Puget Sound Steelheading

[Backstrap]

Considering the biomass of anadromous fish in the north Pacific is a fraction of what it was historically, I cannot imagine that there is any serious competition for food out there amongst salmon species. Maybe in extreme warm water years but even then I think it would be a stretch.

There may be a fraction of the anadromous fish (I don’t know) but there’s a fraction of the food also. Especially in warm water years where zooplankton production can be reduced by over 90%. There absolutely is competition for food, or to put it another way, food shortages.
.
I have it from good authorities that there is an over abundance of whales too. Whales that eat herring, krill, etc. 
.
Here’s an interesting article to maybe refute the overall biomass claim. Lotsa pinks out there...
.
https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2019/04/17/pink-salmon-expected-to-drive-alaska-commercial-salmon-harvest-up-this-season-forecast-says/
.
Your mileage may vary...
.
.

[7mmfan]

@Skillet thoughts on this? I have no data to support my assumptions but we're talking about an ecosystem that really hasn't changed that much over millennia. The only part of it that is targeted is the anadromous fish. Whales have only recently recovered from historic lows caused by excessive whale hunting. 500, 600, 700 years ago there was huge numbers of whales and salmon feeding in these zones. You are right that warm water years cause zooplankton numbers to drop. Sometimes precipitously,  but that has also been happening for millenia.

[Skillet]

I think the Gulf of Alaska food web has changed significantly since the Blob in 2015.  Herring have been relatively scarce the last few years, but are coming back. However, they're much smaller now for their age than they were in 2014.  Massive seabird dieoffs around the GOA in recent years point to food shortages.  I don't think baleen wales have much of an overall effect on the food web, but they can sure make a dent in a localized biomass of forage.  Ask any hatchery manager that's released smolts into the salt in the last 5 years.  Whales are smart, big, and obvious - so some folks like to focus on them as a villain. 

I also think any impact on the food web has as much to do with hatchery chum as hatchery pinks.  AK hatchery production of chum has increased several thousand percent since 2014.  Chums may not eat herring as much as other salmon, but they do eat what herring eat. 

Basically, though, I don't think the amount of hatchery fish we're putting out is necessarily wrong, or bad.  We're just putting them out at a time when the overall food web in the GOA is recovering from a significant body blow and has a different profile than it did a short 5 years ago.  It may take another 5 years to come back to"normal," or it may be that we have to accept the status quo as our new normal.  I'm sure this cycle had happened a lot over the ages, but it's what we're dealing with right now so it seems more dramatic than a blob 100 years ago.  Humans have a penchant for the dramatic.  As an example - how many more forum posts are there about the Corona virus today than there were 100 years ago about the Spanish flu? 

In summary, I do think it is different out here than it was a few years ago, but I don't think it is all nearly as bad as some people like to think it is.

 

[7mmfan]

Way to take the middle road.    I'll accept that ocean conditions are poor, and that my previous statement about no lack of food was wrong. Clearly, 5 years of warm ocean conditions have made available food for young anadromous fish and herring more difficult to come by. Hatchery pinks and chums play a roll in that. I still don't think that's the cause of the decline in Puget Sound steelhead runs.

[2MANY]

Sounds like I need to give up eating sushi or steelhead fishing.

[7mmfan]

Sounds like I need to give up eating sushi or steelhead fishing.

Well? Which will it be?

[Stein]

I'm an engineer which is about as far from a biologist as you can get, so here is my uninformed opinion.

1.  There is no management or recovery plan which stems from a lack of knowledge about salmon and steelhead in general.  We really don't know more than we do and there is no real push for the research that would lead to the knowledge about how to develop a plan.  Humans likely know more about Monarch butterflies than we do about salmon which is crazy considering it is an important renewable food source.

2.  My thought is that the most likely scenario is death by a thousand cuts rather than one or two culprits.  Dams, breeding grounds, overfishing, birds, pinnipeds, warm water, lack of food, competition with other fish, probably a dozen other things.

[Skillet]

Way to take the middle road.    I'll accept that ocean conditions are poor, and that my previous statement about no lack of food was wrong. Clearly, 5 years of warm ocean conditions have made available food for young anadromous fish and herring more difficult to come by. Hatchery pinks and chums play a roll in that. I still don't think that's the cause of the decline in Puget Sound steelhead runs.

Admittedly, I know less about steelhead than of the five Pacific salmon species, and about pinks least of those five.  The study I shared with you did show that steelhead roam the farthest when out to sea, and trended the most southernly.  So it is likely they don't interact with the feeding hatchery salmon as much see much and may have escaped many of the issues of the more northeasterly GOA foodweb disruption I'm blathering on about. 

One thing I can tell you is I promise that I'm not participating in a steelhead intercept fishery as a troller!  I wish we did bycatch a few more, I love to eat them.

[2MANY]

LOL.
I'm hungry for king crab.

[deerlick]

Sounds like I need to give up eating sushi or steelhead fishing.

let me know when you want to sell your boat

[2MANY]

Which one?

[deerlick]

Your thorbuilt.

[87Ford]

Update to my original post.  As of today, 2/6 the adult steelhead return to the Puget Sound rivers, Nooksack, Stilly, Sky, and Snoqualmie is 255 fish from a plant of 486,767 or .052%

How about the North Fork Stilly?  A plant of 136,270 that returned a whopping 24 fish.  That's .000176 or .0176%

I don't think any of these rivers met their egg take numbers..  Portions of these rivers have reopened for hatchery steelhead retention, not because they now have enough broodstock, but because "hatchery broodstock collection has ended for the season" 

There was essentially no hatchery winter steelhead season in these rivers this year...

[Forks]

Bring back the KISW shirt, blast Rush's Working Man to the West from our coast, the fish will come.

[Bullkllr]

 

There was has essentially been no hatchery winter steelhead season in these many rivers this year for many years...