As the numbers of California sea lions increase at Bonneville Dam, state fish and wildlife agencies are for the fifth year turning to capture and kill techniques to help solve the problem created when the pinnipeds lie in wait for the spring chinook salmon arriving at the dam.
Recreational salmon fishing resumes this weekend after fisheries biologists reaffirmed a pre-season forecast of 188,800 adult upriver spring chinook salmon to the Columbia River mouth.
With over a week since spilling water at Dworshak Dam to test total dissolved gas degassing equipment at the federal fish hatchery downstream, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is scheduling maintenance on a hatchery pipeline and the Bonneville Power Administration is scheduling a transmission test at the dam.
Adult fish passing Lower Granite Dam can expect cooler water temperatures at the dam this summer due to a new fish ladder temperature improvement system that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says will eliminate a thermal barrier that last year stopped lower Snake River sockeye salmon from migrating up the ladder.
More than 100 years ago sockeye spawned along the southern shore of northeast Oregon’s Wallowa Lake and the inflowing river.
This year conservation-minded investors and the Nez Perce Tribe came together to protect 10 acres of prime spawning habitat owned by Wallowa Lake Lodge – habitat that could play an important role in the return of sockeye to the lake.
With lower fishing success than expected by recreational anglers fishing upstream of Bonneville Dam to the Oregon and Washington border, along with a surge of spring chinook salmon passing the dam, the two-state Columbia River Compact yesterday extended recreational fishing through this weekend.
At its April 22 meeting in Bandon, Oregon, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted cautious regulations, timing and limits for summer and fall seasons on salmon fishing in state waters in the ocean, and Buoy 10 in the Columbia River upstream to the Oregon and Washington State border.
The state of Oregon has gone straight to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ management for more money to cover its expenses to operate the McKenzie River spring chinook hatchery in the McKenzie River basin.
Egg-to-fry survival for chinook salmon appears not to be a major factor limiting survival in much of the upper Yakima River system, according to a recent study that looked at four years of data.
New research published last week in the journal Scientific Reports has revealed for the first time that half of the world’s farmed fish have hearing loss due to a deformity of the earbone.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission at its March meeting reviewed fishery harvest reforms on the Columbia River that effectively remove commercial gillnetters from the mainstem river by 2017, but allows gillnetting in the lower river in select areas.
With a low number of upriver spring chinook salmon left in the early spring commercial allocation, gillnetters and the two-state Columbia River Comact decided Tuesday to wait a week before gillnetters are again allowed to fish in off-channel areas of the lower Columbia River and in Youngs Bay near Astoria.
Spring chinook fishing in northeast Oregon kicks off on Saturday, April 23 with the opening of the upper Snake River to salmon fishing.
A weak coho salmon run this year will limit the number of chinook salmon (a strong run) that anglers can catch in ocean fisheries. In Puget Sound, salmon fisheries may remain closed as the state and tribes have not been able to come to an agreement on a season.
Washington State fishery managers have begun releasing more than 500,000 juvenile steelhead from five state fish hatcheries into Puget Sound rivers after receiving word from NOAA-Fisheries that those facilities meet federal environmental standards.
Quicker decisions by river managers could have changed the outcome of the adult sockeye salmon runs in the Snake River and in the upper Columbia River, according to a 2015 sockeye salmon passage report released as a draft this week.
Researchers found no performance benefits – smolt-to-adult return – between sizes of spring chinook hatchery smolts that were released into the Imnaha River, a tributary of the Snake River in eastern Oregon.
Spring steelhead anglers can fish the Grande Ronde, Wallowa, and Imnaha Rivers including Big Sheep Creek through April 30 due to 2016 regulation changes that went into effect Jan. 1. The old closure date was April 15.
An eight month overhaul of the Unit 3 generator at Dworshak Dam could require spill at the dam that would exceed the 110 percent total dissolved gas cap set by the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality.
The early phase of recreational spring chinook season on the lower Columbia River ends today, one day earlier than the Saturday deadline set in January by the two-state Columbia River Compact.
The 2015 annual summary of wolf monitoring in Idaho shows wolf numbers remain well above the 150 wolves and 15 breeding pairs required to keep gray wolves off the endangered species list under the 2009 de-listing rule.
A hatchery plan for upper Columbia River white sturgeon passed the latest review by the Independent Scientific Advisory Panel in March, which said the latest version of a Master Plan meets scientific review criteria for a Step Two review, but with qualifications.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife wants to turn a non-operational fish hatchery site near Camp Sherman into a youth fishing destination, and one that assists with bringing salmon back above Lake Billy Chinook in central Oregon.
A Northwest environmental group yesterday filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Oregon in Portland against the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Department of Commerce for funding hatchery programs in the Columbia River basin under the Mitchell Act without complying with section 7 of the federal Endangered Species Act.
For the second year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers a depredation permit to begin culling cormorants in the lower Columbia River estuary.
Recreational anglers took a day off fishing for spring chinook Tuesday, but that didn’t give the fish a rest as the day-long gap was filled by nine hours of commercial gillnetting. Anglers were back fishing Wednesday morning.
The popular spring chinook fisheries on the Deschutes and Hood rivers will open this spring.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation intended to help fund efforts to conserve wild steelhead populations in Washington through the sale of license plates featuring an image of the state’s iconic fish in the background.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has released the statewide “Run Forecasts and Harvest Projections for 2016 Alaska Salmon Fisheries and Review of the 2015 Season Report.”
Poor forecasts for returning coho salmon are prompting state and tribal fishery managers to consider closing all salmon fisheries in Washington’s ocean waters this year as part of a federal season-setting process for the west coast.
Due to declining numbers of legal- and spawning-sized white sturgeon residing in lower Columbia River reservoirs, fisheries managers have reduced harvest in the Bonneville and The Dalles pools.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will no longer release hatchery-reared steelhead in the Grays River to help preserve the wild steelhead population near the mouth of the Columbia River.
Idaho Fish and Game commissioners approved the spring chinook seasons and rules for the Clearwater, Salmon and Little Salmon rivers during its regular meeting last week.
Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead from the same species, but of differing stocks, enter the river’s estuary and the ocean at different times and at different sizes, a variation that contributes to the resilience of the fish.
The State of Oregon has lost more than one-quarter of the funding it receives from NOAA Fisheries and the Environmental Protection Agency over failure to conform to 1990 non-point pollution rules along the state’s coast.
Washington state’s wolf population continued to grow last year and added at least four new packs, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s annual survey. By the end of 2015, the state was home to at least 90 wolves, 18 packs, and eight breeding pairs.
The infamous warm-water ocean “blob” has evolved into a more coastal phenomenon – the region is now at the trailing edge of a warm El Nino weather pattern, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is in a very warm period, according to Brian Burke, research fisheries biologist at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
Scientists who study the northern Pacific Ocean are finding some disturbing, if not alarming trends: the ocean has been warming for several years and salmon sampled in 2015 from Alaska to California were smaller than normal.
NOAA Fisheries has completed its final Environmental Impact Statement for the potential approval of five hatchery and genetic management plans for early-returning winter steelhead hatchery programs in Puget Sound in Washington State.
Another decent return of hatchery chinook salmon to the Columbia River is forecast this year, but expected low returns of coho could put a damper on salmon fisheries in the river, along the coast and in Puget Sound.
Contrary to the prevailing wisdom that the larger a juvenile salmon when released from hatcheries the better the adult returns, a recent study at the Wells Fish Hatchery found that releasing subyearling summer chinook a month earlier – so smaller – results in better adult survival than fish released a month later.
The combination of a parasite found in juvenile salmon along with a bacterial infection, both common in Northwest waters, can make the bacterial infection more lethal, according to a recent study.
Anglers can now fish for bass, walleye and channel catfish without daily catch or size limits from the mouth of the Columbia River 545 miles upstream to Chief Joseph Dam.
Sturgeon commercial gillnetting for tribes, slower than in previous years, is picking up in the John Day and The Dalles pools and tribes will extend fishing in the John Day pool and begin fishing in the Bonneville pool March 14, as they end fishing in The Dalles pool.
A review by the Independent Scientific Review Panel of the Colville Confederated Tribes’ resident fisheries management plan said the plan meets scientific review criteria, except for a few issues, including a proposed introduction of a non-native species into the Twin Lakes as a way to control golden shiners, also an introduced species.
Biologists did not find the benefits they were looking for – less straying and better survival – after acclimating in a holding pond subyearling fall chinook salmon from the Umatilla Fish Hatchery, according to a recent study.
The overall number of white sturgeon that are of legal size (38 inches to 54 inches long) in the lower Columbia River continues to grow.
It takes just one generation for the DNA of steelhead domesticated in hatcheries to be altered and to be significantly different than steelhead whose parents are wild, according to a recent study by Oregon State University.
Idaho Fish and Game wants young steelhead released into the South Fork of the Clearwater River to be from parents taken from that river, so the department is asking anglers to catch local spawners to fill nearby hatcheries.
A warming ocean and decline in sea ice are the ingredients needed for the expansion of harmful algal blooms as far north as Alaska. That makes harmful algal blooms a growing concern in Alaskan marine food webs, according to a study published this month.
There has been a flurry of filings in recent days over litigation challenging the potential harm that Puget Sound commercial salmon farms can pose to wild salmon populations.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has weighed in on hatcheries management, demanding that the federal government eliminate bureaucratic delays for plans that govern hatchery operations in compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council approved using Budget Oversight Group (known as BOG) funding for two Northwest projects at a level lower than requested by the project sponsors at its meeting this week in Portland.
Fishing in Idaho for spring and summer chinook will probably happen in the same places as last year if pre-season forecasts are correct, but the run size is expected to be smaller than last year, and anglers could see shorter seasons and/or lower bag limits.
The two-state Columbia River Compact met yesterday to extend commercial sturgeon gillnetting by tribes in The Dalles and John Day dam pools through 6 pm, Monday, February 22.
Idaho Fish and Game, with assistance from USDA Wildlife Services, has completed wolf control actions in northern Idaho’s Lolo elk zone to improve elk survival in the area.
Some 9,345 fall chinook salmon redds (gravel nests) have been counted in the Snake River and tributaries between Lower Granite and Hells Canyon dams.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is nearing completion of designating additional streams in the lower Columbia River as steelhead gene banks, or sanctuaries.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Columbia Basin 2014 Fish and Wildlife Program calls for the Council to review ongoing research and revise the program’s research plan.
The two-state Columbia River compact set openings and regulations for spring chinook and steelhead fishing for recreational anglers at its annual joint-state hearing Wednesday in Vancouver, Wash.
Non-native lake trout in northern Idaho’s Priest Lake grow quickly as juveniles, but growth slows and reproduction becomes erratic (skipped spawning) as food sources for the larger trout are limited.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is now seeking comments on two options for establishing a wild steelhead gene bank in rivers or streams near the mouth of the Columbia River.
Adult salmon returning to the Columbia River from the northern reaches of the Pacific Ocean to spawn use built-in geomagnetic orientation to find and return to the river’s plume and mouth, and then mostly follow olfactory cues to their spawning grounds.
A new coho salmon hatchery is one step closer to funding as the Bonneville Power Administration completed a public scoping process, the first condition for completing an environmental impact statement for the project.
NOAA Fisheries is obtaining information necessary to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for proposed approval of hatchery programs along the Oregon coast.
Bighorn sheep capture and transplant operations last week in eastern Oregon are continuing decades-long efforts to restore this rare native animal to its historic range.
With the best adult returns in the past thirteen years, nearly 20,000 Columbia River chum salmon have entered the river this winter to spawn, many of them downstream of Bonneville Dam.
An advocacy group for wild fish in the Columbia Basin filed notice this week of intent to sue over alleged harmful impacts of hatchery fish on wild fish in the Columbia Basin.
Ten seconds is all the time an angler should take to remove the hook, take pictures and return a fish to water, according to a recommendation in a recent survey of studies about the impacts of exposing fish to air.
First Nations fisheries’ catch could decline by nearly 50 per cent by 2050, according to a new study examining the threat of climate change to the food and economic security of indigenous communities along coastal British Columbia, Canada.
Washington State fish managers will hold a public meeting Jan. 21 in Cathlamet to discuss two options for establishing a wild steelhead gene bank in rivers and streams near the mouth of the Columbia River.
An interactive mapping tool that tracks 295 populations and combinations of populations of natural origin salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River basin, along with each population’s abundance objective, is in development by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council Fish and Wildlife staff.
Overall smolt to adult return data shows that upper Columbia and Snake river salmon and steelhead populations are not meeting the 2 percent to 6 percent goal set by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in its 2014 Fish and Wildlife Program.
Following a year with salmon returns to the Columbia River basin largely better than average, the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee is forecasting mixed results for early runs of salmon to the Columbia and Snake River basins in 2016.
A new analysis of juvenile chinook salmon in the Pacific Ocean documents a dramatic difference in their foraging habits and overall health between years of warm water and those when the water is colder.
It’s been more than a decade since Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks rolled out a proposal to purge non-native fish from alpine lakes above the South Fork Flathead River drainage, for the purpose of restoring and protecting native westslope cutthroat trout populations for the long haul, and now it has the markings of a significant success story.
Brian Marotz recalls running into a rickety, defunct fish hatchery just off Montana’s North Fork Flathead River in the mid-1990s. As a state fisheries biologist who was guiding mitigation work for native fish species, Marotz was surprised to see there were still rainbow trout in the hatchery, and shocked to learn the fish had potential to escape into the North Fork, presenting hybridization threats to native fish in the Flathead River system.
All 2.4 million fall chinook salmon fry at the Fallert Creek Hatchery on the lower Kalama River were lost when floodwaters inundated the facility last week, said the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
During the next 85 years, temperatures in Oregon’s Willamette River basin are expected to rise significantly, mountain snowpack levels will shrink dramatically, and the population of the region and urban water use may double – but there should be enough water to meet human needs, a new report concludes.
The public is invited to comment on a new plan designed to align state fisheries and hatchery operations to support the recovery of wild salmon and steelhead populations in the lower Columbia River Basin.
Most Snake River sockeye salmon were dead before biologists and river managers could take actions to rescue the endangered fish this summer.
The age at which a salmon returns to its native stream to spawn is determined before the smolt-sized fish leaves freshwater, according to a study of John Day River wild chinook salmon.
This year’s Columbia River basin salmon season ended with 2.3 million adult salmon passing Bonneville Dam on their up-river migration — making 2015 the second-strongest year for Columbia River salmon since the federal government built dams on the river nearly 80 years ago.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week gave the first approval for a “genetically engineered” animal intended for food – salmon.
Some 953,706 fall chinook passed Bonneville Dam as of Thursday this week, the most fall chinook passing the dam since it was built 77 years ago. The previous record was set in 2013 when 953,222 fish passed the dam.
More than 150 steelhead were stocked in the Boise River on Thursday the first of two planned stocking efforts prior to the Thanksgiving holiday.
A special license plate featuring a steelhead – the official state fish of Washington – could be an option for vehicle owners if a proposal for the new plate is approved by the state Legislature.
NOAA Fisheries is seeking public comment on a draft Environmental Impact Statement that evaluates five management plans for Puget Sound fish hatcheries that produce early-returning winter steelhead to support recreational and tribal fisheries. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and tribal managers developed the plans and submitted them to NOAA Fisheries for evaluation.
A draft recovery plan for Snake River fall chinook salmon was recently released, a blue print for recovering the protected species over the next 25 years at a projected cost of about $5.2 million.
Northwest rivers had unseasonably high temperatures this summer, warm enough to kill thousands of migrating sockeye salmon headed to the mid-Columbia and lower Snake rivers.
Spring chinook salmon smolts held about two weeks longer in an acclimation facility before being released had higher survival rates when returning as adults than smolts allowed to migrate from the facility of their own accord, a recent report says.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Thursday enacted an emergency rule to restore cougar harvest rates to 12-16 percent throughout the state for the remainder of the 2015-16 hunting season.
Steelhead fishing is unique, considering it is very good anytime catch rates are lower than 20 hours per fish caught.
NOAA Fisheries has ramped up its ongoing efforts for comprehensive salmon and steelhead recovery with the creation of a new Columbia Basin Partnership, a collaborative group representing multiple entities with common but sometimes divergent interests.
With most of the second largest run of fall chinook salmon on record now upstream of Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River and entering tributaries, and a coho salmon run that so far has failed to materialize, Northwest states are beginning to scale back or end sportfishing catch limits for both species.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is considering a challenge to a 2013 ruling that found tribal treaty rights include assurances that salmon habitat would be protected, and that the state of Washington must remove culverts that prevent the passage of spawning salmon.
A recent study hypothesizes that the reason crowding of steelhead in hatcheries quickens the pace of those fish to domesticate — lowering their fitness for survival and spawning in the wild — is due to a decline in overall length (mean fork length) to below a threshold for survival.
America’s commercial and recreational fisheries show stability and make a contribution to the nation’s economy thanks to sustainable fisheries management policies, according to a new report from NOAA Fisheries.
Abnormally low and warm water this spring contributed to one of the worst seasons for juvenile chinook and steelhead survival through Snake and Columbia river dams in the past 17 years.
The final summary report from a state-of-the-science forum on Columbia River eulachon, commonly known as smelt, is now available at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council website: http://www.nwcouncil.org/media/7149578/eulachon-science-policy-forum-report_final_october-2015.pdf.
Genetic diversity of chum salmon follows regional patterns along the west coast of North America. The highest genetic diversity is in the north and diversity declines going south, but it increases again near the Columbia River, according to a recent study that identified and mapped these genetic patterns along the coast from British Columbia to Oregon.
The total Alaska 2015 statewide commercial salmon harvest was 263.5 million fish, comprising of 474,000 chinook, 15.2 million chum, 3.6 million coho, 190.5 million pinks and 54 million sockeye, says the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The equipment used to farm geoducks, including PVC pipes and nets, might have a greater impact on the Puget Sound food web than the addition of the clams themselves.
The first step to providing passage for salmon and steelhead beyond Grand Coulee dam – a habitat reach assessment – was approved this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Despite the die-off of 169 white sturgeon this summer – which is nearly 2 percent of the spawning population –in Columbia River reservoirs, the white sturgeon population in the Columbia River is healthy and holding steady.
With a near record run of fall chinook salmon this year and with coho salmon arriving in the river (although small in number), commercial gillnetters in the Columbia River downstream of Bonneville Dam are clamoring for more fishing opportunities.
NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service released this week for public comment a draft recovery plan for Oregon Coast coho.
Toxic runoff from highways, parking lots and other developed surfaces is killing many of the adult coho salmon in urban streams along the West Coast, according to a new study that for the first time documents the fatal connection between urban stormwater and salmon survival.
An estimate of California sea lion predation of spring chinook salmon and steelhead at Willamette Falls found that predation by the sea lions was at an all-time high, but not as high as the 8,474 of salmonids taken by sea lions this year at Bonneville Dam, where some sea lions are removed and a few destroyed.
Commercial gillnetters continue this week to fish over the smallest coho salmon run over Bonneville Dam in nearly two decades.
Each year as salmon return to spawn, fisheries managers are faced with decisions about harvest.
A new study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences http://www.pnas.org/content/current says managing our environment for predictable outcomes is risky. In fact, more often than not, it backfires.
In the last two weeks, the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee twice has increased its projection for this year’s run of fall chinook salmon into the Columbia River.
Conservation groups have followed through on their intent to sue regarding alleged pollutant discharges from a federal fish hatchery near Leavenworth, Wash.
If approved at its next meeting in October, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council along with the Bonneville Power Administration will soon release a joint request for proposal for as much as $200,000 to investigate potential salmon habitat blocked by Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams.
A chum salmon reintroduction project has quietly and successfully moved beyond its fifth year in the Columbia River between Astoria and Clatskanie, Oregon.
This summer chinook salmon swam in the Owyhee River on the Idaho and Nevada border for the first time in 87 years. Also for the first time since 1928, members of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes on the Duck Valley Reservation, many of them children, fished for the salmon with traditional handmade wooden spears.
The forecasted run of fall chinook salmon into the Columbia River rose to 1,095,900, more than 15 percent higher than the preseason forecast of 925,300 chinook.
A new and highly effective approach to control a viral pathogen that affects threatened steelhead trout in an Idaho hatchery is documented in a new paper.
Four projects have risen to the top of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s emerging priority list: two were approved at this week’s Council meeting in Eagle, Idaho, while one was set aside for more work and the Council will act on the fourth in October.
The Northwest Power Act requires the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to report annually to the U.S. Congress the “current state of the Columbia River Basin and the Council’s activities” and to make the draft report available for 90 days of public comment prior to submission to the U.S. Congress.
Some 101 Snake River sockeye salmon returned to Idaho this year, but just 44 swam all the way to Redfish Lake on their own.
Commercial gillnetters Thursday (Sept. 10) called for the two-state Columbia River Compact to cease the experimental seine fishery on the Columbia River downstream of Bonneville Dam, saying that participation is low and will get lower as catch rates lag behind goals.
Four salmon stocks – one in the Columbia River Basin and three along the Washington coast — are found to be subject to overfishing by NOAA Fisheries.
Hatchery origin fish spawn earlier and their progeny emerge earlier than their wild counterparts, but have no competitive advantage in a western Washington stream, according to a recent study.
A recently released study http://www.nwcouncil.org/news/intlcolumbiariver/ identifies 46 collaborative initiatives between U.S. and Canadian partners in the Columbia River Basin, and it identifies several top transboundary priorities.
NOAA has announced the availability of approximately $10 million in competitive grants through the 2016 Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program. The program addresses the needs of fishing communities, and increases opportunities to keep working waterfronts viable by funding fisheries research and development projects.
Eulachon, a forage fish that spends 95 percent of its life in the ocean, spawns in rivers along the West Coast from Alaska to Northern California.
Record-setting returns of sockeye salmon to the Columbia River in the last couple of years are largely due to smolt-to-adult return rates as high as 23.5 percent.
A study of a trap and haul operation at the 518 foot tall Cougar Dam on the South Fork of the McKenzie River in Oregon found that hatchery origin spring chinook salmon males are far less fit than natural origin males, although there is little difference between females.
In a sign that Northwest rivers are cooling off, the states of Oregon and Washington lifted their moratoriums on afternoon recreational fishing.
Three fishing seasons opened Tuesday, Sept. 1 and more ocean-fresh fish are arriving daily to Idaho.
An annual study of salmon and steelhead passage and survival through the Columbia and Snake river hydropower system is up for review and comment.
Some five billion hatchery salmon and steelhead are released into the North Pacific each year, including fish from 155 salmon, steelhead and trout hatcheries in the Northwest. But it’s the natural populations of fish that biologists believe to be the most resilient to climate change, according to a series of oral presentations at the 145th American Fisheries Society conference in Portland.
After record-breaking catches of fall chinook salmon in the Buoy 10 fishery at the mouth of the Columbia River, the two-state Columbia River Compact is prohibiting the take of all chinook salmon beginning tomorrow.
The Lower Granite Dam tailrace temperature is holding at around an average of 66 degrees Fahrenheit, a couple of degrees lower than the maximum 68 degree water temperature set by a NOAA Fisheries biological opinion for Columbia/Snake river salmon and steelhead.
When counting salmon, steelhead or lamprey passing dams, a recent study found that abundance can be estimated by employing probabilistic sampling designs, rather than having to count every fish passing the dam.
High water temperatures and repeated bouts of bacteria and parasite infections beginning in May have killed over 150,000 summer steelhead fingerlings at Rock Creek Hatchery on the North Umpqua River.
An internal report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service questions whether culling double-crested cormorants in the Columbia River estuary would actually result in more returning salmon and steelhead.
With an expected increase in solar radiation and air temperature in the lower Snake River basin, river and power operators at Wednesday’s Technical Management Team meeting began to use what could be the last available water from Dworshak Dam until September to cool water in August in the Lower Granite Dam tailrace.
Greater than average forecasts of fall chinook and coho salmon are opening the way for more commercial fishing in the Columbia River.
A record-breaking algal bloom continues to expand across the North Pacific reaching as far north as the Aleutian Islands and as far south as southern California.
A report concludes that blooms of toxic cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, are a poorly monitored and underappreciated risk to recreational and drinking water quality in the United States, and may increasingly pose a global health threat.
After reviewing about a dozen potential fish and wildlife programs, the Bonneville Power Administration and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee have identified $183,000 in cost savings the Council can use in fiscal year 2016 to fund emerging fish and wildlife priorities, but the Council will need to act quickly to take advantage of the savings this coming year.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s efforts to rescue salmon fingerlings at the Leavenworth Fisheries Complex are already starting to pay off, said Dave Carie, hatchery manager at the Service’s Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission has approved a coho salmon season for the mainstem Clearwater, Middle Fork and North Fork Clearwater rivers.
Fisheries and water managers have been tightening their attention on water supply matters in the Columbia Basin so that the best possible fish survival conditions can be maintained through August and September.
Efforts continued this week in the lower Snake River to manipulate water temperatures and flows to provide the best possible migration conditions for endangered Snake River sockeye salmon.
The latest estimate of sockeye salmon mortality in the upper Columbia River Basin, mostly due to high water temperatures, is 80 to 90 percent of a summer return run of nearly a half million fish, according to NOAA Fisheries.
Hatcheries are an effective tool for rebuilding spring chinook abundance and productivity in the Yakima Basin without impacting wild fish, according to a recent study published in the
North American Journal of Aquaculture.
State fishery managers are working to minimize the effects of drought on fish at hatcheries across Washington state.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council says a recent assessment of the Spokane Tribal Hatchery, which raises trout and kokanee for release into Lake Roosevelt behind Grand Coulee Dam, “will serve as a template for similar audits that the Council and the Bonneville Power Administration want to conduct of other hatcheries funded through the Council’s fish and wildlife program.”
Endangered Snake River sockeye salmon passage at Lower Granite Dam on the lower Snake River has stalled, leaving 300 or more of the salmon somewhere in the downstream pools.
The forecasted number of summer chinook and sockeye salmon that will pass Bonneville Dam increased again this week — the third week in a row the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee’s forecast has risen.
In an unprecedented management step, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service completed the transfer of 160,680 salmon from Warm Spring National Fish Hatchery in Central Oregon to Little White Salmon National Fish Hatchery in the Columbia River Gorge at the end of last week.
Conservationists have announced plans to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to have a pollution discharge permit for the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery in central Washington.
Fisheries managers began trapping endangered Snake River sockeye salmon from Lower Granite Dam Monday and transporting the fish to Eagle Hatchery in Idaho as river managers struggled to keep the river cool. As of Wednesday this week, just five fish had been captured and transported.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has curtailed fishing hours on most of Oregon’s rivers to avoid additional stress on native fish already suffering from high water temperatures and low stream flows from this year’s drought.
Washington state fishery managers are closing or restricting fishing on more than 30 rivers throughout Washington to help protect fish in areas where drought conditions have reduced flows and increased water temperatures.
Northern pike were found in the Kettle River arm of Lake Roosevelt during a June 29 through July 3 survey, according to Jim Ruff, speaking at the Fish and Wildlife committee meeting during the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s monthly meeting this week in Spokane.
If conservation hatcheries are to operate to maximize genetic diversity and population size while minimizing inbreeding when introducing hatchery-bred salmon to wild stocks, some hatcheries may need to alter their genetic management practices.
The water temperature at the Willamette Falls counting station hit 80 degrees Fahrenheit a week ago, July 3, and continues to hover around 81 degrees this week. As a result, hundreds of salmon and steelhead have succumbed to a bacteria exacerbated by warmer than normal water in the Willamette River, as well as in other Northwest rivers.
Salmon and river managers of the regional Technical Management Team briefly lost their battle to keep Snake River temperatures in the Lower Granite Dam tailrace below 68 degrees Fahrenheit this week as low water, higher river temperatures from upstream and warmer than normal weather continues to plague the Northwest.
A huge mass of unusually warm water that scientists have dubbed “The Blob” has lurked off the West Coast for much of the past two years and speculation is growing that it may be connected in some way with the drought plaguing West Coast states.
The summer chinook salmon run forecast was increased to an estimated 100,000 fish Monday by the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee — the largest return for these fish since 1961.
A fish carcass clogged an intake pipe at Rock Creek Hatchery last week, shutting off the flow of water to a raceway, killing 400,000 spring chinook pre-smolts. These fish were to be released directly from the hatchery into the North Umpqua River next spring.
With summer-run steelhead now moving into the Kalama River in increasing numbers, fishery managers are taking action to reduce the number of hatchery steelhead that reach upriver spawning grounds this summer, said John Weinheimer, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fish biologist.
The State of Oregon opened commercial fishing at Blind Slough, one of the Select Area Fisheries that target hatchery salmon in the lower Columbia River.
Elevated water temperatures are most likely the cause of spring chinook salmon deaths in the Willamette River and some of its tributaries, according to fish biologists from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Treaty Indian gillnet fishing for summer chinook and sockeye salmon began this week in Zone 6 of the Columbia River – Bonneville Dam upriver to McNary Dam – and will continue through at least the next three weeks.
NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle has mobilized extra scientists to join a fisheries survey along the West Coast to chart an extensive harmful algal bloom that spans much of the West Coast and has triggered numerous closures of important shellfish fisheries in Washington, Oregon and California.
New research by NOAA, University of Alaska, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the journal Oceanography http://www.tos.org/oceanography/ shows that surface waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas could reach levels of acidity that threaten the ability of animals to build and maintain their shells by 2030, with the Bering Sea reaching this level of acidity by 2044.
Thanks to the Columbia Basin Bulletin for its June 12 article about NOAA Fisheries’ new sockeye salmon recovery plan.
Recovery of Snake River sockeye salmon could take 50 to 100 years and over the next 25 years cost over $101 million, according to a Snake River Sockeye Salmon Recovery Plan released Monday by NOAA Fisheries.
The protection and resurgence of major predators such as seals, sea lions and wolves has created new challenges for wildlife managers, including rising conflicts with people, other predators and, in some cases, risks to imperiled species such as endangered salmon and steelhead, a new research paper finds.
With the spring chinook salmon run estimate rising above 282,000 fish, the two-state Columbia River Compact added more fishing time for both commercial and treaty Indian gillnetters, while recreational fishing remains open in all zones on the Columbia River up through the John Day pool.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fish managers will release “early winter” hatchery steelhead into inland lakes again this year, now that federal fisheries officials have decided to conduct a full-scale environmental impact analysis of all Puget Sound hatchery steelhead programs.
The number of sea lions and the number of salmon they’ve eaten this year in the Bonneville Dam tailrace continues to rise, according to a May 22 status report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Young, one and two-year-old male chinook salmon, known as micro- and mini-jacks, that matured sexually in a Wenatchee River tributary without migrating to the ocean, are spawning with adult female chinook salmon who have migrated to the ocean and returned.
As snowpack levels decline with the warming climate, many streams will experience less water flow, especially during summer months, potentially exposing more fish to predation by birds and other animals.
A recent study that compared 12 wild chinook salmon populations that had been the focus of hatchery supplementation programs and 10 populations of salmon that had never been the focus of supplementation programs found none to small benefits in natural salmon abundance.
The two-state Columbia River Compact, made up of Oregon and Washington fisheries managers, approved on Monday a gillnet spring fishery in Zone 6 (Bonneville through John Day pools) for treaty tribes.
Flow augmentation for Kootenai River white sturgeon got underway today, Friday, May 22, at Libby Dam after U.S. Army Corps of Engineers water managers, along with federal, tribal, and state fishery biologists, have determined that water temperatures and flows are sufficient for the operations to begin.
Eight acclimation ponds designed to improve juvenile rearing and adult returns in the Methow and Wenatchee river watersheds is under environmental review by the Bonneville Power Administration.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced this week that the upper John Day River will open for salmon fishing from May 20 through June 7, 2015. The river will be open for the 26 miles from the Hwy 207 bridge (located .5 mile downstream of Service Creek, Ore.) upstream to the mouth of North Fork John Day River near Kimberly, Ore.
The number of sea lions and the number of salmon they’ve eaten this year in the Bonneville Dam tailrace is more than double the twelve-year average, according to a May 12 status report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
With a higher run estimate, the two-state Columbia River Compact made up of Oregon and Washington fisheries managers approved an overnight non-Indian commercial spring chinook salmon drift net fishery this week.
The most populated areas of Puget Sound have experienced striking shifts in marine species, with declines in herring and smelt that have long provided food for other marine life and big increases in the catch of jellyfish, which contribute far less to the food chain, according to new research that tracks species over the last 40 years.
With spring chinook salmon passing Bonneville Dam in higher numbers than expected, fish managers from Washington and Oregon this week agreed to extend the fishing season on the Columbia River for miles below and above the dam.
Spring chinook fishing in northeast Oregon kicked off Saturday, May 2 with the opening of the upper Snake River to salmon fishing. It is the first of several chinook fisheries expected to open later this spring.
The spring chinook sport fishery on the lower Columbia River will reopen for two days – Saturday, May 2, and Sunday, May 3 – under an agreement reached Thursday by fishery managers from Washington and Oregon.
A video posted on the Idaho Fish and Game website highlights a new approach by IDFG fisheries managers that will lead to better success for Idaho anglers. A good share of the hatchery rainbow trout stocked in Idaho’s largest still-water fisheries this spring will be twelve inches instead of the standard of ten inches.
Commercial salmon fisheries off most of California will open today, though seasons for both commercial and sport fisheries will be shorter in several areas this year.
The National Marine Fisheries Service said this week it will initiate a status review of Snake River fall chinook in response to a petition to delist the fish as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Conservation and animal welfare groups filed a lawsuit this week in U.S. District Court of Oregon to stop the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to kill and harass double-crested cormorants on East Sand Island in the lower Columbia River estuary.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers this week delayed commercial gillnet fishing in select areas by one week until more is known about the size of this year’s spring chinook run.
With water levels in the Umatilla River already reaching summer lows, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced this week it will begin transporting returning adult spring chinook salmon from Threemile Dam directly to spawning areas in the upper watershed – a move that will detour fish around the popular upper Umatilla River fishery.
A one-year permit that will allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to carry out the first year of its plan to significantly cull the East Sand Island population of double-crested cormorants in order to reduce the birds’ predation on juvenile salmon was approved this week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
After a lackluster 2013-14 that saw just a few fish moving into the Metolius, Deschutes and Crooked rivers upstream of Lake Billy Chinook on the Deschutes River, but no spawning, researchers are now seeing active spawning by steelhead this year in the Crooked River.
Just a short time into the spring chinook salmon run, with only 3,253 fish passing Bonneville Dam by April 7, sea lions stalking the fish in the dam’s tailrace have already taken 474 salmon.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers have announced the 2015 summer and fall salmon seasons for the Columbia River.
In response to a request by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the Independent Scientific Review Panel has evaluated the “White Sturgeon Hatchery Master Plan: Lower Columbia and Snake River Impoundments” prepared by the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
While some people fish for fun and even food, others fish for the future.
That’s what a group of volunteers have been doing recently on the South Fork Clearwater River from Stites to Mount Idaho.
With 2,856 upriver spring chinook salmon left in the spring fishing quota, the Columbia River Compact states of Oregon and Washington added a two-day salmon fishery for recreational anglers on the Columbia River downstream of Bonneville Dam.
With 57 percent of the remaining harvest still available to commercial gillnetters, the Columbia River Compact states of Oregon and Washington opened an 8-hour non-Indian gillnet fishery Tuesday.
Avian predation of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River basin may be worse than thought.
A recently released multi-agency report on the status of gray wolf populations in the Northwest asserts that wolf numbers “continue to be robust, stable and self-sustaining” throughout the region.
The average cost to produce a juvenile coho salmon through habitat restoration in British Columbia is about the same cost as producing a hatchery salmon, according to a recent study.
As pink salmon abundance in the ocean off British Columbia and Alaska is climbing, sockeye salmon abundance and size is declining and the competition for food between the two species is the reason, according to a recent study.
A non-Indian commercial gillnet fishery in the Columbia River opened for seven hours Tuesday, March 31, yielding 980 spring chinook salmon with an average weight of 12.4 pounds.
A federal judge earlier this month declined to immediately cut the number of hatchery chinook salmon released into Oregon’s McKenzie River, but recognized the need to protect the wild spring chinook salmon that spawn in the river.
NOAA Fisheries is proposing in its draft environmental assessment of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s 2013 hatchery and genetic management plans (HGMP) substantial cuts in hatchery releases of salmon smolts in Oregon’s Sandy River.
The Audubon Society of Portland last week announced its intent to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prevent it from putting a plan in place to reduce the population of double-crested cormorants at East Sand Island in the lower Columbia River estuary.
An Oregon appellate court recently rejected claims by commercial fishing businesses that a new policy to phase out gill netting on the lower Columbia River violated state law.
Columbia River salmon runs should top 2 million fish again in 2015, continuing a trend of record or near-record runs over last decade compared to runs in the 1990s, fish managers reported to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council this month.
The historical range of interior redband trout that inhabit the streams in Western States has declined by 42 percent from the trout’s presumed historical levels (circa 1800), according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey report.
Mid-Columbia River anglers are being asked to help insure future fisheries by catching and providing live hatchery steelhead to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to restock the Ringold Springs Hatchery on the Columbia north of the Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Pasco, Richland).
Fisheries managers have announced that the popular spring chinook salmon fishery on the north-central Oregon’s Deschutes River will not open in 2015 because of an anticipated “very poor return of both hatchery and wild fish this season.”
The governing agency that sets regulations for United States fisheries in the Pacific Ocean along the West Coast acted this week to protect unmanaged and unfished forage fish, some of the smallest fish in the ocean, but also some of the most important in the food chain.
Anglers fishing along the north Oregon and Washington coasts, including off the mouth of the Columbia River, will likely see a catch quota for chinook salmon similar to last year’s and a lower quota for coho, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
State and tribal fish managers are winning the battle against invasive northern pike on a section of the Pend Oreille River in northeast Washington, but they don’t expect to declare victory anytime soon.
Salmon recovery efforts in Washington are making a difference – more salmon are returning home in some areas, although significant work remains – according to a new report released this week by the Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office.
Fishery managers and researchers engaged in salmon and steelhead recovery efforts need to better understand, and address, issues related to what has become a smaller and less hospitable Columbia River basin world, according to a Feb.25 report issued by the region’s Independent Scientific Advisory Board.
When rainbow trout fall prey to Coldwater Disease, its colorful body erodes into ragged wounds and ulcers. The bacterial infection can kill up to 30 percent of hatchery stock and causes millions of dollars in economic loss.
The third largest fall chinook salmon return on record is expected to return to the mouth of the Columbia River this summer and fall, according to preliminary estimates released Feb. 13.
Both salmon and steelhead species seem to be taking advantage of new spawning and rearing habitat options made available via the 2011 breaching and removal of Condit Dam on the lower White Salmon River in southwest Washington.
A bid by commercial fishing interests to reverse Washington management direction aimed at eliminating gill-net salmon fishing on the lower mainstem Columbia River was thwarted last week by a state appeals court.
A new study aimed at understanding habitat needs for Pacific lamprey in western Oregon found this once-abundant fish that is both ecologically and culturally significant prefers side channels and other lower water velocity habitats in streams.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council at its March meeting will vote on an amendment to four of its fishery management plans that would protect the smallest fish in the sea from targeted harvest until a management plan can be adopted.
A total of 6,715 Snake River fall chinook salmon redds (river bottom nests) were estimated in the Snake River basin during 2014 – the highest total recorded since intensive surveys began in 1988.
An Alaska-based commercial fishing advocacy group on Jan. 16 submitted a petition with NOAA Fisheries asking the federal agency to consider dropping the Snake River fall chinook salmon “evolutionarily significant unit” from the Endangered Species Act list.
A record return of Pacific lamprey to the Umatilla River has tribal fish managers optimistic that their restoration efforts are working, but it isn’t stopping them from embarking on an artificial propagation program that would be the first of its kind in the United States.
Oregon’s Foster Dam just got an upgrade, one that may be vital to the survival of threatened Upper Willamette River spring chinook salmon and winter steelhead.
For anglers in Idaho’s Panhandle Region and biologists alike, one of the greatest highlights of 2014 was watching scores of anglers enjoy great kokanee fishing on Lake Pend Oreille for just the second time in 15 years.
The timing of spring phytoplankton blooms in southern Alaska and coastal British Columbia has been correlated to the productivity of pink salmon in a recent study.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have disapproved the state of Oregon’s coastal nonpoint pollution control program because it does not sufficiently protect salmon streams and landslide-prone areas from logging impacts or reduce runoff from forest roads built before 1971.
Raising rainbow trout to a larger size in hatcheries has proven to be both financially beneficial for the state of Idaho and a plus for anglers, according to a four-year study completed by the Idaho Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers on Wednesday approved limited sport fisheries for threatened eulachon – smelt – in Oregon’s Sandy River and Washington’s Cowlitz River, as well as a commercial opportunity on the lower mainstem Columbia River.
Anticipating another strong return of spring chinook salmon, fishery managers from Washington and Oregon on Wednesday set the initial 2015 fishing season to run through April 10 on the lower Columbia River.
Hatchery programs are here to stay, given the legal basis for their survival. But there is growing acknowledgement that past hatchery practices have damaged wild fish runs.
Adding woody debris to streams builds on a natural process, creates pockets of habitat for fish and increases fish abundance where wood has been added.
Approximately 600,000 juvenile winter-run chinook salmon – more than three times the typical annual number — are ready for release in the near future into northern California’s Sacramento River as part of an attempt to shore up a stock that is believed to have suffered a near total “collapse” last year.
Managing the impacts of sea lions and seals on protected salmon and steelhead and other fish stocks is a tough job that has only gotten tougher in recent years due, probably, to fluctuations in both predator and prey species populations in the lower Columbia River.
Although there was a common understanding among the speakers at this week’s “Hatchery vs. Wild Salmonid Symposium” that wild fish perform better than hatchery fish, no one in the first day’s session said that there should be no hatcheries at all.
Steelhead anglers fishing most major tributaries of the Columbia River in Washington will be required to keep all steelhead of hatchery origin that they catch, up to a three-fish catch limit.
Tribal officials on Tuesday spoke Tuesday on the need to enlist the aid of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in work aimed at, first, determining the feasibility of reintroducing salmon to long-blocked habitat above central Washington’s Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams on the Columbia River, and potentially following through.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission on Jan. 9 declined to take action on a staff proposal that would have allowed the use of barbed hooks when fishing for salmon, steelhead and trout in the lower Willamette River, Multnomah Channel and at sites off the lower Columbia River estuary in Gnat Creek and inside Youngs Bay.
Even after years of spawning by hatchery fish in the Willamette River basin, late winter steelhead, the only native steelhead stock in the basin, remain largely genetically untouched.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife hatcheries donated more than 350,000 pounds of chinook and coho salmon to food banks in communities across the state.
Coho and chinook salmon have been successfully reintroduced upstream of a diversion dam in Washington after a fish ladder was installed in 2003.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
