california salmon recovery,    california water blog,    Environment,    Opinion

Why Your Kid's Kids May Not Fish For Salmon in California

By Tom Chandler 3/5/2012

The California Water Blog is written by actual scientists who know more about California's trout, salmon and steelhead than pretty much anyone on the planet, so when they post something definitive, you're smart to sit up and take notice.

Like these  on the insanity of California's fragmented salmon && water management:

The past 60 years of Central Valley hatchery production to support fisheries has resulted in replacement of multiple natural populations with one hatchery population, thereby greatly increasing extinction risk.

The situation is similar to managing financial investments for long-term yields, where a well-diversified investment portfolio (i.e., multiple runs with multiple independent populations) will fluctuate less in response to volatile market conditions (i.e., environmental variation) than will one concentrated in just one or two stocks (i.e., just hatchery fish).

Today, the management portfolio of Central Valley salmon is overwhelmingly concentrated in hatchery production. This all-eggs-in-one-basket strategy is an underlying cause of the recent collapse of salmon numbers (Lindley et al. 2009). Recovery of self-sustaining runs of Central Valley salmon will be impossible if we do not stop interbreeding between hatchery and naturally spawning populations (Katz et al. 2012).

There it is. Plain as day.

Biologists are often reluctant to make statements that will play in the political arena; it's far safer to simply state the hatchery salmon aren't as productive as wild salmon, and that releasing vast numbers of them suppresses wild populations.

Here, Moyle and Katz lay it all out for us; recovery will be impossible as long as rubber trout (and habitat loss, and massive delta pumping, and whatever else) continue to gum up the works.

But that would be a commercial disaster, right? All those fish that commercial salmon fishermen couldn't catch?

Well, don't look to closely, but commercial salmon fishermen haven't been doing too good since about 2006 or so.

What's needed to get California's salmon populations back on track? Lots of things, starting with:

Because of the fragmented nature of the current system of salmon management, we spend tens of millions of dollars annually to produce salmon in inland hatcheries, and then spend hundreds of millions more to deal with the environmental, regulatory and legal consequences of having produced those same fish.

As was suggested for water management in the previous blog, this piecemeal approach to fisheries resource management is not economically viable. Nor is this strategy viable for avoiding extinction. Accordingly, a comprehensive re-thinking of hatchery management must be undertaken in California and where adverse impacts to natural spawning populations outweigh benefits, hatcheries should be closed.

See you eating all the hatchery fish I can catch, Tom Chandler.

 
AuthorPicture

Tom Chandler

As the author of the decade leading fly fishing blog Trout Underground, Tom believes that fishing is not about measuring the experience but instead of about having fun. As a staunch environmentalist, he brings to the Yobi Community thought leadership on environmental and access issues facing us today.

13 comments
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Wow, shot yourself in the foot right out of the gate. Of course they're going to use a hatchery with the San Joaquin -- because the natural run doesn't exist. There is no water in the river and those runs were extirpated. Stellar example, really. FishGuy: If it wasn’t for the many years of dedicated, hard working hatchery staff, we wouldn’t be fishing for salmon right now, let alone our youngsters ... more down the road. Oh, I get it. You worked at a hatchery. Which is probably why you're unaware of the multitude of studies that show hatchery salmon and steelhead degrade wild stocks, and damned quickly. Within one generation, the fish hatchery offspring reproduce at a far lower rate than wild fish, and this is the issue that Moyle is speaking to in the article. Swamping our remaining wild populations with hatchery fish genes is creating a monoculture, and monocultures are highly susceptible to collapse (as we witnessed the last decade). Calling for a rethinking of the hatchery structure -- in light of all this new information -- is only sensible. That some react with vitrol ("so-called science") and worthless anecdotal information is hardly surprising, but not promising. There's far more to this than water, and anyone who asserts such probably has some reading to do.
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Why our kids may not fish for Salmon?? Because of hatcheries?? Really? So, we would have been better off handling everything like the San Joaquin then? Last time I checked the salmon experts are now grasping millions of dollars to restore a run down there. Guess how they are gonna do it? You got it..A HATCHERY!! If it wasn't for the many years of dedicated, hard working hatchery staff, we wouldn't ... more be fishing for salmon right now, let alone our youngsters down the road. The article is less than informative and just another political dart thrown by those living in a Disneyland world of so-called science. I find it interesting that if the Yuba has had such a thriving run of fish, why have we not been able to take salmon out of it for so many years? Water is the key when talking about salmon in the CV. This point was proven this past year on the Mokelumne River. Get the DCC gates closed and presto..the fish show. This type of article serves up little factual info and does not provide up to date stats. I don't how I stumbled upon it but I just couldn't leave here without dropping my 2 cents.
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Tom Chandler: I’m not sure how cold the water *has* to be, but pretty clearly we’re not going to have a hatchery right on SF Bay, though salmon and steelhead *do* spawn in creeks not far off the bay. That said, they have begun releasing salmon smolts in SF Bay instead of at the hatcheries in order to increase survivability, so in some cases, perhaps you move the hatchery, and in others you move ... more the fish… I'm not a biologist, but it seems that as long as the eggs are hatched and initially reared, say, in Battle Creek, the adults will try to return there. So to accomplish the goal of reducing mixing of wild and bred fish, you would need to move the whole hatcheries, no? Anyway, yes. Solving problems is hard. Doesn't mean it ain't worth exploring necessarily.
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Bruce Ross: As a practical matter, do hatcheries need the steady supply of brisk clean water you get on, say, Battle Creek or a Lewiston Dam? Isn’t there a reason salmon head upstream? I'm not sure how cold the water *has* to be, but pretty clearly we're not going to have a hatchery right on SF Bay, though salmon and steelhead *do* spawn in creeks not far off the bay. That said, they have begun ... more releasing salmon smolts in SF Bay instead of at the hatcheries in order to increase survivability, so in some cases, perhaps you move the hatchery, and in others you move the fish...
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@Bruce: Yes, hatcheries do require a reliable supply of cool, clean water, just as natural spawning and rearing areas do. Thus the efforts to install thermal curtains and similar devices on many of CA's dams, to ensure that in-stream flows are cool enough for salmon and steelhead.
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As a practical matter, do hatcheries need the steady supply of brisk clean water you get on, say, Battle Creek or a Lewiston Dam? Isn't there a reason salmon head upstream?
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If it's any consolation, or puts your mind at ease in any way, this stuff does not go unnoticed by "your kids." A graduating student at a north-state school with a penchant for sustainable development, I work and talk with people my age that have legitimate concerns about river system health -- regardless of their fishing ability or interest. We're legitimately concerned about the water grabs and ... more the resource control in this state. Ecological (and specifically water) concerns are discussed in a range of majors and topics -- from public policy, to hydrology, to land use planning. Granted, my school may be slightly more concerned and involved given our location, but I feel that we're not a complete anomaly within California's education system. California's water woes are a legitimate concern in the academic world, and sure it sounds hackneyed, being repeated generation after generation, but just wait for us "kids" to show up to the big show.
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Crap. I read this article and thought it made a lot of sense and now I find out it's both ill informed and chit smoking. ;-) Like most problems this one needs a comprehensive solution that balances myriad demands from folks who like drinking water, folks who like produce grown on a farm, and folks who like native habitat populated by native fishies. What I don't have a sense for is whether many of ... more these California stream have reached a tipping point or not. Here in the Connecticut, Atlantic Salmon are gone. Forever. Even if you removed the dams, eliminated pollution, and restored spawning habitat, it would be generations (if ever) before any Atlantic Salmon immigrated from northern climes into legacy spawning rivers. I don't want to appear to be the fatalist, but can the damage really be undone?
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Mr. Chandler: Thanks for the post. As anglers I think we are on the front lines of this issue along with the researchers and resource managers. As Mr. Bob points out, we (collectively) have put wild salmon populations in one hell of a tight spot as a result the decisions we've made about how to utilize water in this state. Giving the salmon and their watersheds a chance to survive over the long term ... more will take a prolonged commitment to learning and acting thoughtfully. As we are seeing with the re-licensing of dams and water diversions these days (i.e. Klamath, Red Bluff Diversion, lower Yuba) there are opportunities to make substantial changes to our infrastructure in ways that improve water quality and watershed health for us and the salmon. Mr. Bob: Perhaps you could cut the blogger some slack for linking to a non-technical article. The claims of both the CWB folks and your own demand explanation and justification. The CWB folks appear to offer that in the form of links to peer-reviewed literature in their original CWB post. Clearly you draw different conclusions. That's fine. But there is no need to shoot the messenger on this. And you know as well as I do that being on a first name basis with a fellow scientist is in no way a requirement for evaluating or understanding another professional's work. In fact, the opposite is true, as demonstrated by the reliance upon thorough documentation and submittal (often anonymous) to peer-review prior to publication. It is not a perfect process, but neither is the scientific method. Fortunately perfection is not the aim.
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I actually HAVE had the privilege to know, work and play with Peter and Jacob. To describe them as "ill informed" sets any further comment into the realm of fairy tale. Moyle and Katz have chosen to illustrate the folly of current hatchery production in their current blog. As their work and other blogs attest, hatcheries are only a portion of the problem, RIM dams, water diversion, pollution and climate ... more change are all dog piling on our anadromous populations. As a retired scientist, you should grasp that dams are not the only problem salmon face. You mention the Yuba for example. Englebright dam was built in 1941. Since '41 the runs of wild fish spawning in its tailwaters have averaged 15,000 fish with some years much higher than that. This is a far cry from historic run numbers, but still sustainable when everything else is isn't tampered with. The current major issues of the Yuba's wild run is that up to 80% of the fish in that run are strays from the Feather River HATCHERY, loss of floodplain for juvenal development and water management in the Delta. Dams are a huge component, but not THE issue as you state. Hatcheries are a huge component, but not the only issue as both Moyle and Jacob have clearly stated.
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Gee Tom, maybe you should follow your own advice? half cocked, slinging names, etc???? Really now???? BTW, I did read the entire article and do know Dr Moyle. How's about you, have you ever met, talked, worked, or studied with him? And ask your CWB buddies, including DR Moyle, where exactly the thousands and thousands of miles of suitable spawning habitat in the CV are going to come from to replace ... more hatchery production? Monday morning quarterbacking and pie in the sky theorizing is real easy, and that's exactly what that article is all about. As I said, the fate of salmon was sealed 50 years ago when the massive dam projects started. But you seemed to have missed that point.
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Bob, as an "actual retired scientist" you'd think you would have learned to read the entire article before going off half-cocked, slinging names, or -- worse -- dragging a red herring through the mix. Moyle and Katz never called for the wholesale abolishment of hatcheries in the Central Valley (as your reply would indicate). Instead, they laid out an issue (turning a diverse set of native runs into ... more a monoculture) and offered strategies for mitigating the impacts of hatchery fish on native populations.

Moving hatcheries closer to estuaries and away from spawning habitat (so they're less likely to spawn and pollute native genes)

Marking hatchery fish so they can be more easily handled (and probably removed) from the native populations

Using hatchery brood stock that is as far removed from the native genetics as possible (especially migration times) to reduce interbreeding

I could go on, but frankly, this sentence needs some attention: Any one who thinks otherwise, including your your ill informed scientist buddies at CWB, is smoking some pretty good chit. Calling Peter Moyle "ill informed" is laughable. In fact, I honestly laughed when I read it. It suggests more about you than it does Moyle, the man who literally wrote the book on California's trout and salmonid populations. He is probably the leading expert on trout and salmon in the state, so when he suggests we've created a monoculture and that's a problem that needs looking at -- and that the state had damned well better look at its increasing dependence on hatchery programs because we may be spending money only to create problems that require more spending, well, I'm more likely to listen to him than somebody who won't read the damned article. Finally, as we move forward, I'll suggest this isn't some online fly fishing forum where trolling is encouraged and nobody will call you on it when you go all postal and call people names for no good reason. There are plenty of places for you to do that.
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I'm an actual retired scientist, and unfortunately the fate of salmon in the Central Valley was sealed long ago when dams were placed on the Sac, Feather, American, Moke, and Merced with no provisions for upstream passage, and hatcheries were the only solution utilized for the loss of spawning habitat. And I only named the rivers in which hatcheries were placed to mitigate spawning habitat loss, not ... more the gazillion other rivers (like the Yuba, to name only one) that do not have fish passage facilities. They also don't have hatcheries and their runs are also in the toilet, just like the hatchery dominated rivers. There is no way in hell, that salmon runs can be maintained in the Central Valley without hatchery production as there is simply not enough suitable spawning habitat available for wild fish production, PERIOD. Any one who thinks otherwise, including your your ill informed scientist buddies at CWB, is smoking some pretty good chit. However, I do agree with their assertions regarding the negative aspects of relying solely on hatchery production as a management strategy, but that decision was made over 50 years ago and that cow has long left the barn.
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