West coast salmon recovery

[Irrelevant]

I will have a hard time accepting that habitat loss isn't part of the problem.

Part, sure, always. But almost certainly less than everyone thinks. We have almost completely pristine watersheds that are very close to pre-contact conditions, that have almost no salmon or steelhead. The Queets, Hoh, Bogi, Sol Duc, Quinault, and even most of the Humptulips, there are no dams, very few homes, and minimal timber harvest.

 

[Irrelevant]

In my opinion I think the anti hatchery folks in the lower 48 caused a lot of this. They thought that hatchery fish were out competing native fish so they started a campaign to demonize hatcheries. In reality large numbers of hatchery fish were providing the buffer of mass numbers of fish to reduce the effects of all of the other impacts listed above.

In steelhead, it's fairly well documented that hatchery competition does harm native fry and smolts.

Hatchery Selection and the Effects of Egg Size on Steelhead Growth and Development

An ambitious and hopeful effort to protect and restore the wild steelhead.

www.wildsteelheaders.org

I have read a few things over the years that the impacts in other species are not as "bad"

 

[R.K.]

Part, sure, always. But almost certainly less than everyone thinks. We have almost completely pristine watersheds that are very close to pre-contact conditions, that have almost no salmon. The Queets, Hoh, Bogi, Sol Duc, Quinault, and even most of the Humptulips, there are no dams, very few homes, and minimal timber harvest.

Any chance the outlets of those streams flow past salmon pens?

 

[Irrelevant]

Any chance the outlets of those streams flow past salmon pens?

I don't believe so. They all discharge to the open pacific, and all the net pens are in protected waters of some sort.

 

[Salmonchaser]

Not only is there quite a bit of good habitat in the Northwest but consider Alaska where most of the salmon streams have very little disturbance on them. The adults can’t spawn in rarified beautiful habitat if they can’t get by the nets.

 

[Goodfish]

Not only is there quite a bit of good habitat in the Northwest but consider Alaska where most of the salmon streams have very little disturbance on them. The adults can’t spawn in rarified beautiful habitat if they can’t get by the nets.

That is exactly right. The spawning grounds and competition on the spawning grounds don’t matter much when nothing is coming back to benefit. Now it is a math problem that having fewer salmon in total means they receive a greater impact from everything else.

 

[Goodfish]

In steelhead, it's fairly well documented that hatchery competition does harm native fry and smolts.

Hatchery Selection and the Effects of Egg Size on Steelhead Growth and Development

An ambitious and hopeful effort to protect and restore the wild steelhead.

www.wildsteelheaders.org

I have read a few things over the years that the impacts in other species are not as "bad

In steelhead, it's fairly well documented that hatchery competition does harm native fry and smolts.

Hatchery Selection and the Effects of Egg Size on Steelhead Growth and Development

An ambitious and hopeful effort to protect and restore the wild steelhead.

www.wildsteelheaders.org

I have read a few things over the years that the impacts in other species are not as "bad"

It’s true if there were enough fish returning to actually compete. I think the big issue there was experimenting with separate genetic strains within the same river to alter run timing. You can tell a hatchery steelhead immediately from a native and they pretty well suck in comparison. But in terms of math, having a lot of the hatchery fish keeps the sea lions and everything else from keeping native fish populations down and lets them get reestablished faster.