David Johnson
03-04-2002, 08:31 PM
ASTORIA, Ore. — With a wary eye to the cargo ships heading down the Columbia River, gill-netter Steve Fick ventured into the main channel and rolled out a cork-lined net in hopes of catching his first spring chinook of the season. It's a century-old ritual along the Lower Columbia — but marked this season by a big change in tactics to protect threatened and endangered wild salmon.
Under new Washington and Oregon rules, Lower River commercial gill-netters have been forced to abandon their namesake fishing technique, which nets fish by the gills.
Instead, Fick deploys a less-lethal net that tangles the fish. And for the first time, he must return all the wild spring salmon to the river. Only the fin-clipped — and far more abundant — hatchery fish are allowed to make it to market.
The new rules took effect last week as the season opened, and they reform one of the Pacific Northwest's most fabled salmon harvests. The region's first canneries were built in the 1860s along the mouth of the Columbia to pack the spring chinook, which are rich with oil that fuels a lengthy journey to upstream spawning grounds. Gill-netters supplied these early canneries — and for the fishermen, who are heirs to that tradition, change has not come without controversy.
Many hail the more-selective harvest as a way to protect the wild chinook, which remain under strict protection.
0thers chafe at the new techniques.
It's the dams
"We're certainly willing to do our part," Fick said. "But you have to realize that we're not the reason the wild runs are depressed. It's not the fishing that ran the stocks down — it was the dams."
Before venturing out on the river last week, Fick had to sit through a six-hour training course on tangle-net fishing. Then he had to rerig his gear. He must deploy a shorter net than in years past. And he must use a smaller mesh, so that fat-headed chinook can't poke through the webbing and get trapped by the gills. Instead, the fish tend to snag around the jaw, nose or tooth and then get wrapped up in the net.
In years past, Fick might let a gill net drift for an hour or more. Under the new rules, he must bring the net back aboard within 45 minutes, so that tangled wild fish aren't weakened by a long entrapment.
Fick's first tow yielded only the stub tail of a fish devoured by a hungry sea lion and a small 15-pound wild chinook. He unwound the webbing and lowered the chinook back into the river. It promptly swam away.
Fish first aid
If the wild salmon had been dazed or bloodied, Fick would have been required to give it first aid, reviving the fish in a plexi-glass box that sits on the bottom of his boat. It's known as a recovery tank, and an onboard pump keeps it filled with oxygen-rich water.
Some fishermen say the tanks have produced miraculous recoveries and have dubbed them "Lazarus boxes."
This year's harvest is monitored by 16 observers. If gill-netters comply with the new rules, state biologists estimate they'll reduce the wild-fish-mortality rate from 100 percent during the catch-and-keep harvests of years past to about 10 percent. That is roughly the same mortality rate that biologists estimate for hook-and-line sport fishermen who catch and release wild fish.
The tangle-net system is not perfected, and fishermen can revert back to gill nets to harvest other runs of salmon later in the year.
State biologists say the new system will be subject to further refinement. Already, they've noted an unfortunate side effect of the small-meshed nets: They tend to entangle slender-headed steelhead trout, which used to slip out of the old gill nets. On one of Fick's drifts, he caught several steelhead that he had to turn loose — but no salmon.
If handled carefully, the steelhead should survive their encounters with the tangle net at the same rates as wild chinook, according to Scott Whisler, a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife who helps manage the Lower Columbia fisheries. He's convinced the conservation benefits of these nets will give them a prominent place in the harvest as long as weak wild runs require protection.
"We've seen how commercial fishing is going downhill," Whisler said. "This is a way to turn that around."
For fishermen, the tradeoff for conserving wild fish is a bigger harvest of hatchery salmon. This year, gill-net fishermen will be allowed a longer season to catch more than 19,000 of the spring chinook from a total run expected to top 400,000 fish. That's far above last year's harvest of 5,400, taken from a total run of more than 465,000, which was the best return since completion of the Bonneville Dam in 1937.
Even as salmon farms glut the markets, spring chinook command a premium price. Fishermen are getting $4 to $5 a pound for the first spring chinook — compared with 30 cents a pound for last fall's Columbia River coho. If prices hold, that will bring in more than $1.7 million to the fleet, with most of the money collected by about 150 fishermen who typically catch the bulk of the harvest.
Rich flavor = high prices
The high prices reflect the high oil content of the spring salmon, which some say gives it a rich flavor on a par — or superior — to that of the ballyhooed Alaska Copper River king.
"I've eaten nearly every fish in the world, and these are the best," Fick said. "In my mind, they're like the finest wine in France."
When Fick is not on the river, he operates Fishhawk Fisheries, an Astoria seafood-processing plant. Last week, dozens of the first hatchery chinook were being cleaned for shipment to Seattle, Portland and other regional cities, where they're likely to be sold in restaurants and seafood specialty markets.
These spring chinook arrive with little of the fanfare that accompany the late-spring arrival of the Alaska Copper River kings. And some consumers have been wary of the Columbia River fish because of the high-profile status of the threatened and endangered wild runs.
Still, demand for the first spring chinook is strong. They have less of the net marks that scar gill-netted fish. And some fishermen hope that conservation efforts may be used as a marketing tool to bolster the fleet's image and court more consumers.
But not all the spring chinook will be caught with tangle nets. In the weeks ahead, tribal fishermen will a begin separate — and larger — harvest in stretches of the river above Bonneville Dam. They expect to catch more than 40,000 chinook in ceremonial, subsistence and commercial harvests.
The tribal fishermen exercise treaty rights and are not bound by the state fishing regulations. So far, they have declined to test the tangle nets and this spring plan to harvest hatchery and wild chinook.
Charles Hudson, a spokesman for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, said pressure must be kept on federal agencies to restore the wild runs. By agreeing to target only hatchery stocks, tribes feel they would compromise their treaty rights and agree to a "techno-fix" that takes the pressure off wild-stock restoration. Increasingly, biologists are concerned that hatchery fish may escape to spawning grounds, interbreed with wild fish and weaken genetic traits that are key to survival.
"We're monitoring what's going on downriver with tangle nets, and we're not turning our back on it, " Hudson said. "But we need to have people understand the whole picture that we're advocating. The more you divide and split the hatchery (harvest) from the wild fish — the longer and steeper the road to recovery."
Seattle Times
Under new Washington and Oregon rules, Lower River commercial gill-netters have been forced to abandon their namesake fishing technique, which nets fish by the gills.
Instead, Fick deploys a less-lethal net that tangles the fish. And for the first time, he must return all the wild spring salmon to the river. Only the fin-clipped — and far more abundant — hatchery fish are allowed to make it to market.
The new rules took effect last week as the season opened, and they reform one of the Pacific Northwest's most fabled salmon harvests. The region's first canneries were built in the 1860s along the mouth of the Columbia to pack the spring chinook, which are rich with oil that fuels a lengthy journey to upstream spawning grounds. Gill-netters supplied these early canneries — and for the fishermen, who are heirs to that tradition, change has not come without controversy.
Many hail the more-selective harvest as a way to protect the wild chinook, which remain under strict protection.
0thers chafe at the new techniques.
It's the dams
"We're certainly willing to do our part," Fick said. "But you have to realize that we're not the reason the wild runs are depressed. It's not the fishing that ran the stocks down — it was the dams."
Before venturing out on the river last week, Fick had to sit through a six-hour training course on tangle-net fishing. Then he had to rerig his gear. He must deploy a shorter net than in years past. And he must use a smaller mesh, so that fat-headed chinook can't poke through the webbing and get trapped by the gills. Instead, the fish tend to snag around the jaw, nose or tooth and then get wrapped up in the net.
In years past, Fick might let a gill net drift for an hour or more. Under the new rules, he must bring the net back aboard within 45 minutes, so that tangled wild fish aren't weakened by a long entrapment.
Fick's first tow yielded only the stub tail of a fish devoured by a hungry sea lion and a small 15-pound wild chinook. He unwound the webbing and lowered the chinook back into the river. It promptly swam away.
Fish first aid
If the wild salmon had been dazed or bloodied, Fick would have been required to give it first aid, reviving the fish in a plexi-glass box that sits on the bottom of his boat. It's known as a recovery tank, and an onboard pump keeps it filled with oxygen-rich water.
Some fishermen say the tanks have produced miraculous recoveries and have dubbed them "Lazarus boxes."
This year's harvest is monitored by 16 observers. If gill-netters comply with the new rules, state biologists estimate they'll reduce the wild-fish-mortality rate from 100 percent during the catch-and-keep harvests of years past to about 10 percent. That is roughly the same mortality rate that biologists estimate for hook-and-line sport fishermen who catch and release wild fish.
The tangle-net system is not perfected, and fishermen can revert back to gill nets to harvest other runs of salmon later in the year.
State biologists say the new system will be subject to further refinement. Already, they've noted an unfortunate side effect of the small-meshed nets: They tend to entangle slender-headed steelhead trout, which used to slip out of the old gill nets. On one of Fick's drifts, he caught several steelhead that he had to turn loose — but no salmon.
If handled carefully, the steelhead should survive their encounters with the tangle net at the same rates as wild chinook, according to Scott Whisler, a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife who helps manage the Lower Columbia fisheries. He's convinced the conservation benefits of these nets will give them a prominent place in the harvest as long as weak wild runs require protection.
"We've seen how commercial fishing is going downhill," Whisler said. "This is a way to turn that around."
For fishermen, the tradeoff for conserving wild fish is a bigger harvest of hatchery salmon. This year, gill-net fishermen will be allowed a longer season to catch more than 19,000 of the spring chinook from a total run expected to top 400,000 fish. That's far above last year's harvest of 5,400, taken from a total run of more than 465,000, which was the best return since completion of the Bonneville Dam in 1937.
Even as salmon farms glut the markets, spring chinook command a premium price. Fishermen are getting $4 to $5 a pound for the first spring chinook — compared with 30 cents a pound for last fall's Columbia River coho. If prices hold, that will bring in more than $1.7 million to the fleet, with most of the money collected by about 150 fishermen who typically catch the bulk of the harvest.
Rich flavor = high prices
The high prices reflect the high oil content of the spring salmon, which some say gives it a rich flavor on a par — or superior — to that of the ballyhooed Alaska Copper River king.
"I've eaten nearly every fish in the world, and these are the best," Fick said. "In my mind, they're like the finest wine in France."
When Fick is not on the river, he operates Fishhawk Fisheries, an Astoria seafood-processing plant. Last week, dozens of the first hatchery chinook were being cleaned for shipment to Seattle, Portland and other regional cities, where they're likely to be sold in restaurants and seafood specialty markets.
These spring chinook arrive with little of the fanfare that accompany the late-spring arrival of the Alaska Copper River kings. And some consumers have been wary of the Columbia River fish because of the high-profile status of the threatened and endangered wild runs.
Still, demand for the first spring chinook is strong. They have less of the net marks that scar gill-netted fish. And some fishermen hope that conservation efforts may be used as a marketing tool to bolster the fleet's image and court more consumers.
But not all the spring chinook will be caught with tangle nets. In the weeks ahead, tribal fishermen will a begin separate — and larger — harvest in stretches of the river above Bonneville Dam. They expect to catch more than 40,000 chinook in ceremonial, subsistence and commercial harvests.
The tribal fishermen exercise treaty rights and are not bound by the state fishing regulations. So far, they have declined to test the tangle nets and this spring plan to harvest hatchery and wild chinook.
Charles Hudson, a spokesman for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, said pressure must be kept on federal agencies to restore the wild runs. By agreeing to target only hatchery stocks, tribes feel they would compromise their treaty rights and agree to a "techno-fix" that takes the pressure off wild-stock restoration. Increasingly, biologists are concerned that hatchery fish may escape to spawning grounds, interbreed with wild fish and weaken genetic traits that are key to survival.
"We're monitoring what's going on downriver with tangle nets, and we're not turning our back on it, " Hudson said. "But we need to have people understand the whole picture that we're advocating. The more you divide and split the hatchery (harvest) from the wild fish — the longer and steeper the road to recovery."
Seattle Times