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Posted in Uncategorized
The most prominent appeal in this discussion was whether we can move away from litigation and towards more collaborative processes to restore the wild populations of Columbia salmon and steelhead. The agreement between 3 tribes and federal agencies (the “Columbia Basin Accords”) may be a step in the right direction. However, many feel the 2008 biological opinion (“BiOp”) is not acceptable and that the Federal agencies need to have their feet held to the fire (by Judge Redden, potentially .
The speakers made a strong suggestion that salmon fisheries will be closed again this year south of Cape Falcon. This is due to the poor condition of the Sacramento River runs, but will also presumably help protect runs from the Kalamath, Rogue, and OR coastal rivers. Ocean conditions north of Cape Falcon are looking about the same as last year (moderate) and we may have a stronger Columbia Coho year. The Pacific Fisheries Management Commission will meet next week; folks will probably start fishing around May 1.
Rob of Trout Unlimited was clearest: There are 1000s of miles of good habitat in the Snake River Basin (NE Oregon and Idaho). If you took down the 4 lower Snake River dams, you would enable wild runs to access that potential salmon refuge. We haven’t had a regional dialogue about realistic solutions to the goal of salmon recovery (to which most parties agree)! The courtroom encourages battle lines, not a serious, creative problem-solving approach. At the end of the day, the only way to have sustainable runs is to have access to habitat in healthy river systems. We’ve spent about $8B on salmonid recovery since initial listing in 1991 and the long-term trends are generally pointing towards extinction of wild runs.
Jerry (42′ salmon trolling fisherman) was also well-spoken: Rail is a good competitor for transport which is the main service provided by the lower Snake River. A problem with 400ton barges is that smaller wheat farmers must aggregate their product and can only get commodity prices. Rail cars could allow an organic wheat farmer to differentiate their product. This year we’re still looking at survival. Eight years from now I hope we’ll have honest commitments from the hydrosystem (the BPA and Army Corp have been too insulated by past administrations). Recent biological opinions have downplayed the impacts of the hydrosystem and have especially avoided the elephant in the room: the lower Snake dams.
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Here is an excerpt from yesterday’s WDFW announcement that describes the forecasts for many Columbia and Salish Sea salmon runs. To Pat’s credit, there was a quick correction to a painful error (suggesting that adipose-clipped fish weren’t hatchery fish). In conjunction with the process-map in the previous post, these dates should help us orca-advocates be in the right place at the right time to “speak for the whale’s” share of NW salmon… Better speak now before they start shooting orcas like the CA sea lions lounging at the Bonneville debacle…
Preseason salmon forecasts developed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and treaty Indian tribes, were released today at a public meeting in Olympia.
Forecasts for chinook, coho, sockeye, pink and chum salmon mark the starting point for developing 2009 salmon-fishing seasons in Puget Sound, the Columbia River and Washington coastal areas. Fishery managers have scheduled a series of public meetings through March before finalizing fishing seasons in early April.
While several salmon runs are up this year, fishery managers still face a number of challenges in crafting fisheries that meet conservation goals for weak salmon stocks, said Phil Anderson, WDFW’s interim director.
“Conservation of wild fish will continue to be our top priority,” Anderson said. “We will work hard with tribal co-managers and our constituents to create fishing opportunities for hatchery fish while ensuring that we are successful in meeting conservation objectives for wild fish populations.”
One constraining stock this year is the Bonneville Pool hatchery fall chinook run, a major contributor to Washington’s coastal fisheries. Although the overall return of Columbia River fall chinook is forecasted to be higher than last year, catch quotas for chinook in the river and the ocean will likely be low because of the poor Bonneville Pool return and restrictions needed to protect wild salmon listed under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).
While salmon forecasts are up overall in the Columbia River, coho and chinook returns to Puget Sound are expected to be slightly down this year.
A few individual Puget Sound coho stocks, including the Skagit and Stillaguamish, are expected to return at low levels and will require additional protective measures this summer, said Pat Pattillo, salmon policy coordinator for WDFW. The overall summer/fall chinook forecast for Puget Sound, where wild chinook salmon are listed for protection under the federal ESA, is 222,000 fish, a slight decrease from last year’s forecast.
“It’s important that we continue working to recover and protect wild salmon populations in Puget Sound,” Pattillo said. “One management tool we can use that helps with those recovery efforts and allows us to provide meaningful recreational fishing opportunities is mark-selective fisheries.”
In the last two years, WDFW has added several recreational mark-selective fisheries for hatchery chinook in Puget Sound. These fisheries allow anglers to catch and keep abundant hatchery salmon – marked with a missing adipose fin – but require that they release wild salmon.
Pattillo said consideration of additional mark-selective fisheries for hatchery chinook in Puget Sound, as well as in the ocean, will be on the agenda during this year’s North of Falcon meetings.
A bright spot for Puget Sound this year is the pink salmon run. More than 5.1 million pink salmon are expected back to Puget Sound streams this summer, nearly 2 million more fish than forecasted in 2007. The smallest of the Pacific salmon species, the majority of pink salmon return to Washington’s waters only in odd-numbered years.
Another strong fall chum salmon return also is forecasted for Hood Canal and other areas of Puget Sound, where the run is expected to total nearly 915,000 fish. But a Lake Washington sockeye fishery is unlikely this year. The sockeye forecast is about 20,000, well below the minimum return of 350,000 sockeye needed to consider opening a recreational fishery in the lake.
Meanwhile, coho returns to several coastal rivers, including the Hoh and Quillayute, are expected to be up this year, Pattillo said.
State, tribal and federal fishery managers will meet March 8-13 in SeaTac with the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) to develop options for this year’s commercial and recreational ocean chinook and coho salmon fisheries. The PFMC establishes fishing seasons in ocean waters off the Pacific Coast.
Seven additional public meetings have been scheduled in March to discuss regional fisheries issues. Input from these regional discussions will be considered as the season-setting process moves into the “North of Falcon” and PFMC meetings, which will determine the final 2009 salmon seasons. The meetings are set for:
* March 4 – Grays Harbor fisheries discussion, 6 p.m.-8 p.m., Montesano City Hall, 112 N. Main St., Montesano.
* March 5 – Willapa Bay fisheries discussion, 6 p.m.-8 p.m., Raymond Elks Lodge, 326 Third St., Raymond.
* March 11 – Puget Sound commercial fisheries discussion, 10 a.m.-noon, WDFW Mill Creek Office, 16018 Mill Creek Blvd., Mill Creek.
* March 11 – Puget Sound recreational fisheries discussion, 6 p.m.-8 p.m., WDFW Mill Creek Office, 16018 Mill Creek Blvd., Mill Creek.
* March 16 – Columbia River fisheries discussion, 9 a.m.-3 p.m., Vancouver Water Resources Education Center, 4600 S.E. Columbia Way, Vancouver, Wash.
* March 19 – Final Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay fisheries meeting, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Room 172 of the Natural Resources Building, 1111 Washington St. S.E., Olympia.
* March 19 – North of Falcon salmon fisheries discussion, 6 p.m.-9 p.m. Benton PUD, 2721 W. 10th Ave., Kennewick.Two public North of Falcon meetings, which involve planning fishing seasons for Washington’s waters, including Puget Sound, also will take place in March. The first meeting is scheduled March 17 at the Lacey Community Center, and the second meeting is scheduled March 31 at the Lynwood Embassy Suites. Both meetings will begin at 9 a.m.
The PFMC is expected to adopt the final ocean fishing seasons and harvest levels at its April 4-9 meeting in Millbrae, Calif. The 2009 salmon fisheries package for Washington’s inside waters will be completed by the state and tribal co-managers during the PFMC’s April meeting.
Preseason salmon forecasts, proposed fishing options and details on upcoming meetings will be posted as they become available on WDFW’s North of Falcon website at http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/northfalcon/ .
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Intro by Miles (Chip) Boothe
Over 600 vessels have been escorted by the Neah Bay tug since it first started operating in 1999; 6 involved throwing lines to a vessel in distress. This afternoon the legislature is looking at a new measure to fund the tug permanently (beyond the 1 year that Governor Gregoire recently promised) and transfer the burden of cost to the maritime shipping industry.
See Fred Felleman’s guest column in the Seattle Pi (Feb 4, 2009) [~40% of tankers calling on WA are single-hulled; WA has 5 refiners that process 9 billion gallons crude/yr;
Dan Doty: Slick Fixes for the Salish Sea – Restoring Natural Resources after Oil Spills
Prevention is important, but what happens if a spill occurs? Three types of responses:
Most spills are small. NRDA is WA compensation schedule ($1-100/Gal damages go into a fund that is used for restoration)
Bigger spills involve planning and preparation:
Restoration is the goal of this whole process. We need to invest in preparation to do a good job when a spill happens.
Evaluating Capacity to Respond to Large-scale Oil Spills in Puget Sound and the Georgia Basin, Jacqui Brown-Miller
Later this week the Washington Oil Spill Advisory Council will publish “Assessment of capacity in WA State to respond to large-scale marine oil spills.” This is a synopsis of the assessment of what to do in the first 48 hours after a ~50k barrel spill. The results of the study will likely guide upcoming policy revisions.
Response modes:
Results:
Looking to the Future – Training, Drills, and Exercises, David Sawicki
Dept of Ecology has a Spill Drill checklist that is aligned with the Northwest Area Contingency Plan and designed to test the functionality of the Incident Command System. Federally, there is National Preparedness for Response Plan document.
The present state: Incident Command System is probably best in the world
Future state: Increased focus on field activities (not incident command post where we are excellent)
We need to do this through workshops and coordinated training (leveraging proximal refineries and response organizations). We need to move past repetitive checklist 3-year cycle approach. “Many of us are ready for graduate school.” We also need to develop more realistic goals (only a mag 9 earthquake would cause some of the scenarios we train for…)
Panel discussion
Kathy Fletcher: Prevention is the most important thing we can do. Right now we have a 5cent/barrel tax that funds our prevention and response activities, but the revenue is unpredictable because if oil is shipped out of WA the tax is refunded. The Oil Spill Advisory Council needs to advise the legislature on ways to stabilize the revenue (though the Governor has suggested abolishing the Council itself). This March 24th will mark the 20th anniversary of the Exxon spill where lack of vigilance was the main reason the damage was so grave.
Richard Wright: Runs largest private, non-profit Marine Spill Response Company (4M barrel clean-up capacity, nationally??). WA State is very well prepared and we have an MOA with Burrard, a Canadian counterpart. A single phone call will access their full resources.
Linda Pilkey-Jarvis: possible big spills are from 10k barrels to ~3M barrels. We have gained rules in latest regulatory framework that make review of plans optimal, e.g. standards for skimmer efficiency equipment. We’ve pushed equipment caches to outer coast areas and San Juan Islands. Some companies are close to compliance, but many have a ways to go as we begin this 3 year process. Before plans are approved, we go into field to verify procedures and resources.
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long-term fate and bioaccumulation of PCBs in Puget Sound,
Models of contaminant kinetics:
Since 1990s, English sole PCBs have been increasing (but not in other species). This may be caused by on-going external loading. Our model predictions match measured biota within a factor of 2.
External loading in Puget Sound is probably non-point source from watersheds. Policies that control general toxics loading and runoff should help reduce PCB loading.
Scott: External loading is still a problem?! The orca community should be lobbying HARD for global PCB bans!
James Maroncelli
Phase 1 of toxic loadings to PS initiated in 2006 by a coalition (PSAT+WA Ecology+…): realized that air deposition was an important pathway
Phase 2: spring 07 $300k from EPA, $300 from Ecology TPA, $55k NOAA funded all programs (because we established a framework for project prioritzation)
Sources
Phase 3: hope to attain funding from national estuary, trying to align with action agenda, but didn’t want to wait in part because Norm Dix wanted to start fixing problems asap. Year 1 projects focused on analyzing surface runoff, sediments, biota, including $310k from WA legislature on atmospheric deposition (via PSP). First of these projects will report in June, 2009.
Phase 3, year 2: starting to use action agenda for guidance, PSP wanted an inventory of toxic chemicals by spring 2010 to inform second version of Action Agenda which is due in Sept 2010. Projects: 3-6 may be funded, proposals due to EPA March 1; Transferring responsibility for toxic loading to PSP science panel. Joel Baker says funding will be “pragmatic.” Decision process for potential Oct 2009 funding is to be more formal and rely on recommendations of PSP Science Panel.
Lyndal Johnson, NWFSC
Pre-spawn mortality of salmon is occurring in restored urban streams. It is associated with urban development, road traffic, and storm water runoff, but concentrations of toxics aren’t high enough to account for the convulsions and lethargy. We suspect a synergistic effect of multiple pollutants.
PAHs affect embryo development in spawned herring eggs (e.g. heart defects).
These problems would not have been identified without monitoring for contaminants as well as biological effects. Sometimes the source is the food web, not water or sediments. Contaminants may be having damaging effects at sub-lethal concentrations (e.g. copper at 5-20 ng/l decreasing predator evasion and other behaviors that depend on olfaction).
What monitoring is currently being done in PS as part of PSAMP?
What is a biologically-integrated Observing System for Toxics (tBIOS):
