By Russ Mohney, russm@localaccess.com, The Chronicle Friday, July 25, 2003
In a brief but chilling statement this week, officials of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife announced they have found several hundred escaped Atlantic salmon swimming freely in Scatter Creek near Grand Mound. The non-native species were found during a stream survey a few days ago.
About 250 juvenile Atlantic salmon, some up to a foot long, were sighted in the creek during a snorkeling survey late last week. The biologists collected 17 juvenile Atlantics and took them to the WDFW lab in Olympia for genetic testing and analysis. It is not known how long the fish have been in Scatter Creek.
Scatter Creek, a Chehalis River tributary, is home to a healthy, naturally spawning coho salmon population. Atlantic salmon are not native to the Pacific Coast and — like other non-native species — can compete with native fish for food and habitat. On some rivers in Alaska and British Columbia, the accidental introduction of Atlantic salmon from commercial hatcheries has had a devastating effect on local, native salmon and trout populations.
WDFW biologists and representatives of Cypress Island, which operates the commercial hatchery on the creek, plan to meet to determine how to remove Atlantic salmon from the creek, prevent future fish escapes from the hatchery and step up monitoring for hatchery escapees.
Biologists, meanwhile, are exploring ways to remove the Atlantic salmon from the creek without harming native species. Possible methods include hand-netting the fish from the creek, electroshocking the creek, or constructing a trap that would allow the Atlantic salmon to be removed from the creek as they migrate downstream, according to John Kerwin, WDFW’s head hatchery official.
Following the announcement, we talked with other WDFW biologists in the area and learned that juvenile Atlantic salmon had been captured in a trap further down the Chehalis earlier, during a smolt survey, but apparently no public disclosure was made at that time.
We talked with a local angler who had drifted the Skookumchuck earlier this week and had observed several schools of salmon smolt that were 10-12 inches long, much larger than either chinook or coho salmon are expected to be at this time of summer.
We cannot know yet if Atlantics are present in the Skookumchuck, but he is hoping to catch and identify a couple of those stocks. If they are, indeed, Atlantic salmon, there is a definite threat to the native chinook and planted coho stocks in our backyard river.
The discovery of Atlantic salmon in local waters may have been the impetus for a grant from the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission to the WDFW to conduct the survey on Scatter Creek. A total of 13 other watersheds will be investigated as a result of that grant.
The Cypress Island hatchery at Scatter Creek produces about 3 million Atlantic salmon juveniles annually for transfer to the company’s eight marine net pen sites throughout Puget Sound. Those, in turn, produce 11 to 14 million pounds of salmon each year.
Given the volume of non-native salmon being bred on the Chehalis, it seems likely that the potential for escape is high. The evidence at hand is now incontrovertible; some Atlantic salmon have escaped into the Chehalis system, and there are Atlantics swimming free in the watershed. If they infiltrate the Skookumchuck, Newaukum and other Chehalis tributaries — which evidence seems to indicate they have — the effect on native stocks could be significant.
There will be a concerted effort to remove or neutralize the escapees from Scatter Creek. If, however, the alien salmon have already moved into the Chehalis and other tributaries, the effort must go far beyond the confines of that little stream.
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