Poor salmon returns expected in 1998 The Associated Press 02/28/98 6:00 PM Eastern
OLYMPIA (AP) -- Don't expect to go fishing for salmon much this year.
That's the message from state Department of Fish and Wildlife managers, who forecast most salmon runs returning to state waters this year will be in poor shape and provide only limited fisheries.
They blamed warming ocean conditions caused by El Nino and continuing degradation of rivers and streams on which salmon depend to start and end their lives.
"We've been reducing salmon harvest for years but it hasn't been enough," Bruce Crawford, head of the department's Fish Management Program, said Friday.
"The salmon habitat problems have to be addressed by state, local and tribal governments as well as everyone from the big corporations right down to the fisher on the river, or there is no future for this Northwestern totem."
Crawford said he expected the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which sets ocean fishing seasons, to propose options ranging from no fishing to limited opportunities for hatchery fish at coastal areas such as Ilwaco and Westport.
He said he hoped hatchery stocks would provide some chances for fishing in Puget Sound.
"We'll try to provide fishing benefits where we can without harming wild stocks," he said. In instances when hatchery fish mingle with wild salmon, seasons are limited to allow wild fish to reach their spawning grounds.
Washington salmon seasons will be set in April.
The forecast held no surprises. It came one day after the National Marine Fisheries Service proposed listing 13 salmon stocks, ranging from Washington to central California, under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Those proposed for listing from Washington include Puget Sound chinook, Hood Canal summer chum, Ozette Lake sockeye, upper Columbia spring chinook, middle Columbia steelhead, lower Columbia chum, lower Columbia chinook, and Snake River fall chinook.
The Friday forecast meeting included sport and commercial fishers, conservationists and businesspeople.
Carol Smith, the department's chinook program manager, said Puget Sound chinook stocks, except for the Nisqually and Green River runs, have been in decline for three decades.
She said only one Columbia River chinook stock -- upper-river brights -- is expected to have a relatively healthy return. She attributed their success to the facts that they spawn in the Hanford Reach, the free-flowing part of the Columbia, and that they forage in Alaska waters, where warm El Nino currents do not reach.
Coho manager Bill Tweit said large numbers of wild and hatchery smolts went to sea in 1997 "but it appears ocean survival for coastal and Columbia River stocks was very poor." Though it's not clear what effect El Nino currents had on Puget Sound stocks, he noted coho, or silver salmon, returning last year were unusually small -- a bad sign to fish biologists.
El Nino characteristically warms ocean waters, reducing food sources for salmon and allowing such fish as mackeral to move north, where they forage on young salmon.
Early runs of Columbia River coho should provide some fishing opportunities, but late runs were expected to be poor, he said.
Meanwhile, the City of Seattle said it would commit to increasing stream flow on the Cedar River, and would make improvements to help move fish past the Hiram Chittendon Locks in Seattle and Landsburg Diversion Dam on the upper Cedar.
A fish ladder on the Landsburg dam will open 17 miles of habitat to chinook, coho and steelhead for the first time in a century, Seattle Public Utilities said in a release.
©1998 Oregon Live LLC
Back to Fish Index Page
Back to Whats New Index Page
Back to Chehalis River Council Index Page