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Thread: Shortened Salmon Season

  1. #21
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    Spawning habitat is not the limiting factor in the Sacramento Valley or the Klamath system. In-river conditions during outmigration are the main barrier to salmon recovery probably followed by ocean conditions. Improve in-river conditions via habitat improvements and a flow and temperature regime conducive to salmonids and you will begin to see populations rebound.

    My hunch is we are seeing the effects of the warm water 'blob' resulting in higher mortality in younger age classes of fish. Chinook runs are down in their entire range, this is not a localized problem to California. Remember, we aren't that far removed from near record runs in 2012-2013. We are unfortunately on a downcycle that hopefully will get better before it gets worse.
    “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
    ― Issac Asimov

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fishtopher View Post
    Spawning habitat is not the limiting factor in the Sacramento Valley or the Klamath system.
    Wait,what??? Between the water diversions,dammed up traditional spawning areas,and what the Army Corps of Engineers has done to those rivers,as well as 5 dams on the Klamath,a major Dam on the Trinity,how can you back up that statement? No doubt there are other factors but the MAIN factor is severe habitat degradation on our streams. That,is no hunch. It's backed by science.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by avidangler View Post
    Wait,what??? Between the water diversions,dammed up traditional spawning areas,and what the Army Corps of Engineers has done to those rivers,as well as 5 dams on the Klamath,a major Dam on the Trinity,how can you back up that statement? No doubt there are other factors but the MAIN factor is severe habitat degradation on our streams. That,is no hunch. It's backed by science.
    I think you've misinterpreted what I was trying to get at. There is no question that spawning habitat has been affected by the dams, however, juvenile rearing habitat has been disproportionately affected compared to spawning habitat. I do not know of any regulated river in CA where the spawning habitat is fully exploited. Too many spawning fish can actually cause problems in certain systems as the carrying capacity for juveniles has been reached. Juvenile rearing habitat is the limiting factor for almost all salmonid populations, including in CA. Improve rearing conditions, and you will have more fish available for harvest.

    Keep in mind this perspective is coming from the current situation of rivers within CA. Whether we like it or not, most dams are not going to be removed. I am very excited to see the Klamath dams come down as I think we will see an immediate impact in the entire basin due to the disease issue in the Klamath. Losing >90% of your juveniles before they hit the ocean is not conducive to future returns.
    “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
    ― Issac Asimov

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fishtopher View Post
    Losing >90% of your juveniles before they hit the ocean is not conducive to future returns.
    True that, absent C. Shasta juveniles in the Klamath would at least have a chance getting to/in the ocean.

    Bummed for limited Klamath salmon season I was just figuring that up from the mouth fishery out.

    The Shasta River was the biggest producer for the Klamath system. Its spawning habitat is hammered by agricultural water use practices. Fall Chinook come in late enough to get it done down low in the system, though even they suffer as one life history component used the upper river and reared over summer, that habitat is severly impaired by temp, low oxygen and e. coli. The same upper river rearing habitat is where steelies and coho would over summer but fish don't do well in hot sewage water.

    Bummer about valley streams. Though hatchery fish put a bandaid on the habitat problem it is still a problem, they got to get through the delta and that habitat is arguably compromised.

    I landed a Feather hatchery springer a couple years back on a striper trip, it pained me to have to release it as it was bleeding badly and looked so tasty. Guess the otters gotta eat too.

    Andy Marx

  5. #25
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    Just some facts to go along with the blame placing going on in this thread.

    Tim's original post is an action of the PFMC. The state DFW has no jurisdiction or influence over what the PFMC does with offshore salmon.

    The Feather along with the Sac and all tribs of the Sac-SJ Delta, experienced a near total ~85%, multi-year collapse in population abundance over the 2007-2009 seasons. Is it really realistic to expect a full rebound from a collapse of that magnitude?

    In the 9 years of pre-collapse to collapse emigration data for the Feather, the Feather produces on average, over 10 million streamborn Chinook emigrants per season. I have no idea where this notion that instream Chinook production for a river like the Feather is a number so low, it's negligible. It's definitely not congruent with the facts.

    Adult escapement for the Feather from 2010 on, compares pretty favorably to any previous 10 year period for which there's data except the 2001-2006 period which we'll discuss in more detail, because we now know WHY those boom years happened. This science was published in 2018, I wasn't made aware of it until last Dec. That said, I'm shocked that the last ten years is comparable to decades past because we've had multiple consecutive years of drought leading to poor conditions for emigrants inland and the same for marine conditions from 2010 on to the present.

    The LF typically produces more Chinook emigrants than does the HF at about at about a 55-45 split on average with the exception of one year where the HF ~doubled the LF production. Chinooks produced in the HF are ~10mm larger on avg than their cohorts that emerge from the gravel in the LF. Most Feather Chinooks start migration soon after emergence (prior to being mature enough to undergo smoltification) with ~90% of LF fish and ~70% of HF fish hitting the respective screw traps at less than 50mm. This is 'normal' for the Feather and the A. The emigrants also in general, don't get larger to the same extent as the emergence window progresses like we do see happening on a river like the Trinity.

    Streamborn Chinooks were slightly more prone to spawn in the HF than were fish of hatchery origin.

    There was an absolutely bizarre, upstream spatial shift in spawning site selection by adult Chinooks post collapse and we've been left with a HF channel that is now largely devoid of spawning salmon in most seasons. Pre-collapse we typically had Chinooks digging in every riff down to Palm by the end of the 3rd week in Oct even in a below avg escapement season. That simply does not happen any longer.

    Hatchery production on the Feather has not declined over time(see the first graph on the posted clip). It actually increased by about 30% going into the years of the collapse. Target production for the Feather is 6M.

    The second graph shows what really created the boom years on the Feather: Survival rates from emergence to escapement of streamborn Chinooks that was literally ~350-450% greater than it has been in the years after the collapse. In short, the Feather has lost most of its capacity to produce streamborn fish that survive to escapement compared to the boom years.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

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  6. #26
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    I think there's some definitive conclusions that can be drawn:

    1-Churning out millions of fake hatchery fish didn't stop the collapse from occuring.
    2-Reliance on hatcheries to restore abundance has been an epic level failure. As Andy mentioned, we wouldn't be having this discussion it it was working.
    3- Blame placing in lieu of expending the effort to understand what the problems/challenges really are, won't lead to any viable solutions that produce favorable results.
    4- The Feather has the capacity to produce far more streamborn Chinooks than most think it does.

    Also, the run comp data for graph 2 was derived from Strontium isotope analysis for years 2002 to 2010 and constant fractional marking for 2011 and 2012. It would be nice to have similar comp data for years prior to the boom years to see if streamborn escapement ran at similar rates but that data wasn't presented. I know escapement data was not available for 1998 and 1999 for the Feather.

    I've never really thought that enough isolation was present on a truncated river like the Feather for local adaption to occur and that streamborn fish were simply the progeny of hatchery fish that elected to spawn in basin. I don't think that's a safe assumption at this point.

    I do also think the spatial shift in spawning site selection that happened post collapse is a huge contributor to WHY we're where we are at now.

  7. #27
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    Thanks for the insightful post, YC. I'm glad we have two very senior and qualified fish biologists (You and Fishtopher) still posting here giving scientific rationales for what we're all observing. Wish you both would both post more often here, but I do understand your "reluctance" for obvious reasons. I really like this part:
    1-Churning out millions of fake hatchery fish didn't stop the collapse from occuring.
    2-Reliance on hatcheries to restore abundance has been an epic level failure. As Andy mentioned, we wouldn't be having this discussion it it was working.
    3- Blame placing in lieu of expending the effort to understand what the problems/challenges really are, won't lead to any viable solutions that produce favorable results.
    4- The Feather has the capacity to produce far more streamborn Chinooks than most think it does.

    Especially point #3. Since that seems to be what happens here the most.

  8. #28
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    “1-Churning out millions of fake hatchery fish didn't stop the collapse from occuring”

    Fake? They taste pretty real to me. Those “fake” king salmon seem to be doing pretty good in Chile and Argentina. There’s no hatchery on the lower yuba and it’s not pumping out salmon either. I’m no scientist but something about dams seems to be an issue.
    Last edited by Rossflyguy; 05-10-2021 at 09:17 AM.

  9. #29
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    Also, if we compare the Feather river hatchery to the Moke hatchery it’s pretty clear who’s more successful at doing it right. EBMUD actually wants salmon returns versus the way it’s being done by the other hatcheries. Not saying they don’t care but there’s more backing for the Moke hatchery it seems. And the 6 million released is a pony show. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the survival rate less than 1%? I think there is some data that shows the decline of salmon AND striper when those massive water pumps were fired up. I’ll try looking for that stat but it’s pretty interesting. I couldnt imagine how many smolt get sucked into those pumps.

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rossflyguy View Post
    Fake? They taste pretty real to me.
    I’d suggest that how hatchery Chinooks taste probably isn’t the best metric for whether ‘fake’ is an appropriate descriptor. I’d suggest that the mountain of peer reviewed science that details how hatchery products reduce fitness via spawning introgression, impact streamborn abundance via intra- and inter- species competition across all life stages, and a myriad of other means is perhaps a better, more tenable metric. Even though you could literally stack this science like it were multiple cords of firewood, I also think it’s rather naïve to think that we’ve identified all the means and vehicles that hatchery products can impact self-sustaining populations.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rossflyguy View Post
    Those “fake” king salmon seem to be doing pretty good in Chile and Argentina.
    I don’t know much about South American Chinooks but a quick google search reveals they were initially introduced multiple times (unsuccessfully) for recreational means and really didn’t establish until the Aquaculture industry succeeded (but gave up before the pops established) and the established pops expanded and these populations became self-sustaining. So yes these fish are derived from WA hatchery stock, but those South American Chinooks have been allowed to evolve in basin and have achieved a high degree of local adaptation, because there also isn’t a network of fish hatcheries on those rivers churning out millions of hatchery products annually. That’s the actual problem here (streamborn progeny of Hatchery products in the Sacto and it’s tribs can’t ever get to that level of local adaptation, along with the wild pops that have some measure of temporal or spacial separation (think Yuba River) but not complete isolation, being ground down constantly over time via exposure and negative interactions of all types with fake, rubber hatchery fish.

    The goal for Hatchery reform in CA is actually more akin to creating an environs where what has happened in those SA Chinooks CAN happen here. Not trying to bag on you, but the fact you think this is a valid criticism of and not a ringing endorsement for hatchery reform, illustrates just how badly you fail to understand the nature of the problem or the goals of hatchery reform.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rossflyguy View Post
    There’s no hatchery on the lower yuba and it’s not pumping out salmon either.
    As Fishtopher mentioned, the Yuba follows similar trends to the other Sacto tribs, because the inland bottleneck @emigration is shared, as are marine conditions. Even though there’s no hatchery on the Yuba the genetic influence of hatcheries on other tribs is visibly present on the Yuba.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rossflyguy View Post
    Also, if we compare the Feather river hatchery to the Moke hatchery it’s pretty clear who’s more successful at doing it right. EBMUD actually wants salmon returns versus the way it’s being done by the other hatcheries. Not saying they don’t care but there’s more backing for the Moke hatchery it seems.

    I couldnt imagine how many smolt get sucked into those pumps.
    I can see why you would think things are all rosy on the Moke IF you’re soley relying on main stream media for your information, but the peer reviewed science on the Moke paints a much bleaker picture: most of those boom years on the Moke in terms of adult escapement is largely a result of strays from other rivers showing up on the Moke; in critically dry to avg years survival from emergence (and for hatchery fish released in river) to the salt is effectively zero; highest survival for SJ trib fish actually occurs when those fish hit the screens at the pumping facilities and get a taxi ride to the bay, etc

    https://afspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....002/nafm.10063

    I paid to read this article, but since you didn’t trust my input on Jimmy Stone’s Unspawned, maybe you’ll trust Moyle’s:

    https://californiawaterblog.com/2018...oaquin-salmon/

    Moyle’s opinion on higher flows not positively impacting SJ salmon survival is a bit over the top, and there’s plenty of data that says survival increases if flows are high enough over a critical window.

    His other talking points for the most part, I’m in agreement with.

    Other aspects of Moke fish production and management might seem more ‘progressive’ than the Feather but that’s because the Moke has far more challenges and those actions need to be more progressive to make the Moke viable. It has nothing to do with caring more and EBMUD might foot the bill for operational costs, but the Moke facility is owned, operated and staffed by the state.

    The Moke facility raises 2 fish. Fall Chinooks and O. Mykiss. The Moke has had chronic and ongoing Mykiss production problems and actually has for years, imported hatchery Mykiss from the Feather hatchery. So, I wouldn't agree that the Moke facility is golden when it has more challenges and actually has had to rely of the Feather facility to produce half the species they support.

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