Unlimited Salmon / Steelhead News Update...

[Woolly Bugger]

https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/11/22/will-removing-klamath-dams-lead-to-a-salmon-revival/

Year after year, volunteers return to tributaries of the Klamath River, just like the fish they're trying to help do the same thing.

Jimmy Peterson, a fisheries project coordinator for the Mid-Klamath Watershed Council, places rocks and stones to make fish passages in Fort Goff Creek, 60 miles up from the river's mouth on California's North Coast.

"This creek has extremely awesome habitat up top here," Peterson says. "Extremely awesome."

Then he translates: "The water stays really cold and there's plenty of nice spawning gravel that go up fairly far into the watershed. There's not a lot of human activity up there either, so it's fairly untouched."

Scientists estimate that a century ago, hundreds of thousands of coho may have run up the Klamath's streams and tributaries. Now it's a few thousand. Federal and private grants fund the council's work, helping coho access "extremely awesome" habitat because coho are threatened with extinction.

Dams aren't the only reason salmon, trout and other fish need help on the Klamath. But they are a big one. The promise of dam removal is free passage for fish up to cooler spots and native headwaters. And the Klamath River, near California's northern border, may become the next big western river to see that happen. Federal energy regulators are considering a plan that would open hundreds of miles of the Klamath to the potential of the largest river restoration in U.S. history.

[Woolly Bugger]

A MAJOR milestone in salmon conservation has been reavealed as the fishing season on the River Tay opened today. The opening at Meikleour on the River Tay has been boosted by confirmation that the "dry" River Garry tributary will flow again after over 60 years.Spawning salmon will have access following a landmark agreement. A section of one of the Tay's most important tributaries is soon to have consistent flows restored after decades of very extensive water abstraction.

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/dry-tayside-salmon-river-tributary-reopens-after-60-years-1-4340573

[Woolly Bugger]

Truckloads of baby fish hauled to river in restoration plan http://koin.com/ap/truckloads-of-tiny-fish-hauled-to-river-in-restoration-plan/ via @koinnewsp


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[Woolly Bugger]

After an absence of more than a decade, a trickle of salmon are finally finding their way back to Sonoma County streams, thanks to private landowners and a coalition of conservationists.

Roughly 22 million years ago, the fish we know as salmon evolved the complicated biology they needed to commute between inland freshwater streams and the open salty ocean. Thus began one of the most remarkable life cycle journeys known on the planet.

Two million years ago, on the ancient California coastline, the salmon would have found a perfect cold and clear waterway emptying into the Pacific near the mouth of today's Russian River. Running a hundred miles back among high ridges and dense redwood forest, its widely branching network of creeks and tributaries made ideal habitat for the spawning fish and its young.

And that paleo-Russian River has been the salmon's home ever since.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/lifestyle/6779466-181/baby-salmon-trickle-back-to?artslide=0

[Woolly Bugger]

Coho salmon reintroduced into Grande Ronde Basin

The Lostine River flowed gently Thursday afternoon through Wolfe Ranch near Wallowa, where a truck hauling young coho salmon backed slowly down a gravel drive to the water's edge.

For the first time in 31 years, coho were released into the Grande Ronde Basin, following a ceremony hosted by the Nez Perce Tribe and Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife. Approximately 50 people gathered to celebrate the occasion, marking a major milestone in the effort to restore a once-abundant fishery.

Guests watched from just upstream of the tribe's Lostine salmon weir as a thick hose connected to the tanker belched tens of thousands of finger-size smolts into the river. Silver flashes darted around the stream bank before the fish eventually took to the current and began their long journey to the Pacific Ocean.

http://www.wallowa.com/local_news/20170311/coho-salmon-reintroduced-into-grande-ronde-basin

[Woolly Bugger]

Measures save young salmon after failure of Oroville Dam spillway

A million fingerling salmon, rescued from almost certain death after the Oroville Dam spillway fell apart last month, began their remarkable journey to the ocean Monday by being launched unceremoniously out of tanker trucks into the Feather River.

The flapping, flopping chinook were poured through pipes into the water at a Yuba City boat ramp, where their trek downstream to the ocean, through a gantlet of predators and environmental perils, started amid cheers from biologists and schoolchildren on a field trip.

The lucky fish are among 2 million spring-run chinook moved from the state-run Feather River Fish Hatchery last month after a gaping hole opened in the main spillway at Oroville Dam and erosion on the emergency spillway sent plumes of suffocating silt into their rearing pens.


http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Measures-save-young-salmon-after-failure-of-11015659.php

[Woolly Bugger]

https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/community/2017/07/26/salmon-tribal-interests-at-stake-in-columbia-river-treaty-update

The 50-year-old treaty with Canada governing the massive Columbia River system is up for revision. Aaron Wolf of Oregon State University explains what's at stake as the two nations begin to discuss changes.

[Aka]

"Bristol Bay red salmon run smashes records"

https://www.adn.com/outdoors-adventure/fishing/2017/07/28/bristol-bay-red-salmon-run-smashes-records/






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[Woolly Bugger]

SEATTLE — The company whose collapsed net pens released thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound is planning to stock another marine facility off Bainbridge Island with a million juvenile fish despite a request from the governor not to do so.

Gov. Jay Inslee had asked Cooke Aquaculture not to move fish from its hatchery to other saltwater net pens until the investigation into the Aug. 19 salmon farm collapse at its Cypress Island facility was completed.


   

https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/company-behind-farmed-fish-escape-to-move-more-salmon/

[Woolly Bugger]

Photo of salmon deterrent mats courtesy Trans Mountain website.
After swimming 1,300 kilometres upstream to their spawning grounds near the headwaters of the Fraser River, Chinook salmon returning to Swift Creek this year found their gravel beds blocked by a bright orange layer of snow fencing.

Kinder Morgan, the pipeline company that put it there, patted itself on the back for its "innovative" use of the deterrent mats, which prevent salmon from digging nests in the streambed to spawn. Of course, the only problem is it didn't have permission to install them.

But the company went ahead with its plans, although it had not met its conditions, to start construction without the necessary permits. This reckless behaviour is shocking from a company asking for the public's trust. 

On Sept. 8 the National Energy Board (NEB) sent a letter to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) asking for confirmation that this work, among other measures, would require authorization under the Fisheries Act. It noted Kinder Morgan's plans, "could constitute serious harm."

Kinder Morgan posted photos of Swift Creek lined with orange plastic even though DFO had not yet responded. If anybody else had gone into a major salmon-bearing stream and interfered with fish spawning, there would be absolute hell to pay. Violations of the Fisheries Actoften carry tens of thousands of dollars in fines but so far there's been no penalty at all.

Are we supposed to just trust that Kinder Morgan knows what it's doing? With dwindling salmon runs and starving killer whales, the company wants to use untested methods to prevent spawning in 26 streams along its pipeline route.


https://www.vancouverobserver.com/opinion/kinder-morgan-goes-rogue-proving-it-can-t-be-trusted

[Aka]

"This year, 56 million sockeye salmon swam hundreds of miles from the ocean toward the rivers and streams of the Bristol Bay watershed in southwest Alaska.

Many that escaped fishermen and bears leapt over waterfalls and used a mysterious combination of the Earth's magnetic field and their own sensory memories to locate the exact streams where they were born -- and then spawned, made gravel nests for their young, and died.
"It seems like a heroic -- and perhaps tragic -- life cycle," said Thomas Quinn, a professor at the University of Washington who has been studying fish in Bristol Bay for 30 years.
The salmon's incredible migration also sustains people: Nearly half of the world's sockeye catch comes from this one region, which is one of the last, great salmon fisheries on Earth. The returning salmon and other ecological resources create some 14,000 full- and part-time jobs, generate about $480 million annually -- and support 4,000-year-old Alaska Native cultures.
Now, however, Quinn and others fear this cycle could be strained if not broken.
For more than 15 years, Northern Dynasty Minerals, a Canadian mining company, has sought to build a gold and copper mine in Bristol Bay. And this spring, the Trump administration took swift action to make that prospect more likely..."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/10/politics/bristol-bay-salmon-invs/index.html


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[Woolly Bugger]

Marine mammals on the West Coast may now be eating more Chinook salmon than those being caught by commercial and recreational fisheries combined, a new study finds.

It shows that recovering populations of killer whales, sea lions, and harbor seals have dramatically increased their consumption of Chinook salmon in the last 40 years.

"We have been successful at restoring and improving the population status of protected marine mammals," said Brandon Chasco, a doctoral candidate at Oregon State University and lead author of the study. "But now we have the potential for protected seals and sea lions to be competing with protected killer whales, and all of which consume protected Chinook salmon."

The research was a collaboration of federal, state and tribal scientists in the Pacific Northwest, including Oregon State University and NOAA Fisheries.

http://www.king5.com/tech/science/environment/marine-mammals-catching-more-salmon-than-fishermen-harvest/493351252

[Woolly Bugger]

A relatively new $13.5 million hatchery intended to save Snake River sockeye salmon from extinction is instead killing thousands of fish before they ever get to the ocean, and fisheries biologists in Idaho think they know why.

The Department of Fish and Game in information released this week says water chemistry at the Springfield Hatchery in eastern Idaho is so different from that in the central region that the young fish can't adjust when released into the wild.

"It's not a disaster, it's part of what you experience when you open a new hatchery," Paul Kline, Fish and Game's assistant fisheries chief, said in a post on the agency's website.

Idaho Rivers United, an environmental group, blasted the report as more reason for removing four dams on the lower Snake River that impede salmon.

"Until we address main-stem survival we're missing the biggest opportunity for these amazing fish," Kevin Lewis, the group's executive director, said in a statement.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/experts-idaho-hatchery-built-save-salmon-killing-51227241

[Dougfish]

Fucking humans! 

[Woolly Bugger]

A Canadian fish processing plant is under scrutiny after footage was released showing bloody effluent being discharged into British Columbia's waters. The "very graphic" images have raised concerns the wastewater could spread disease to the province's Pacific wild salmon population.
A constant stream of billowing bright red liquid is seen rippling and mixing into the otherwise clear waters.
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," says photographer Tavish Campbell who filmed the footage during underwater dives between Vancouver Island and the mainland.
"I was grossed out at the same time I was feeling mad," he says. "I was just in shock."
The effluent flowed into waters around BC's Discovery Islands where wild Fraser River sockeye salmon migrate each year .
The red water samples collected later tested positive for pathogens potentially harmful to fish: PRV and Piscirickettsia salmonis bacteria.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42115794