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We Need Hatcheries by Editorial Board The Daily Astorian, December 6, 2010

Until there is a better alternative

Few news stories arouse such intense debate as those about salmon hatcheries. Les Blumenthal, a talented reporter working for the chain that owns newspapers in Tacoma, Anchorage and elsewhere, waded into a big brouhaha last week with a piece claiming that too many hatchery salmon are threatening the survival of wild runs in the North Pacific.

Mostly based on research and comments by a private fisheries consultant in Seattle, Blumenthal's story begins with a provocative contention that the North Pacific may be running out of fish nutrients because nations around the Pacific Rim have increased hatchery production in recent decades.

Besides those in the U.S., which are currently under a federal threat of cutbacks, hatcheries in Canada, Russia, China and Japan have increased production from 500 million in 1970 to 5 billion in 2008, according to Gregory Ruggerone of Natural Resources Consultants. Even after factoring in the tremendous mortality of hatchery fish, he says this has doubled the number of adults vying for survival in the ocean.

Citing unnamed studies, the story claims competition for food is driving down the size of salmon, making them more vulnerable to predators, while some runs are declining in overall quantity. (But here on the Columbia, although coho struggled a bit in 2010, the adult chinook count at Bonneville Dam exceeded 809,000, compared to 480,000 in 2009 and the 10-year average of 624,000.)

Needless to say, Ruggerone's claims are nutritious fodder for those who see all hatcheries as evil transgressions on the natural order. However, just as in physics where every action has an equal and opposite reaction, in salmon management any assertion will quickly be met with sharply contrasting theories and facts.

Some of the reader reactions in the Anchorage Daily News are at least as interesting as the story itself:

• "The hatchery issue has many facets. For the Columbia River, hatcheries were part of a promise to mitigate for the destruction of salmon runs with the building of the hydroelectric dams. Chinook and coho are the dominant species released. ... Those of us watching (the National Marine Fisheries Service) do all it can, including shading science to defend the hydroelectric system and then justify the federal failure to mitigate for the dam's impacts, can only write our letters and hope that some day someone (U.S. Sen. Patty Murray) in high places will wake up with a conscience and resolve to help salmon in her last term in the senate."

• "It is high time that we invest some of this squandered (Endangered Species Act funding) and other federal, state, and native/tribal funds into a comprehensive high-sea and near-shore study that provides us with the results we need to understand carrying capacity concerns."

• "The only thing they can point to is that pink and chums in the Pacific are generally performing more consistently than some wild stock salmon. But once the data is examined, you find that some chum and pink hatchery returns aren't doing so well and some natural stocks are doing great."

• "This past season the Fraser River had the biggest run of reds since 1911, over 30 million fish, the past few even numbered years the pink runs in Puget Sound have been growing at an exponential rate, this past year the Columbia River had the largest run of reds since they began counting in 1938. These Columbia River fish had been just about wiped out. All of the 'experts' are at a loss to explain this."

• "Global climate change, pollution, deforestation, hydroelectric power, irrigation, habitat loss, agriculture, overfishing, intercept fisheries, bycatch in the pollock trawl fisheries, depletion of prey species by commercial fisheries targeting stocks lower on the food chain all have impacted salmon but hatcheries are the villains? Give me a break."