocean ecology program and one
of the authors of the memo, says
the numbers need to be taken with
a grain of salt. One research boat
at one point in time can’t cover all
the habitat, nor can researchers
know for certain that where they
drop a net is where the fish are
present. But, he said, “it was clear
that there were not many fish out
there.”
More data
As they continue to process ad-
ditional data—salmons’ blood
samples, growth hormone levels
and stomach contents—Burke said
their understanding of why so
many juveniles apparently died
could shift.
“I think the big picture is sort
of settled,” he said. “It’s refining
the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what.’”
It’s possible that with a scarcity
of usual prey like anchovies, smelt
and herring, “predators may have
been forced to feed at higher rates
on salmon,” the memo states. The
memo also notes anomalies
throughout the area surveyed: the
biomass of northern copepods—
salmon growth and survival is re-
lated to the abundance of these
small crustaceans—has been low
since 2014; the lowest levels of
chlorophyll (a proxy for phy-
toplankton); changes in the jelly-
fish population.
Michael Tehan, assistant re-
gional administrator for NOAA’s
Interior Columbia Basin Office
and the recipient of the memo,
said the heads up provides him
and the agency’s policymakers,
fishery managers and those in-
volved in habitat restoration work
across the basin with “situational
awareness.”
“Many studies have focused on
the (salmon’s) freshwater phase,
and there has been substantially
less research on salmon during
ocean residence,” said David
Huff, estuarine and ocean ecology
program manager with NOAA
and another author of the memo.
But, he added, the success of
practices in freshwater that touch
on the size, timing and abundance
of migrating salmon depends on
the ocean environment.
For those involved in restora-
tion work—or the entities that
fund this work—the memo is a
reminder of the complexity of a
salmon’s life cycle.
“People expect there to be no-
ticeable, sometimes dramatic re-
sponses when they do conserva-
tion activities,” Tehan said. But the
salmon are “a product of what
happened when they migrated out
to the ocean”—and what kind of
ocean they entered.
Without the ability to distin-
guish between the different ways
ocean, freshwater or estuary con-
ditions impact salmon, it’s hard to
say where conservation or recov-
ery efforts are succeeding or fail-
ing, he clarified. “Large salmon re-
turns may be mistakenly presumed
to be a result of successful fresh-
water mitigation practices when
they are in fact a function of fa-
vorable ocean conditions.”
“Similarly,” he added, “the ef-
fects of successful freshwater re-
covery actions may be masked or
overridden by poor ocean condi-
tions, leading to unwarranted
changes to recovery actions.”
Something different
Between persistent, unusually
warm surface temperatures and a
strong El Nino event, the ocean
hasn’t been normal for the last
three years.
“When you look at the whole
time series, the last three years re-
ally stand out as being something
different,” said Jennifer Fisher, a
research assistant with Oregon
State’s Cooperative Institute for
Marine Resources Studies, which
works closely with NOAA. Her
group goes out on shorter-range,
biweekly trips to monitor ocean
conditions. The May and June
cruises Burke participates in,
funded by the Bonneville Power
Administration, primarily look at
food availability and conditions
when juvenile salmon first go out
to the ocean.
Still, said Burke, “It’s often not
just what’s happening in the ocean,
but because the fish live in the river
and they are coming out in differ-
ent conditions each year”—at dif-
ferent sizes, with different fat re-
serves or parasites—“and all of
these aspects of their biology dif-
fer from year to year … we can’t
just look at the ocean and say sur-
vival was really low because of x,
y, z.”