With the prospect of breaching newly established Endangered Species Act “incidental take” limits, the states of Oregon and Washington and treaty tribes have all but ended, for now, Columbia River mainstem fish harvest activity.
The states decided Monday that the lower Columbia River will remain closed to steelhead fishing until further notice to avoid the incidental catch of protected upriver spring chinook salmon. The announcement effectively delays a fishery for hatchery steelhead scheduled to open May 16 from the Interstate 5 Bridge at Portland downriver to the Rocky Point/Tongue Point line a few miles east of Astoria.
The steelhead closure could extend as late as June 15, unless returns of upriver spring chinook begin to pick up, said Cindy LeFleur, WDFW Columbia River policy coordinator. Starting then the chinook salmon passing the dam are counted as “summer” chinook and a new fishery management period begins.
“With returns of upriver spring chinook falling far short of expectations, we need to do everything we can to conserve protected runs,” she said. “At this point, that means some fisheries that have only an incidental impact on upriver chinook will be affected.”
The closures were triggered by an updated spring chinook run forecast of 180,000 adult returns to the mouth of the Columbia, down from 269,300 fish initially projected by fishery managers from the states, tribes and federal agencies.
The falling upriver spring chinook forecasts have put the states and tribes in jeopardy of surpassing ESA limits on the take of listed stocks, wild Snake River spring/summer and Upper Columbia spring chinook.
If the final run tally is 180,000 adult upriver chinook, the catch in hand would represent an estimated 2.04 percent impact on upriver spring chinook for non-tribal sport and commercial mainstem fisheries.
A new harvest biological opinion approved last week by NOAA Fisheries Service says those impacts must be limited to 1.9 percent or less for returns that number 217,000 or fewer.
Non-tribal commercial and sport fisheries require that unmarked, presumably wild, listed fish, be released. But mortality is incurred because a percentage of those released chinook later die. A high percentage of hatchery fish are marked by clipping their adipose fin.
Likewise, tribal fisheries are over their ESA impact limit unless salmon passage at Bonneville Dam picks up in the coming days. Tribal impacts on the upriver chinook run are estimated to be 9.6 percent as compared to the 9.1 percent cap.
Highly successful non-Indian sport and commercial and tribal spring fisheries prompted the belief that the actual abundance of upriver chinook would come close to matching preseason forecasts.
“All of the fisheries performed above expectations,” the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s John North said of high lower river sport catch rates and strong outings by the non-tribal commercial fleet.
But the counts at Bonneville have bobbed up and down, not reaching the levels needed to assure a higher final tally. The upriver spring chinook are bound for hatcheries and tributary spawning grounds above Bonneville in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
