West coast salmon recovery

Bullbrl said:
We won't see it again. Too many things will have to change and people aren't willing to make those sacrifices.
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I know but I feel so bad for folks that have never seen a strong salmon run. While I was guiding in Alaska we had a few days every year when 250,000 sockeye came up the river in one day, most of those in a 12 hour period between commercial openings. Occasionally the com fish guys would net 1,000,000 sockeye in a day.
It is a sight to behold.
Every other year we would get a huge run of pinks in the river. Upwards of 1,000,000 would settle into a one mile stretch of river. You had to work at it not to catch fish.
I liked to get my clients to quit fishing for awhile and just watch. As often as not they quit trying to kill all the fish they could after that. Catch a few to take home then go catch and release rainbows and Char.
 

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We found that population recovery of these mobile species following restoration of habitat connectivity takes time. Some responses continued to increase linearly 15 years after restoration, while others appeared to plateau about 10 years after restoration. Additionally, the restoration response differed by species, life stage, and streamflow variability, likely due to differences in life history, including the timing of reproduction, extent of freshwater rearing, and propensity to disperse from natal habitat. The pace of upstream population expansion by juvenile coho salmon and mountain whitefish declined linearly with distance from the site of restoration, demonstrating the importance of environmental context in shaping the spatial footprint of the restoration response. While these results are compelling, restoration response trajectories may shift with changes in source populations, climate, season, and land use. Moreover, coho and Chinook salmon are subject to interannual variation in marine survival of juveniles and adults as well as harvest, so their abundance and distribution depend only in part on conditions in the river.
 
neffa3 said:
We found that population recovery of these mobile species following restoration of habitat connectivity takes time. Some responses continued to increase linearly 15 years after restoration, while others appeared to plateau about 10 years after restoration. Additionally, the restoration response differed by species, life stage, and streamflow variability, likely due to differences in life history, including the timing of reproduction, extent of freshwater rearing, and propensity to disperse from natal habitat. The pace of upstream population expansion by juvenile coho salmon and mountain whitefish declined linearly with distance from the site of restoration, demonstrating the importance of environmental context in shaping the spatial footprint of the restoration response. While these results are compelling, restoration response trajectories may shift with changes in source populations, climate, season, and land use. Moreover, coho and Chinook salmon are subject to interannual variation in marine survival of juveniles and adults as well as harvest, so their abundance and distribution depend only in part on conditions in the river.
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I'm not a fisheries biologist, but I'm obsessed with the topic and read everything I can find on the subject.

Montgomery points out how changes in the riverbed are as critical to salmon loss/recovery as dam removal. The fish need gravel beds, log jams, meanderings,and other features which are likely no longer there. Nobody wants to talk about it, but siltation occurs from ag erosion and logging far upstream of the actual dams.

I hope the Klamath salmon come up the river and find what they need.
 
44hunter45 said:
I'm not a fisheries biologist, but I'm obsessed with the topic and read everything I can find on the subject.

Montgomery points out how changes in the riverbed are as critical to salmon loss/recovery as dam removal. The fish need gravel beds, log jams, meanderings,and other features which are likely no longer there. Nobody wants to talk about it, but siltation occurs from ag erosion and logging far upstream of the actual dams.

I hope the Klamath salmon come up the river and find what they need.
Click to expand...
Yes, but I also think he's jaded into an ideology that doesn't necessarily fit reality. I've come to think of most of the salmon restoration space as an echo chamber where too many people are profiting off the current restoration model (plus people want to do something... anything).

Take the Queets River (or any of the OP rivers for that matter). We are seeing long-term catastrophic declines in unaltered pristine habitat. While opening up habitat can't help but improve things, there have to be larger issuing at play.
 
My friend is laying 100 full trees in a streambed in the Apache NF on private land to help restore the Gila trout fishery on the land. It takes work to restore natural features .
One reason there are no trout on the San Francisco River anymore is it is a drainage channel now in all reality.

I fished it in 1963 before everyone got a 4x4 and just drove the river for fun. Now your lucky to see minnows.
 

Not going to lie. I submitted a comment against removal. This is a topic I've shifted around on, and may shift back again.

IMO there's not enough data to support removal. There too many crashing stocks that have no dams and exceptional habitat. While we are constantly learning more and more about micro-contamination and as @Goodfish has posted about, commercial fishing in the ocean could be a huge impact that we aren't addressing, but which would be a helluva lot easier than removing those dams.
 
neffa3 said:

Not going to lie. I submitted a comment against removal. This is a topic I've shifted around on, and may shift back again.

IMO there's not enough data to support removal. They’re too many crashing stocks that have no dams and exceptional habitat. While we are constantly learning more and more about micro-contamination and as @Goodfish has posted about, commercial fishing in the ocean could be a huge impact that we aren't addressing, but which would be a helluva lot easier than removing those dams.
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I agree that removing the lower Snake River dams is politically motivated and not supported by science at this point. If I were to support it, it would be for upland bird hunting opportunities that were inundated with the dams. I am more curious about the effects removing the Hells Canyon complex and the Grand Coulee blockades and seeing if that additional spawning territory has any effect. (Likely not). At least spend the money on fish ladders at those end of the line dams. All of the best salmon runs in the lower 48 are coming from hatchery stocks and that may never change in my lifetime. The variables that affect Washington and Oregon are that our fish are intercepted in the ocean by our own ocean fishing fleets, Canadian and Alaskan sports and commercial fleets as well as bycatch and illegal fisheries. Then there is this huge unknown of temperatures of the high seas and the effects on baitfish and subsequently salmon. Add in some guys that are fishing millions of tons of Krill for your vitamin pills and cat food. It seems to be a huge race to the bottom and every political opinion is represented. We blamed logging for two decades. As @Neffa has pointed out there are excellent examples of Washington rivers with no logging that are still fish poor( Elwha, Solduc, Hoh, Queets, etc.) Yet by comparison the Bristol Bay complex produces increasingly enormous amounts of sockeye without hatchery augmentation and has been successfully commercially fished and sport fished for over a hundred years. That said, even Bristol Bays’ Chinook stocks and most of the rest of Alaska‘s are in the toilet. The only group that is not being curtailed are the trawlers. They are essentially self policed and the State of Alaska is beholden to that money. As a consumer about all we can do is yell at every opportunity and refuse to buy trawl caught cod and pollack. Boycott the Fillet-O Fish at McDonalds! There are no simple answers to this one but everyone should share in the solution. Salmon are such magnificent fish and I won’t let them disappear without a fight. Sorry about the rant!
 
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