Addendum to ISRP report 2001-8: clarification of Umatilla Hatchery M&E review

Date: March 5, 2002

To: Mark Fritsch, Fish Production Coordinator, Northwest Power Planning Council

From: ISRP Reviewers for Columbia Plateau Umatilla Subbasin: C. Coutant, J. McIntyre, B. Ward, R. Whitney, and R. Williams

Subject: Clarification and Guidance on the ISRP’s Comments on Project 199000500, Umatilla Fish Hatchery Monitoring and Evaluation

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Your memorandum requesting clarification and guidance on ISRP comments on ODFW’s Umatilla Fish Hatchery Monitoring and Evaluation, Project 199000500, included a quotation of the Council’s recommendation, as follows:

“The Council concluded that the ISRP’s concerns were severe enough that there is a need to ensure that the stated purpose for the artificial production initiative and specific goals and objectives can be assessed under the current study designs. The Council needs to make this determination prior to future commitment to the program. The Council suggests that the review be conducted by the ISRP. The review needs to address not only the overarching goal of the assessment, but also specific questions raised by the ISRP in their final review. In addition, the review should address the long-term outcome of the evaluation as it relates to the artificial production initiative being monitored.”

The project sponsor requested clarification of the ISRP comments that led to the Council’s determination. Per your Memorandum request, we have the following comments to clarify the ISRP’s earlier comments on Project 199000500.

1. Introduction.

The Umatilla Program is often cited as an example of positive results that can be achieved in restoration of salmon and steelhead. Many substantial adjustments in water use have been required. It is potentially a dramatic example, since it starts with little or no water in the river and proceeds from there. The beneficiaries have a responsibility to the Council, to BPA and the region to document fully the steps that were and are being taken in the process of fish restoration, and to provide step-by-step, rigorous evaluations of progress in restoration as it is made.

The foundation for review of this proposal occurs in the statement on page 3 of the proposal for project 199000500, Umatilla Fish Hatchery Monitoring and Evaluation, that reads: “The Umatilla Fish Hatchery Monitoring and Evaluation project was developed to assess the effectiveness of Umatilla Hatchery in reintroduction of spring and fall chinook salmon, and supplementation of summer steelhead in the Umatilla River.”

2. Detailed Comments on the Current Proposal

The ISRP reviews of Project 199000500 in this and previous years have found some shortcomings. We have not been as specific as we might have been, with the result that our comments apparently have not been as helpful as they should have been.

Apparent in the proposal is an inward looking frame of reference, which leads to questions being addressed that have to do primarily with the internal operations of the hatchery and its output of juvenile salmon and steelhead, rather than the larger questions having to do with assessing progress in reintroducing salmon and supplementing steelhead in the Umatilla Basin. The proposal does not provide justification for proceeding with studies on internal operational questions that seem to us to be matters that have been studied adequately elsewhere and are covered in manuals and texts on salmonid culture. Routine monitoring of fish condition and health should be incorporated as normal operating procedures for the hatchery, and we see no need for particular study designs. An example described in the proposal is the experiment designed to test the efficacy of oxygen supplementation as a means of increasing the loading rate of salmonids in raceways. This is a method that has been tested and adopted elsewhere, with generally favorable results. The point we are making is that this study addresses internal operating procedures of the hatchery, and does not get to the larger, more significant questions having to do with progress in reintroducing salmon or supplementing steelhead populations. [1]

An examination of the Narrative of Objectives further illustrates the inward looking frame of reference of the project proposal. The Narrative of Objectives (4, 5, and 8) states that these objectives are aimed at comparing effects of feeding rates in Oregon vs. Michigan (oxygenated) raceways on growth and condition, food conversion rate, survival, smolt to adult returns, and comparing these same characteristics for spring chinook raised at Umatilla Hatchery vs. Little White Salmon Hatchery. We see little or no potential application of the results, other than to switch to Michigan raceways, as the proposal suggests might be done - “If these trends continue, …” We see no reason given in the proposal not to proceed at once with the complete conversion to Michigan raceways.  In any case, this particular line of investigation does not get at answers to fundamental questions bearing on the restoration of salmon and supplementation of steelhead in the Umatilla River. We see no reason to continue with these studies. The one exception might be the comparison of survival rates of fish in the Umatilla Hatchery with those observed at Little White Salmon Hatchery. This comparison, we understand, shows lower survival rates for Umatilla Hatchery fish. This raises a significant question deserving further study. Why are Umatilla Hatchery survival rates lower? We see no study design that might be intended to answer this question.

The Narrative of Objectives (1, 2, 3, 6, and 8) speaks of tagging experiments that are intended to determine migration survival and performance for different rearing profiles.  Approximately 250-500 fish from each rearing group will be PIT tagged to provide adequate data. There is no discussion of how this number was arrived at, nor whether the expected number of recoveries will be adequate to satisfy the requirements of the statistical test proposed. More to the point, the test is said to test for differences in migration survival, differences between rearing, acclimation, and release strategies, none of which are elements that get to significant issues described in the proposal.

The Narrative for Objectives 12 and 13 describes them as fish health monitoring. These are routine hatchery practices (or ought to be) and do not get to significant issues.

The Narrative for Objective 9 describes a survey of the recreational fishery that would be designed to estimate the numbers of fish contributed by hatchery release groups. This information should be useful, if it is properly gathered.

3.  Revised Emphasis of the Umatilla Fish Hatchery Monitoring and Evaluation Project

The approach described in the proposal’s Section f. “Proposal objectives, tasks and methods” is to provide lists of hypotheses for testing. While this approach might be appropriate for study designs to test alternative rearing strategies within the hatchery, a better approach for addressing the larger-scale issues beyond the hatchery is to identify questions that need to be answered. We believe the significant questions that arise in this context have to do with the following:

1. How many chinook and steelhead adults can trace their origin to the Umatilla Hatchery and its satellites or acclimation ponds? The objective should be to develop an accounting for the numbers of salmon and steelhead that originated in the hatchery or its satellites or acclimation ponds that are taken in any and all fisheries, and for all salmon and steelhead on the spawning grounds.
2. How many fish on the spawning grounds are direct returns from hatchery releases? And how many are returnees resulting from natural spawning? The numbers of salmon and steelhead on the spawning grounds should be separated into groups returning directly from hatchery (or satellite) plants and groups that may have originated from natural spawning. This question is important in decisions to be made about the mix of hatchery and natural spawners to be achieved, as specified in the Master Plan.
3. Are there interactions between the spawners from the two groups?
4. Similar questions.

In order to answer these questions there should be a redirection of effort in this project toward marking sufficient numbers (preferably all) of the fish that are released from the hatchery and its satellites and acclimation ponds. There needs to be a redirection of the effort out and away from the hatchery and into the field where marked fish can be recovered and accounted for. While the proposal mentions a survey of recreational fisheries in the Umatilla River, there is no mention of tribal fisheries, nor of commercial fisheries outside the river that might take fish originating from the Umatilla River. While the proposal mentions that information on tags that are recovered in the fisheries will be assembled by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, there is no discussion of what use will be made of the information. This project should be responsible for analyzing the data from all these sources into a full accounting of the fate of fish originating in the Umatilla Hatchery and its satellites and acclimation ponds. 

Obviously, this redirection will require even closer coordination with Project #199000501, Umatilla Basin Natural Production Monitoring and Evaluation, and Project #198902401, Juvenile Outmigration and Survival than has occurred in the past.  Joint efforts in the field will become a necessity. An overlap in responsibility for monitoring and evaluating the contributions of hatchery fish that spawn naturally will need to be resolved.

4. Recommendations

Project #199000500, Umatilla Fish Hatchery Monitoring and Evaluation, should be responsible for preparing a progress report with an evaluation of the reintroduction and supplementation efforts in the Umatilla River. This effort will need to be coordinated with the following projects due to their close association -- Project #199000501, Umatilla Basin Natural Production Monitoring and Evaluation, and Project #198902401, Juvenile Outmigration and Survival.

That progress report ought to identify key questions that need to be addressed in “evaluating the long-term outcome of the hatchery initiative”, per the Council’s expressed interest. The ISRP recommends that the project develop a study plan to describe a redirection of effort, such as suggested above. Of course the study plan should incorporate evaluations of the effects of fish released from satellite and acclimation facilities, such as described in Project #198343500 Operate and Maintain Umatilla Hatchery Satellite Facilities.

We believe one of the key questions has to do with how the hatchery initiative should proceed in order to ensure that populations of salmon and steelhead are developed that are well adapted to the Umatilla system. By that we mean populations that effectively use, in space and time, the available habitat; life histories expand to that observed in well adapted stocks elsewhere; and most components of the population have the reproductive potential to replace themselves each generation. A point to be considered is that fish in the wild will be “culled” via natural selection as they adapt or die in response to variations in conditions in the Umatilla River. On the other hand, fish reared in the hatchery experience a stable environment with plenty of food, protection from predators, and so on. As a result, hatchery fish are not likely to qualify as being well adapted to the Umatilla system. The question is “What effects on development of well adapted Umatilla stocks of salmon and steelhead are to be expected from continually superimposing plants of hatchery fish on populations that are rearing naturally?” Is there a mix of numbers at this stage that might be optimum, or hatchery numbers that might be a desirable maximum? There is a need to separate monitoring and evaluation of restoration activities from monitoring and evaluation of supplementation activities. The goals are not the same. At what point will evaluation of salmon restoration need to shift to evaluation of salmon supplementation? Is there a possibility that the tribe’s intention of continuing hatchery plants to support a fishery might impinge on or interfere with its objective of establishing a self-sustaining wild (or natural) population? Imaginative approaches will be required to address these key issues.

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[1] We find no explanation in the proposal as to why it was thought to be necessary to repeat or enlarge upon what was already known about oxygen supplementation as it has been used in the so-called Michigan raceways. We find no reason given for why oxygen supplementation should not have simply been incorporated into the operations in the first place, as a means of compensating to some degree for the shortage of water at the hatchery. (Only one-third of the anticipated amount, and one-third of the amount for which the hatchery was sized during the design phases.)

(We also expected to find a description of a modified study design that might have been adopted when it was discovered that sample sizes in the experiment were too small. Ten years after the study began, results of this particular Umatilla Hatchery study are still inconclusive. However, we want to emphasize that we see no reason to continue this line of study.)

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