Snake River sockeye running behind forecast

Endangered Snake River sockeye appear to be following the same troubling trajectory as sockeye bound for the upper Columbia River.

Thus far, the fish are returning at a pace well below preseason forecasts. The low return prompted the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to cancel sockeye fishing on the upper Columbia River.

In a preseason forecast, fisheries managers estimated 275,000 sockeye would return to the upper Columbia and about 3,300 to the Snake River. David Venditti, a research fisheries biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said with the run estimated to be a little past the halfway mark at Bonneville Dam, just 19 Snake River sockeye implanted with tracking tags have been detected there. That expands to about 620 fish when the percentage of sockeye not carrying tags is accounted for.

“We don’t suspect it’s a late run timing,” Venditti said. “We kind of have our fingers crossed but it’s probably not in the cards.”

It’s perhaps doubly disappointing considering sockeye generally return in higher numbers during even years when there is less competition in the ocean from pink salmon. Three of the 19 tagged sockeye detected at Bonneville have passed Lower Granite Dam west of Clarkston, Washington, and the rest, except for one that appears to have died, are progressing upstream.

“That is actually pretty good,” he said.

So far, temperatures in the Snake and Salmon rivers haven’t hit levels deemed dangerous for the fish, but they are on the rise.

“The earlier they can get past Lower Granite, the better chances they have between Granite and Stanley,” Venditti said. “We are hoping this year things stay a little cooler and the ones that get past Granite have a little better shot of making it.”

The department, in partnership with the Nez Perce Tribe, is trucking some sockeye that end up in a sampling trap at Lower Granite Dam to the state’s fish hatchery at Eagle. The program is designed to help the critically endangered fish by skipping much of the part of their journey when they are exposed to the warmest water.

The fish are held at the hatchery and incorporated into a captive breeding program there.

A pilot program that has Snake River sockeye return to a hatchery below Bonneville Dam is showing much better returns. The tribe and Idaho Fish and Game partnered in the project that sees a small number of Snake River sockeye eggs raised and released from Bonneville Hatchery on Tanner Creek below the dam. The fish return to the hatchery and are trucked to the Eagle Hatchery, allowing them to bypass eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers and the 400 miles between Lower Granite Dam and the Stanley Basin.

There were 150 in the trap earlier this week.

“I think it’s fabulous,” said Becky Johnson, production director of the Nez Perce Tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resources Management.

Last year, about 400 sockeye returned to the hatchery after spending just one year in the ocean. Most sockeye spend two years in salt water and this summer marks the first return of adult fish.

Johnson said last year, during the first run of the trap, 17 one-ocean sockeye were trapped. This year there were 40 one-ocean fish and 110 adult sockeye caught in the first week of trapping.

With the in-river return below expectations, Johnson said the sockeye trapped at Bonneville amount to a significant bump in abundance and serve as a guard against extinction.