NWF.016/AUG.23.1996

[1] Jack Counts at Lower Granite Signal Growing Run Strength Next Year :: Spring and summer jack salmon have been returning to the Snake River in numbers that haven't been seen for years. It's the third highest jack count since 1980 at Lower Granite Dam near Lewiston. By Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2,580 jacks had been counted going past the dam. Saturday was to be the last official counting day for the spring/summer jack run and NMFS biologist Gene Matthews was hoping that 20 more fish would show up before the counting stopped. "I'd love to get to 2600, but they're coming in so few and far between now, that I don't think there are 20 jacks left in the whole river."

Jacks are sexually precocious males that return to spawn only a year after they outmigrate, and their numbers generally signal the strength of the adult run to follow next year. What it tells biologists is that both the river and the ocean have been more hospitable to fish than just a few years ago.

There's more good news: this year's numbers may even be better than the counts show. Matthews said the jacks are so big that fish counters may be undercounting them, because some are as large as two-year-olds returning from the outmigration of 1994. He said the count could actually be 600 fish higher.

The official 1996 count is 110 percent above the 10-year average that is tracked by the Fish Passage Center. But Matthews said that average is misleading, "It's like comparing apples and oranges," he said, because up until 1989 or so, certain hatchery practices, especially at Idaho's Looking Glass Hatchery, produced twice as many jacks per adults as they do now. In those days, fry were fed more and released later, a formula that made for larger smolts--150 mm. long compared to 135 mm. now--a regimen that was great for producing jacks.

The situation looks even more optimistic when this year's jack count is tracked against the last nine-year average. It's up 141 percent. And when compared to the last four-year average, it's up 447 percent. Matthews is hopeful this signals a return of better ocean survival and a run next year of more than 20,000 adults, with even more benefit in 1998 [Bill Rudolph].

[2] Montana Power May Soon Transfer Kerr Dam License to Tribes :: Montana Power Company has met with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Indian Tribes to discuss the possibility of the Pablo, MT-based tribes assuming the license for the Kerr Hydroelectric Project sooner than initially planned. Montana Power and the tribes secured a joint 50-year FERC license for Kerr in 1985, under which MPC was to own and operate the plant for the first 30 years, with the tribes having the option of purchasing the plant in 2015 and running it for another 20 years. But the utility says the mitigation plan FERC has included in its final EIS on Kerr will make the project too expensive for Montana Power to operate.

The 168 MW Kerr Dam, on the Flathead River eight miles southwest of Polson, MT, has been considered the crown jewel of Montana Power's hydro system for almost 60 years, says Montana Power's Dean Conklin. But the combination of marketplace pressure to keep power prices down and the increased costs the mitigation plan would generate led the utility to suggest turning the project over to the tribes.

"The tribes have a different cost structure than we do," Conklin said. For example, Montana Power will pay the Tribes a 1996-97 rental fee of $13.1 million (the annual payments are indexed to the CPI for inflation)--a payment the tribes wouldn't make to themselves. In addition, the utility paid Lake County $588,204 in property taxes for Kerr Dam, which the tribes would not be obligated to pay.

Besides these costs, Montana Power would have been obligated to make a one-time payment of $48 million along with additional annual payments of about $1.3 million under the mitigation proposal included in FERC's final EIS for Kerr Dam. "Obviously [this means] the Kerr power is not as cheap as it used to be," Conklin said.

Under the 1985 license agreement, Conklin said Montana Power was to work in consultation with the tribes and other parties to develop an environmental impact mitigation plan to cover several items left unsettled in the 1985 license. In 1990, Montana Power submitted to FERC a mitigation and management plan (MMP) that had the concurrence of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai, as well as the US Department of Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The MMP set a one-time payment of $18.4 million, with annual payments of about $1.1 million (indexed to the CPI for inflation), to fund mitigation. Conklin said the funds were to be used for mitigation projects such as hatchery development, investments in land for wildlife habitat and shoreline improvements along Flathead Lake.

In November 1995, the US Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs proposed additional license conditions with FERC as the Secretary of Interior has the right to do under Section 4(e) of the Federal Power Act--setting the $48 million one-time mitigation payment and the higher annual payments. The Department of Interior's proposal also required that Kerr be operated as a baseload plant only, rather than for peaking and load following, in order to limit water fluctuations below the dam.

FERC staff incorporated the Department of Interior's 4(e) conditions in the final EIS on Kerr mitigation options issued in July. According to Montana Power, FERC staff said it favored Interior's proposal because it "provides the greatest benefit to fish and wildlife resources" and on the basis that FERC is required by law to accept it.

But Montana Power said FERC also acknowledges in the EIS that the economic impacts associated with Interior's conditions are significantly greater than those associated with the MMP and that some of the conditions would "eliminate all of the Kerr Project's positive economic benefits due to the combination of high costs and low current power values."

In comments filed with FERC on Aug. 12, Montana Power argued that FERC can reject Interior's plan because it is neither reasonable nor timely. "The Kerr license issued in 1985 grants the secretary of the Department of Interior the authority to issue license conditions only within a reasonable time," MPC attorney Robert O'Leary said in a company news release. "But DOI took six years to get the job done after Montana Power filed its MMP."

Montana Power's comments also suggested that Interior revise its proposed conditions to make them consistent with the MMP. But even if that were to occur, it's doubtful the company would change its mind about an early transfer of Kerr's license to the tribes, according to MPC's Conklin. Conklin also said Montana Power may have an opportunity to purchase Kerr's power after such a transfer [Jude Noland].

[3] Canada, Montana Swap Water: State Still Cries Foul Over Flow :: With Montana reservoirs at Libby and Hungry Horse full during the recreation season for the first time in several years, Mark Reller of the NWPPC's Montana office tried to sell river managers on a revised proposal for keeping the reservoirs full longer, at least until boaters hang up their water skis for the season. But before anything was decided, President Clinton stepped in to help them out. The administration on Aug. 14 announced a water swap with Canada that would help keep Libby Reservoir full during the month and still maintain flows to help migrating salmon.

The Canadians will release water from Arrow Reservoir in BC through August which means Libby Reservoir will fall by only six feet instead of 16 feet. The Canadians also gain because Lake Kookanusa, Libby's Reservoir, backs up into Canada; so both countries will see higher water levels. Folks around the Arrow Reservoir will have to cope with only a three-foot drop.

The changes at Libby have other benefits as well. Spill at downstream Canadian projects will be reduced, and the higher head at Libby dam will make for more efficient power production.

Though the arrangement makes the river more usable, Reller said it was still a last-minute deal, and his state still needs a better process to plan ahead for lowering the reservoirs.

At the TMT meeting July 31, Reller had originally requested that half of the 20-foot drafts of their reservoirs be deferred until September, when significant numbers of fall chinook will still be present in the Columbia system. He pointed out that it would represent a more natural hydrograph, as called for in the BiOp, observing that a 5 Kcfs-20 Kcfs reduction in late August flows would have no measurable effect on fish movement.

NMFS' Chris Ross said the reduction would increase travel time and mortality. Reller asked for some numbers, and Ross referred to data from John Day pool. Montana did not dispute the 20-foot draft the BiOp called for, said Reller, but the margin of error associated with such a slight increase in water velocity would have a debatable effect on survival.

At the TMT meeting Aug. 7, Reller was still trying to convince the group on the merits of his proposal, but representatives from Washington, Oregon and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission maintained their objections to moving any water from August to September. Reller said he would draft a letter to NMFS requesting a written justification for what the fisheries agency and federal project operators proposed.

In his letter, Reller requested estimates of the proportion of the run that may potentially benefit from Columbia River flow augmentation in August.

"I am very curious," wrote Reller, "how the Snake and Columbia efforts are coordinated to maximize benefits for the listed stocks. It appears that August migrating fish from the ESA areas through the Snake will receive the greatest augmentation in late August and as a result arrive at the Columbia or remain in the lower river when water supplies from the Columbia are exhausted and augmentation terminated."

Reller said since it was through litigation that American Rivers gained the opportunity to see in writing NMFS' reasoning for its decisions, his state would like the same treatment without the necessity of bringing a lawsuit against the fisheries agency to bring it about.

"Montana representatives," wrote Reller, "have a difficult time explaining to their governor and the citizens why in such a good water year, Montana cannot obtain more equitable treatment" [Bill Rudolph].

[4] Media Flips Over Curtailing Spill at The Dalles :: The headline in the Aug. 13 Oregonian read "Fish sacrificed to ensure electricity," but when salmon stewards counted up the damage from stopping the spill at The Dalles, the number of dead fish disappeared in a cloud of statistical insignificance.

After the Northwest power grid went through its voltage gyrations on Aug. 10, NMFS granted BPA a waiver to stop spill at The Dalles so all generators could go on line to help avoid another massive power failure.

NMFS spokesman Brian Gorman said the fisheries agency estimated that more than 100,000 hatchery-raised fall chinook smolts were passing by the dam every day when the outage occurred, along with about 20 ESA-listed wild fall chinook smolts.

It's likely that a few wild smolts died without the spill, but not many. The Dalles Dam does have a bypass system and turbine mortality is estimated at 15 percent. Without spill, the dam has approximately a 50 percent FPE, which means half the fish are routed around turbines. Maybe 30 at most would have gone through the turbines during three days of spill curtailment.

With the ratio of returning adults to migrating smolts on the order of one to 100 or less, stopping The Dalles spill caused the loss of less than one adult spawner.

To keep the power grid from going down again, The Dalles was generating at capacity last week, awaiting the return of Diablo Canyon nuke plants to the grid on Friday.

But according to the BiOp, the spill must go on, and water has been wrung out of the system to keep the Corps in compliance.

The Implementation Team, the inter-agency policy managers of the river system, held a conference call on Aug. 15 to handle the emergency and called for drafting water from Dworshak, Chief Joseph, John Day and McNary pools, as well as from behind Grand Coulee, to provide for The Dalles power needs plus 25 percent spill at night and 15 percent during the day, according to Cindy Henriksen of the COE.

"The question is," Henriksen said, "will this water count against what we've saved for August?" She noted that Dworshak was scheduled for drafting anyway to reduce temperatures in the lower Snake.

At the TMT meeting on Aug. 14, NMFS policy analyst Donna Darm pointed out there is no such thing as an "ESA waiver." She told the river managers that NMFS was aware of the situation and did not object to the operation.

As it turned out, spill at The Dalles was stopped from about 9 a.m. Aug. 12 to the evening of Aug. 15, when it was back up to the pre-blackout 64 percent of flow, running between 180-200 kcfs.

At the TMT meeting the following Wednesday, state and tribal fish managers proposed a spill in September to make up for the loss during the power crisis. The issue was elevated to the Implementation Team level, where it will be discussed [Bill Rudolph].

[5] Mid-Columbia PUDS Face Changes to Habitat Plans :: Will Mid-Columbia PUDs have to do things differently now that their wild steelhead stocks have been proposed for endangered status? Dick Nason of Chelan County PUD says there will undoubtedly be changes to the habitat conservation plan, but "we feel real good about it."

The Mid-Columbia PUDs started work on the plan in 1994 to help protect fish and avoid an ESA listing. Utility officials met with NMFS after the July 30 steelhead announcement to discuss the upcoming process, which will involve consultation with state agencies and tribes as the habitat plan is fine-tuned and legal staffs get to work. Three policy meetings are slated for September, three more in October and two in November.

Nason said the final product should only be slightly different from the present plan, adding that NMFS told the PUDs it is really up to the utilities to decide how to meet the survival goal for the region's wild steelhead, a goal that has yet to be determined. Wild stocks make up between five and 20 percent of the steelhead population in the river above its confluence with the Snake.

Chelan County PUD has already built a prototype surface collector at Rocky Reach Dam. How they use it in concert with mechanical screens, spill strategies and predator removal depends on which mix of strategies costs the least to implement in achieving the goal.

According to Nason, each dam will have a fish mitigation plan customized for its specific problems. He noted that modification of spill gates at Rock Island has already resulted in passing more smolts safely past the dam. But at Rocky Reach, it is a different story. Spill at Rocky Reach Dam has proven ineffective as a smolt passage tactic, and he hopes to eliminate it altogether.

Nason pointed out that the public utilities have been working on improvements in fish habitat and passage long before the federal mandate. He referred to a study done for the PUDs in the 1980s by consultant Don Chapman that resulted in improved conditions for wild steelhead. The state of Washington quit planting trout in the Tumwater Canyon of the Wenatchee River because Chapman's report identified high incidence of juvenile wild steelhead mortality by trout fishermen.

But Nason said some things are simply out of their hands--spill, for instance. He cited this year's high levels of dissolved gas from spill at Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee and pointed to new system-wide strategies in which the PUDs could reduce both power generation and spill to mitigate for trouble spots like Ice Harbor Dam, to lessen gas supersaturation in the lower river and still satisfy power commitments.

Biologists are hoping for a single set of standards that will satisfy FERC, NMFS and the state and tribal fish managers. Grant County PUD fish and wildlife manager Stuart Hammond said the conservation plan is being developed to allow as much flexibility as possible, but he was disappointed that NMFS had adopted "a conservative viewpoint" when it considered the steelhead ESU (evolutionarily significant unit). He was cautious, noting that the habitat conservation plan will depend on how specifically the stocks are categorized. If NMFS wants to look at stocks on a stream-by-stream basis, Hammond said it could be a difficult process, but "that won't be a decision we make." As for hatcheries, he said that is another NMFS call.

The draft plan's completion is slated for the end of the year. Then it will begin the NEPA process review.

Regional NMFS director Will Stelle has already expressed optimism that the steelhead will not have to be listed once the plan is in place.

Does that mean hatchery production will be curtailed?

Stelle himself said that as long as hatcheries produce fish that are genetically and behaviorally similar to wild stocks, they "can and will be part of the solution."

Grant County's Hammond points to the Priest Rapids Hatchery as an example of the success of supplementation efforts. "I don't say it has rebuilt the wild run," he said, "because it hasn't been around long enough, but both wild and hatchery fall chinook spawn in the river right in front of the hatchery" [Bill Rudolph].

[6] ESA Petition Management Guidance Policy Announced :: Two federal agencies charged with listing plants and animals as threatened or endangered species have adopted a new guidance policy to ensure citizen petitions are handled more efficiently.

The Endangered Species Act allows any interested citizen to petition the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service or the Commerce Department's National Marine Fisheries Service to list, delist, or reclassify species or to revise a listed species' critical habitat. The guidance policy describes situations under each category to assist employees in both agencies.

The new policy became effective July 15 and outlines specific administrative steps once petetions are received, including guidance concerning "lead Region" responsibilities, timeframes for internal review of 90-day and 12-month findings, petition tracking, preparation of administrative findings and notices, and petitioner notification.

"It is another in-house step to ensure that both agencies are strictly consistent in dealing with listing petitions," said Rolland Schmitten, director of the National Marine Fisheries service.

The availability notice concerning the final policy was published in the July 9, 1996, Federal Register.

Persons desiring copies of the guidance policy should write to LaVerne Smith, Chief, Division of Endangered Species (452 ARLSQ), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1849 C Street NW., Washington, D.C. 20240 [Bill Rudolph].

[7] Gillnetters Find Sympathy But No Funds to Support License Buyout :: Astoria-based gillnetters told the Power Council on Aug. 7 that their catch of chinook salmon in the lower Columbia river has declined by 99 percent. They urged the Council to support completion of a measure in the 1994 Fish and Wildlife Program that calls for BPA and representatives of Oregon and Washington fishery agencies to negotiate a leaseback or buyback program for commercial fishing licenses on the lower river. Earlier negotiations that wrestled with the issue broke down in 1994.

Alan Takalo, a lifelong commercial fisherman who lives near Astoria, said Columbia River fishing "was a good life until a few years ago." Today, he said, fishermen rely on fishing in Alaska for their livelihood. "You can't make a living here."

Fisherman Steve Gray told the Council that 870 independent business people make up the local industry, and that a leaseback and buyback plan was necessary to save the industry and what it represents.

Council members said there was little they could do, but Council chair John Etchart was hopeful that negotiation on the leaseback/buyback program would resume in the near future.

A presentation by Bob Eaton of the Astoria-based group Salmon for All was canceled. Eaton was in Alaska helping commercial fishermen in that state fight a ballot initiative backed by sports fishermen to increase their share of the catch. He had been scheduled to describe the Young's Bay terminal fishery, developed by the community as a way to help mitigate the crisis on the river. The creation of terminal fisheries is one strategy recommended by the NMFS salmon recovery team.

The recovery team had recommended several alternative methods for reducing the catch of depressed stocks while still providing access to harvestable fish from stronger stocks. These included: reducing selection for larger fish prevalent under current management practices; developing more selective fishing practices and gear for the harvest of surplus production, and reducing mixed stock fisheries by implementing voluntary or mandatory commercial fishing buyback programs to reduce harvesting capacity in mixed-stock fisheries.

Meanwhile, lower river gillnetters were preparing for a three-day season. The harvest will target upriver brites and is scheduled to begin on Aug. 27.

Seventy-nine year old fisherman Don Riswick, was readying the wooden bowpicker Shoo-Fly for a trailer ride upriver to fish the opening near Beacon Rock. Riswick, a retired postal employee, has been fishing the Columbia since he was 13. His grandfather was a well-known Astoria shipwright who built many gillnetters for the Bristol Bay and Columbia River fleets. Was an old riverman like Riswick ready to give up the game?

"That buyback's for people who want to quit," said the optimistic fisherman, who is editor of "Columbia River Gillnetter," house organ of the Columbia River Fishermen's Protective Union, a group formed in 1886 [Bill Rudolph].

[8] Fraser Run Up, Sockeye Stocks Rebound :: As Northwest residents filled the air with smoke from thousands of backyard grills loaded with cheap Alaska salmon, even more fish was showing up in the neighborhood.

The downbeat Fraser River forecast turned a bit rosier when Canadian fishermen caught 375,000 sockeye in 24 hours on Aug. 13. Canadians have now caught more than a million Fraser sockeye, and their U.S. counterparts more than 200,000 fish.

But the better-than-expected return didn't surprise everybody. Ian Todd, executive secretary of the Vancouver, BC-based Pacific Salmon Commission said the original escapement forecast was deliberately conservative. He called it risk-averse forecasting.

Canadian fish managers were burned badly when they flubbed the 1994 harvest allocation for their own salmon fleet, and allowed a severe over-harvest. Preoccupied with a fish war with the U.S. and determined to keep every sockeye they could out of American nets, escapement was severely compromised by a series of managerial snafus, poaching, and a harvest model that failed miserably to account for changes in migration patterns.

During El Nino years, most of the run comes down the inside of Vancouver Island. Todd said that only about 40 percent of the run came that way this year, reflecting cooler water off the West Coast. In 1993, more than 90 percent of the Fraser sockeye run took the inside route to the river mouth.

Based on strong escapements recorded over the past week and the large commercial catch on Aug. 13, the Fraser River Panel revised 1996 run size estimates to a total of 4,220,000 fish, up 3.64 million from their earlier estimate at the end of July.

The run is now the third largest on the cycle since 1948 and reflects good survival of juvenile sockeye migrating to sea in 1994. This cycle however has always been the lowest producing segment of the overall four-year cycle of Fraser runs. In 1993, for instance, the total run amounted to more than 24 million fish.

There was better news from up north where the Skeena River sockeye run was coming in at an all-time record. Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans reported that 2 million more sockeye showed than the 3-4 million fish anticipated in the forecast. Southeast Alaska commercial fishermen were not complaining, either. Southern area Southeast netters have landed close to 2 million sockeye this year, many of them bound for those northern Canadian rivers.

Back in the U.S., the Lake Washington sockeye run had tourists gaping for weeks as more than 450,000 fish swam through the Seattle city limits on their way to the Cedar River.

Mid-Columbia sockeye were showing improvement, too. By Aug. 15, more than 21,000 sockeye had passed Rocky Reach Dam near Wenatchee. That's four times better than last year's return, and nearly up to par with the 10-year average.

Even the endangered Snake River run showed a gain. On Aug. 5 one more sockeye was reported at Lower Granite Dam. That makes three altogether, a 50-percent improvement over last year's return. The fish was reported to be about 25 inches long and in good condition. According to the Fish Passage Center in Portland, none of the three sockeye has yet arrived at Red Fish Lake in the upper Salmon River Basin [Bill Rudolph].

[9] Alaska Fisherman Struggle with Strong Runs, Weak Prices :: Folks along the Columbia River may think salmon are pretty scarce these days, but the world supply of salmon has nearly doubled in the last ten years, with huge production increases from salmon farmers in Norway and Chile. Commercial Columbia River fishermen are competing in a global economy, and the question is, when the runs are built up to really harvestable surpluses, will it be worth it to catch salmon at all?

A look at Alaska's predicament may shed some light. Salmon catches are strong this year, but low prices for some species have simply made it uneconomical to harvest them.

The statewide salmon forecast of a harvest of 180 million fish may not quite be reached, but over the last 15 years, Alaska's salmon harvest has averaged 150 million fish annually.

Nearly 30 million sockeye were harvested in Bristol Bay this year, and another 19 million from other parts of the state. Prices for sockeye stayed in the $.65/lb. range for Bristol Bay and higher in other parts of the state. But prices for pink and chum salmon have dropped into single digits.

So many chums have returned to Southeast Alaska that prices have sunk to a nickel a pound. The dark ones, nearly ready to spawn, are going for a penny a pound. And they just keep on coming.

In mid-July the sport catch for chums was doubled in some parts of Southeast Alaska, where at least one hatchery was stripping roe, taking the eggs but dumping the carcasses. Other hatcheries have applied for dumping permits.

Plunging prices have caused serious disruptions in remote parts of the state like the Kuskokwim District where commercial fishing periods have been determined by processor capacity and market conditions. The low value of chums has kept buyers away because high shipping costs have kept the Kuskie fish out of the marketplace. Native groups are telling the world that surpluses at hatcheries in Southeast have ruined their fishery.

Then the pinks started showing up. Scott Walker of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's Ketchikan office said local seine boats were fishing with catch limits imposed by canneries. Each two-day opening was bringing in another 5-6 million fish, which were selling for 5-8 cents a pound, down from 18 cents just a couple of years ago. By Aug. 21, over 42 million pinks had been harvested in Southeast Alaska alone.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has promised to buy $14 million worth of Alaska canned pinks from this year's harvest, but canners still have about half of last year's pack sitting in warehouses throughout the Northwest. One processor told his fleet if he got the fish for nothing this year, he might break even [Bill Rudolph].

DOCUMENTS FROM NW FISHLETTER 016 :: Below are listed available documents referred to in the text of NW Fishletter issue 016.

• University of Washington Columbia Basin Research Home Page

• Fish Passage Center Home Page

• Public Inseason Technical Management Team(TMT) Meetings Home Page

• Alaska Department of Fish and Game Home Page

THE ARCHIVE :: Previous NW Fishletter issues and supporting documents.