 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Save Our Fish
North of Falcon
"Commonly referred to as "North of Falcon," the term is short hand for the annual salmon season setting process that begins in late February and ends about the first week of April. Cape Falcon is located on the Oregon Coast, just below the Columbia River. Seasons are defined in conjunction with the federal Pacific Fishery Management Council that has jurisdiction from 3 miles and out from the coast. The PFMC sets the off shore fisheries for salmon. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife works with sports groups, commercial fishing interests, charter boat associations and the various Indian tribes to set the near shore coastal, Willapa Bay, Grays Harbor, and Puget Sound regulations. WDFW also produces the regulations for the Columbia River fisheries in partnership with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, allowing for sport, commercial and tribal input. At the end of the process NOAA-F has to approve the regulations and the modeled impacts on ESA listed species. By the March 30 NOF public meeting that will be held at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Lynnwood, Washington, the wants and desires of the various stakeholder groups for the 2006 season will be on the table. Frank Urabeck, officer for the Save Our Fish Chapter, PSA, is one of twenty individuals who was selected by WDFW Director, Jeff Keonings, to help in the process as a representative of the sports fishing community. Frank is optimistic that we will have reasonable opportunities on Chinook and coho salmon in Puget Sound waters.
Friends of the Hylebos Wetlands
The chapter will be working with the Friends of the Hylebos Wetlands in April by planting native trees and shrubs in the wetland areas of the West Milton Nature Preserve and at the Lower Hylebos Marsh. These plantings will help increase water retention on the site, decreasing the incidence of flooding across the road. Duane Horton is the SOF coordinator for conservation works in the Hylebos Creek drainage.Friends of the Hylebos Wetlands
Brood Stock Progam for the Green River
Over the last few weeks, an important project that we are pursuing is the wild fish capture program on the Green River. The Green River's hatchery steelhead stock has one of the poorest survival rates in the state. Several members of SOF, in cooperation with the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and the WDFW, created a five-year brood stock program to see if we can improve the return of hatchery-reared fish. Each year, we capture wild steelhead by hook and line and carefully transported them via fish tubes to a tank truck for relocation to the Soos Creek Hatchery. In January, the progeny of these wild fish are marked by fin clips (adipose and ventral) identifying them as coming from this project. Many of our double-clipped fish returned as two-salt and three-salt adults this past winter, indicating they possess the genetic vigor to survive and return. To evaluate the effectiveness of this program, it's important to know more about the habits and growth patterns of these fish and the number caught. If you or anyone you know catches a steelhead on the Green with a ventral and adipose clip, please remove a few scales and get them to the Soos Creek Hatchery for analysis. To remove scales take pocketknife to gently scrape around ten scales from each side of the fish mid way between the lateral line and the dorsal fin and place them in an envelope. Please record if it was a right or left ventral clip and length of the fish on the envelope.
Tracking Green River Steelhead Smolts with Acoustic Tags
For most of us, our time with a steelhead is usually very brief - just a few thrilling minutes on the end of a line. Once that fish is on the beach or in the boat, do you ever wonder where he's been since leaving the river as a smolt? Scientists are now starting to find out with the help of acoustical sensors placed in our rivers and along the coast.The Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking Program is an important step in figuring out the migration paths and destination feeding grounds of steelhead and salmon as they leave our rivers. POST uses listening stations that sit on the bottom of a river or the seabed. They detect the "pings" of a surgically implanted tiny acoustic emitter as a smolt moves through the system. The listening lines forming this array stretch from the Washington coast through British Columbia and north through Alaska's panhandle. This unprecedented listening array is the first major step towards building a permanent year-round undersea tracking system for the entire west coast of North America. It's intended to give a complete census of all the tagged juvenile salmon and steelhead migrating over swaths of the ocean 12 miles wide.
POST is being tested and built as one of 13 major international field programs of the Census of Marine Life www.coml.org, a billion dollar, 10 year international program to jumpstart a new era of ocean discovery. Major financial support comes from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Bonneville Power Administration.
The Steelhead Trout Club of Washington and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe are funding the purchase of the sensors and tags for our watershed. The WDFW and the Tribe are providing the equipment and labor for tagging the fish. And your Save Our Fish chapter is pleased to help with the placement of sensors in support of this important project.
Webmaster: Steve Bagley