Experimental Hatchery Opens Salmon Supposed To Return To Wild, Not To The Hatchery

An experimental hatchery designed to improve natural salmon runs on the Yakima River is finally open for business.

After years of study and debate, the hatchery will produce its first salmon this year.

When it reaches full operation next year, the 15-acre hatchery will produce 800,000 salmon smolts that will be planted in three locations.

The plan is that these fish will home in on those locations, rather than the hatchery, when they return to lay the eggs that will be the next generation.

The Yakama Indian Nation operates the hatchery, along with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“We don’t want to build a separate hatchery run,” said Dave Fast, fisheries research manager for the Yakamas. “The whole goal is to increase the production of natural fish and hope to end use of the hatchery.”

The Northwest Power Planning Council is funding the $20 million experimental hatchery as part of a $70 million project to restore Yakima River salmon runs.

The Yakima project is an alternative to the meat factories that hatcheries have been traditionally, council spokesman John Harrison said.

“This Yakima production project and all of its components are the most ambitious of any of the production projects we have undertaken,” Harrison said.

Native wild salmon stock are genetically better equipped for survival than hatchery fish.

Fast said this type of hatchery system is known as “supplementation” because its goal is to supplement the natural fish run as opposed to replacing it with hatchery fish.

“We will know a lot more about supplementation when we are done with this project,” he said.

Estimates place the turn-of-the-century returning salmon population at more than 600,000 fish of several species in the Yakima and Naches rivers The returning adult salmon population hasn’t exceeded 4,600 during the 1990s.

This year’s returning run has yet to reach 3,000 spring chinook.