In the western United States, when something good gets discovered, it seems nothing better to do than to rush to deplete the good – gold, trees, … salmon.  Gold is mined many times at the cost of whatever lived in the area before.  Trees, centuries of age, swept away, sometimes replanted, sometimes not, always with ecological cost.  In the case of salmon, former runs of billions of salmon first suffered from overfishing, taken to extremes.  To finish off the magnificent earlier runs, primeval rivers dammed ending the prehistoric runs.  Fish hatchery to the rescue

ENTER THE FISH HATCHERY

Native American culture in the Pacific Northwest built itself upon the salmon. European irruption totally changed the game. From the massive fishery industries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to the hydroelectric dams of the 20th.

Salmon previously persevered as a species overcoming ecological catastrophes such as volcanic eruptions and landslides. Different generations of salmon are at sea so there was a buffer for the general population enabling them to survive as a species. Unregulated fishing industry followed by the dams of the Columbia Basin and elsewhere with industrial-level fishing constantly gnawing away at each run of returning fish. Hydroelectric dams built across the rivers used by the salmon in the 20th century further pushed the species to the brink.

Even in the 19th and early 20th century, problems of maintaining salmon populations soon became realized. Laws came in favor of allowing salmon to return to spawn. Those laws also realized as ineffective. To make up the deficit, the salmon hatchery appeared in an effort to help deny the possibility of the complete disappearance of a majestic family of species. The fish hatchery was designed to help make up for overfishing and the depletion of environment.

bEGINNINGS

Fish hatcheries have a checkered reputation depending on your source.  In the western United States, the first fish hatchery – Baird Fish Hatchery developed on the Sacramento River north of Redding, California. 

The location of the hatchery is ironically located deep with the confines of Lake Shasta today.  This reservoir backed up by the construction of the 1937-1945 602-foot-high Shasta Dam which without fish ladders in place, ended all further fish migration upriver.  Half of the best salmon habitats in the Sacramento basin became lost because of the dam.

Renewed plans to raise the dam could come about with the new Trump administration which would impinge upon trout upstream from the present lake.

Spencer Baird became the first U.S. Fish Commissioner in 1871.  His charge given to him by President Grant was to find out the condition of fish stocks both on the coasts and inland lakes.  If depleted or declining, he was then to come up with ways to supplement those stocks.  He built up what has become the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  Baird remained in the East where he was more concerned with declining bluefish populations, but he sent Livingston Stone out West to form the first federal fish hatchery – today there are seventy – focusing upon salmon.

REACHING TO THE NORTHWEST

The hatchery closed in 1937 with the construction of the dam, though the Livingstone Stone Fish Hatchery has since begun operations in 1997 at the base of the dam aiming to increase the numbers of endangered winter-run chinook salmon (listed as so under the Federal Endangered Species Act in 1994).  In the Pacific Northwest, Stone built a first hatchery on the Clackamas River in 1877.  Stone, however, worked under false understandings.  His main problem was not realizing that anadromous fish do return to their natal streams for the vast majority.  He also failed to consider the environment of the river, especially when dams, logging and agriculture came into the picture to seriously muddy the scene.

PACIFIC NORTHWESTERN FISH HATCHERIES

I am focusing on the Pacific Northwestern fish hatcheries which include state (Oregon and Washington) and federal. The purposes of the hatcheries are similar though the federal hatcheries also involve themselves more with increasing fish numbers for Native American tribes – the States also play a role. Native American tribes have fishing clauses in their treaties with the federal government. There are only two federal hatcheries in Oregon – Eagle Creek and Warm Springs – but Washington has nine. The Columbia Gorge National Fish Hatchery Complex consists of five different hatcheries producing over 25 million fish a year.

The State of Washington claims 87 separate hatcheries, 15 acclimation ponds and 2 net pond facilities. Oregon has 33 hatcheries, 4 separate rearing ponds, 8 acclimation ponds and 9 trapping facilities. More salmon hatcheries call Alaska and British Columbia home.

Acclimation ponds are short-term rearing ponds (usually 2–6 weeks) for juvenile salmon at a release site immediately before their release. Fish gain acclimatization by holding them in natural or constructed ponds using water from the home stream. This bounds with the fish for their eventual spawning return.

I visited three different types of Oregon fish hatcheries, and these are the ones I will concentrate upon.

CENTRAL – BONNEVILLE – FISH HATCHERY

A lot of information has evolved since Stone’s work in the late 19^th century.  Oregon developed the first of 33 long-term fish hatcheries at Bonneville at the mouth of Tanner Creek in the Columbia River Gorge in 1909.  The hatchery has undergone expansion and modernization in the intervening years.  Bonneville made up one of three hatcheries I visited in the past summer-fall to try and gain a better understanding of how fish hatcheries fit in the world of salmon today.

Bonneville Fish Hatchery has over a million visitors checking in every year.  Most people quickly observe the rearing ponds where chinook and coho salmon are raised. Steel wires hold screens above the ponds (races) to keep out predatory birds.  Visitors then spend more time at the visitor gift shop, the two rainbow trout ponds (these trout not raised here) and the sturgeon pond featuring several young sturgeons complementing the ten foot long, 500 pound and an over 80-year-old Herman the Sturgeon.

PURPOSE OF THE FISH HATCHERY

The main purpose of the fish hatchery has nothing to do with trout nor sturgeon.  It is the largest fish hatchery of many in the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife repertoire.  Tule fall chinook make up a subspecies of chinook (king) salmon.  The name comes from ancestral spawning grounds found from California to Alaska.  The Tule salmon begin their spawning run earlier than most chinook arriving in the mouth of the Columbia River as early as July with peak migration in August and September.

While the fish hatchery focuses on chinook and coho – raising 8 million fall chinook and 1.2 million coho – there also some 200,000 summer and 60,000 winter steelhead also raised here.  Steelhead are a rainbow trout living anadromously like the salmon. Unlike the salmon, steelhead “spawn” at either the South Santiam Fish Hatchery (summer steelhead) or the Clackamas Fish Hatchery (winter steelhead).

THE SPAWN AND THE BROOD

For the salmon, adults are gathered for the Tanner Creek Tule stock – 1 male:1female ratio randomly selected to be “spawned”.  Eggs come also from the Little White Salmon, Priest Rapids and Umatilla Fish Hatcheries.  They then come to the breeding ponds here at Bonneville for the fish to be reared.  In addition to Tanner Creek coho, eggs come from the Big Creek Fish Hatchery 16 miles east of Astoria in the lower Columbia. Doing a flow chart for the different salmon and their various runs – not all go at the same time, further evidence of a built-in defense against ecological catastrophes – there are arrows going this way and that. Bonneville directly works in concert with a dozen other hatcheries and indirectly with many more. Similar flow charts work in the same fashion at other hatcheries.

quiet until it is not

The setting of the Bonneville Fish Hatchery – formerly known as the Central Fish Hatchery – is magnificent with Bonneville Dam just upstream.  Table Mountain soars above on the Washington side of the Columbia.  Tanner Creek supplies the water for the hatchery.  The creek itself closed off with a small dam just above the entrance to the fish holding pens.

Fish ladders operate a short distance away out on Bradford Island trying to help returning salmon geared for upper areas of the Columbia (or upper tributaries) get over Bonneville Dam. A newer set of fish ladders on the Washington side – north – try to help mitigate the dam and new powerhouse obstructions from the opposite riverbank.

SEASON OF RETURN

The best time to visit is during the spawning season September to early December.  Young salmon raised in the brood ponds here gain release into Tanner Creek.  After 3-4 years out at sea, they return to their natal stream.  Unlike spawning naturally – chinook spawn in large rivers like the Columbia (here, the most important surviving stretch of the river for wild salmon lies in the Hanford Reach) while coho spawn in intermediate-sized tributaries – here, at Bonneville in the Spawning Building, we have more of a factory setting.

Returnees come up into fish holding ponds off of Tanner Creek.  They make their way up slowly from one pond to another. When the fish are deemed ready to “spawn”, the fish are pushed into an elevator where after anesthetization, they drop down into the Spawning Building. Here they are clubbed on the head and sorted.  Females have their eggs liberated and males milked of sperm – milt.  Eggs will mix with the milt and those fertilized raised in the rearing ponds. Not all fish are “spawned”. Only a certain number of returning hatchery fish gain selection for egg and sperm collection. All die here, mimicking the natural life cycle of the fish.

secondary purposes

Not all young salmon smolt are released back into Tanner Creek.  First, some of the eggs will be mixed with other milt gathered at other hatcheries.  Other fry will be trucked to other hatcheries or pens – i.e. Blind Slough Clatsop County Fish (CCF) pen near Knappa, Oregon – for release into other streams.

The goal of the ODF&W is to maintain fish stock for sport fishermen and secondarily for commercial fishermen.  A secondary goal is to attempt to sustain local wild strains of salmon.  Catches in the Columbia give credence to an 80% hatchery versus 20% wild salmon ratio.

Wild salmon appear to be outnumbered because of loss of habitat and a more aggressive nature of hatchery fish raised in a first-come first eat environment.  But the problem is hatchery fish never adapt to the multitude of problems wild fish must overcome to survive in their early periods of life – ODFW estimates only three out of every 1,000 released make it back to spawn here.  The vast majority succumb to the intricacies of life on a river full of predators.  Genetic diversity is also lost in the shuffle to produce as many salmon as possible. 

ABATOIR

Important to remember when witnessing the Spawning Building at work – salmon do not survive the spawning process. The effort of the return journey combined with no feeding once they hit fresh water, plus the efforts involved with the physical acts of spawning end their lives shortly after the spawning events. Their bodies encase their spawning streams afterwards providing nutrients for other species living along the stream, which in turn can provide nutrients for the young fry as they develop.

Still, the returning salmon scene at Bonneville is a bit sad as the fish line up for their impending doom.

SPAWNING

Natural spawning is more complicated however than a simple collection of eggs and milt.  Males will try and spawn over as many eggs as they can.  Females are not limited to one outburst of eggs.  They also live for a few days after protecting their nests (redd).  To mimic the dead grounds of salmon, fish hatchery plans include salmon carcasses spread out along many stream beds, streams where salmon naturally occur.

When salmon return from the sea, they stop feeding.  They change physically, as well.  The journey to their natal stream and the act of spawning consumes them.  Even with that knowledge, the industrial method in which the salmon are dispatched in a hatchery setting can be a bit unnerving.

GNAT CREEK FISH HATCHERY

Not all fish hatcheries rear salmon for release and return.  In Oregon, several hatcheries are found from Bonneville and downriver.  Big Creek Fish Hatchery factors importantly both in production of smolts for released there but also release at other spots – Klaskanine Hatchery, Tongue Point, Gnat Creek, Youngs Bay.

Gnat Creek Fish Hatchery sits just off US 30 about 17 miles east of Astoria.  Built in 1960 as part of a program to enhance declining runs on the Columbia, this fish hatchery has the main goal to incubate and rear spring chinook and summer steelhead.  The fish raised here gain releases at other locations.  The eggs arrive from either the South Santiam Fish Hatchery – spring chinook – or Big Creek Fish Hatchery – winter steelhead. There is no spawning conducted on site. Salmon next go into the Blind Slough net pens near Knappa. They also go to other fish pens near Tongue Point and in Young’s Bay. They stay in the pens long enough to acclimatize to those waters. It is there where they will try to return after their sea journeys.

These fish are not raised to breed but to be caught. Gnat Creek, lacking a good gravel bottom, is not suitable for spawning. Just upstream from the hatchery races, a waterfall known as the Barrier Falls prohibits further fish movement upstream.

The location of spawning hatcheries sets up in locations spawning salmon do not normally use. These hopefully keeps wild salmon separate from hatchery salmon. Good examples of this found at South Santiam, near Sweet Home, Oregon built directly at the foot of the Foster Dam. With no fish ladders, salmon can go no further.

CASCADE FISH HATCHERY

Cascade Fish Hatchery, found on the lower section of Eagle Creek just east of Bonneville Dam – 2.5 miles west of Cascade Locks – began in 1959.  Its main goal is to incubate and rear coho salmon.  The stock for the Coho comes from Big Creek, Tanner Creek, Umatilla River and the mid-Columbia (Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery).  Originally, fish returned to “spawn”. Today, they return to Big Creek, Bonneville or Three Mile Dam on the Umatilla River.

This hatchery originally included a returning fish run to “spawn” returnees. Today, Cascade exists only as a rearing center with trucks bringing in eggs and taking out juvenile fish.

The hatchery sits near the mouth of Eagle Creek. Waterfalls just upstream make the creek off limits for salmon spawning within. Next to the hatchery is the parking area for the trailhead of the ever-popular Eagle Creek Trail.

QUESTIONS

Questions swirl around costs involved in raising the fish. Wild versus hatchery with a genetic lack of diversity incorporated into the hatchery brood. Other issues include salmon versus hydropower, sport fishermen versus commercial and many other counterpoints. 

An interesting quote from David Montgomery’s King of Fish; the Thousand-Year Run of Salmon, “Raising fish in a hatchery and releasing them to the wild may not increase the number of adult fish.  Instead, it simply rearranges when in their life cycle most of the fish will die.”  This means unlike wild fish; hatchery fish survive the early travails only to succumb to their release as juveniles. “Releasing hatchery fish into a stream is like dropping suburban kids into the middle of the Congo and asking them to walk out of the jungle to coast. Few will make it.”

King of Fish; the Thousand-Year Run of Salmon David Montgomery

Salmon; A Fish, the Earth and the History of their Common Fate by Mark Kurlansky

Upstream; Searching for Wild Salmon, from River to Table by Langdon Cook

Trout and Salmon of North America by Robert Behnke