The Chief Joseph Hatchery Program 2013 Annual Report

Abstract

The Chief Joseph Hatchery is the fourth hatchery obligated under the Grand Coulee Dam/Dry Falls project, originating in the 1940s. Leavenworth, Entiat, and Winthrop National Fish Hatcheries were built and operated as mitigation for salmon blockage at Grand Coulee Dam, but the fourth hatchery was not built, and the obligation was nearly forgotten. After the Colville Tribes successfully collaborated with the United States to resurrect the project, planning of the hatchery began in 2001 and construction was completed in 2013. The monitoring program began in 2012 and adult Chinook Salmon were brought on station for the first time in June 2013. BPA is the primary funding source for CJH, and the Mid-Columbia PUDs (Douglas, Grant and Chelan County) have entered into cost-share agreements with the tribes and BPA in order to meet some of their mitigation obligations. The CJH production level was set at 60% in 2013 in order to train staff and test hatchery facility systems during the first year of operation. Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery (LNFH) provided 422 Spring Chinook broodstock in June, 2013; representing the official beginning of CJH operations. In July and August the CCT used a purse seine vessel to collect 814 summer/fall Chinook as broodstock that were a continuation and expansion of the previous Similkameen Pond program. In-hatchery survival for most life stages exceeded survival targets and, as of April 2014, the program was on track to exceed the 60% production target for its start-up year. The CJH monitoring project collected field data to determine Chinook population status, trend, and hatchery effectiveness centered on five major activities; 1) rotary screw traps (juvenile outmigration, natural-origin smolt PIT tagging) 2) beach seine (naturalorigin smolt PIT tagging) 3) lower Okanogan adult fish pilot weir (adult escapement, proportion of hatchery-origin spawners [pHOS], broodstock) 4) spawning ground surveys (redd and carcass surveys)(viable salmonid population [VSP] parameters) 5) eDNA collection (VSP parameter—distribution/spatial structure). Adult summer/fall Chinook spawning escapement in 2013 was estimated to be 8,193, with more than 6,227 natural-origin spawners, which exceeded the recent five year and long term averages. The values for pHOS (0.24) and proportion of natural influence (PNI) (0.79) in 2013 exceeded the objectives (0.67), but the five year averages fell short of the goals (0.39 and 0.62, respectively). An Annual Program Review (APR) was held in March, 2014 to share hatchery production and monitoring data, review the salmon forecast for the upcoming year, and develop action plans for the hatchery, selective harvest, and monitoring projects. Based on a strong pre-season forecast of 67,500 Upper Columbia summer/fall Chinook, the plan for 2014 is to operate the hatchery at full program levels of 2 million summer/fall Chinook and 900,000 spring Chinook. To maximize PNI, broodstock for the integrated program should Chief Joseph Hatchery Program 2013 Annual Report 3 be 100% natural-origin broodstock (NOB) and CCT should plan to harvest their full allocation with the selective harvest program removing as many adult hatchery Chinook as possible with the purse seine, the weir, and at the hatchery ladder.