[env-trinity] Article Submission: Sacramento River Salmon Trucking Program Begins

[Dan Bacher]

http://www.fishsniffer.com/blogs/details/sacramento-river-salmon- 
trucking-program-begins/

SACRAMENTO RIVER SALMON TRUCKING PROGRAM BEGINS
Written By: Dan Bacher, March 26, 2014





Federal and state officials and fishing group representatives  
yesterday greeted the beginning of a trucking program designed to  
transport juvenile salmon from a federal fish hatchery in Anderson,  
California to the Delta in order to improve their chances of survival  
in drought conditions.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Coleman National Fish Hatchery  
began transporting fall Chinook salmon smolts (juveniles) from the  
hatchery to a release site near Rio Vista on the morning of Tuesday,  
March 25, carrying out details of a special drought contingency plan  
announced by federal and state agencies earlier this month.

The event marked the start of a more than two-month drought-response  
effort by federal and state hatcheries to transport roughly 30.4  
million Chinook salmon to downriver locations to improve the fish’s  
chances for survival during their migration to the ocean.

The Chinook smolts, 3 inches in length, have been raised at the  
Coleman hatchery as part of the federal hatchery’s role in partially  
mitigating for Shasta and Keswick dams on the upper Sacramento River,  
according to a news release from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Coleman NFH transported the Chinook salmon smolts from the hatchery  
over approximately 180 miles to a site on the lower Sacramento River  
near Rio Vista, the first time that site has been used.

“This is the first time USFWS has trucked smolts from Coleman since  
2011. While it's a 180-mile trip for the trucks, the salmon will have  
their typical migration from the hatchery to the ocean shortened by  
260 to 300 river miles,” according to Steve Martarano, Public  
Affairs Specialist, Bay-Delta Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The smolts were placed in net pens operated by the Fishery Foundation  
of California, a non-profit organization, for acclimatization and  
then released.

Martarano said Coleman NFH smolts are typically released on-site into  
Battle Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River, so that they  
complete the imprinting cycle during their outmigration to the ocean.

"A continuing severe drought in the Central Valley of California,  
however, has produced conditions in the Sacramento River and Delta  
detrimental to the survival of juvenile salmon," said Martarano. "To  
avoid unacceptably high levels of juvenile fish mortality that may  
result in 2014, this one-time release strategy should produce  
substantial increases in ocean harvest opportunity."

The operation will be one of coordination and collaboration between  
the USFWS, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, National  
Marine Fisheries Service, and the Fishery Foundation of California.

If triggers are met in the coming months and all 12 million salmon  
are trucked from Coleman, the effort will take 22 non-consecutive  
days, using between four and seven USFWS and CDFW trucks each day,  
noted Martarano. Each truck holds up to 2,800 gallons of water and  
each can carry up to 130,000 smolts at water temperatures between  
55-60 degrees.

In addition to Coleman NFH, an estimated 18.4 million salmon smolts  
are scheduled to be transported until early June to San Pablo Bay  
from four state hatcheries operated by the CDFW: Feather River  
Hatchery in Oroville, Mokelumne River Fish Hatchery in Clements,  
Nimbus Hatchery in Gold River, and Merced River Fish Hatchery in  
Snelling.

If USFWS continues trucking into April and May, the San Pablo Bay  
site will also be used for Coleman hatchery releases.

However, Martarano also said this release strategy "increases the  
levels of straying."

“Salmon tend to return to the point of release when planted from the  
hatchery to a river, and this release strategy is likely to  
compromise some of the hatchery objectives, including contributions  
to harvest in the upper Sacramento River and the ability to collect  
adequate broodstock at the Coleman NFH in future years –  
particularly 2016," Martarano explained. "This one-time strategy,  
however, represents the best possible option when faced with the  
possibility of losing the entire 2013 production year.”

“In future years, under less extreme conditions, the standard  
protocol for releasing Chinook from the Coleman NFH will continue to  
be on-site releases into Battle Creek,” he concluded.

Golden Gate Salmon Association (GGSA) representatives were on hand to  
greet the arrival of tanker trucks bringing millions of juvenile  
salmon to the Delta.

“The fish are being trucked from the Coleman National Fish Hatchery,  
located hundreds of miles up the Sacramento River, because drought  
conditions have made the river virtually impassable to baby salmon,”  
according to a GGSA news release. “The trucks are carrying them  
around the deadly drought zone to safe release sites in the Delta and  
bay. After a short acclimation period, the fish are being released to  
migrate to the ocean. In 2016 they’ll be adults contributing to the  
ocean and inland fisheries.”

GGSA chairman Roger Thomas emphasized, “Our 2016 fishing season may  
be riding on the survival of the fish in these trucks. We know that  
fish trucked around dangers lurking in the rivers and Delta survive  
at much higher rates than those released at the hatcheries. They are  
being trucked this year because they’d likely die in the low, clear,  
hot river conditions created by drought.”

Coleman hatchery raises approximately 12 million baby fall run salmon  
annually to help mitigate for the destruction of habitat by Shasta  
Dam and federal water operations in the Upper Sacramento River.  
Before the construction of Shasta and other dams, millions of salmon  
once migrated into the Sacramento, McCloud and Pit rivers and their  
tributaries to spawn.

“GGSA worked with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to move and save  
these salmon,” said GGSA executive director John McManus. “What  
this means is we’ll likely have a much better salmon fishing season  
in 2016, when these fish reach adulthood, than we would have  
otherwise gotten. This could mean the difference between a shutdown  
of the fishery in 2016 and a decent year.”

McManus said California’s state-operated hatcheries truck much of  
their production annually for release in the Delta or Bay and this  
year the state took a leading role to truck even more due to the  
drought. State and federally raised hatchery fish could make up much  
of 2016’s adult salmon harvest and spawning adults.

With no significant rain in sight, trucking the rest of the Coleman  
baby salmon is expected to continue through June, according to McManus.

“Although transporting the baby salmon in tanker trucks and  
releasing them into the bay or western Delta will greatly increase  
their chances of survival, it’s not our preferred option,” said  
GGSA treasurer Victor Gonella. “We’d all rather see a functioning,  
healthy river and Delta that support natural and hatchery salmon.”

Baby salmon this year face the added risk of being pulled to their  
deaths through the Delta Cross Channel, a manmade canal built to  
divert water to huge pumps that send it to corporate agribusiness  
interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Normally the  
Cross Channel Gates would be closed at this time of year to allow  
salmon passage. However, they are now being opened to dilute salt  
water accumulation in the interior Delta caused by the drought.

“In addition, pumping of Delta water south in recent weeks was  
increased even as wildlife managers warned water agencies that many  
wild federally protected winter and spring run baby salmon were  
threatened by the pumping. Low numbers of winter run Chinooks could  
adversely affect the 2016 fishing season,” said Gonella.

The winter-run Chinook salmon, a robust fish that formerly migrated  
into the McCloud River before Shasta Dam was built, is listed as  
"endangered" under both state and federal law.

GGSA secretary Dick Pool, said, "The Fish and Wildlife Service  
developed criteria for this year dictating when it should transport  
salmon rather than release them into hostile drought conditions. We  
think hatchery fish should be trucked in the future whenever these  
criteria are triggered by low water conditions.

“As more and more fresh water is extracted from the Sacramento River  
and Delta for delivery to San Joaquin Valley agribusiness, the  
salmon’s migration corridor downstream and through the Bay-Delta  
estuary has become a deadly gauntlet,” said GGSA vice chairman Zeke  
Grader who is also the executive director of the Pacific Coast  
Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “Add drought, and the  
Central Valley rivers and Delta become virtually impassable for  
salmon.”

GGSA was joined by member fishing groups in working to get the  
Coleman fish trucked. Members of Congress, including Representatives  
Mike Thompson, John Garamendi, Jared Huffman, Anna Eshoo, Jackie  
Speier, George Miller and Mike Honda, also supported the efforts.

The Sacramento River is the driver of West Coast salmon fisheries.  
California’s salmon industry is currently valued at $1.4 billion in  
economic activity annually about half that much in economic activity  
again in Oregon. The industry employs tens of thousands of people  
from Santa Barbara to northern Oregon.

This is a huge economic bloc made up of commercial fishing men and  
women, ocean and river recreational anglers, fish processors,  
marinas, coastal communities, fishing guides, equipment  
manufacturers, the hotel and food industry, Indian Tribes, and the  
salmon fishing industry at large.

It must be noted that the drought conditions were greatly exacerbated  
by poor management of northern California reservoirs and rivers by  
the state and federal water agencies throughout 2013, a record  
drought year. The water managers systematically drained Shasta,  
Oroville, Folsom and other reservoirs in 2013 to ship water to  
corporate agribusiness interests, oil companies and Southern  
California water agencies.

The draining of the reservoirs last year spurred Restore the Delta,  
at a Congressional field hearing in Fresno last week, to call for  
drought relief for Delta farming and fishing communities and for a  
Congressional investigation of the mismanagement of water resources  
in California.

“Unfortunately, at the Hearing on Immediate and Long-Term Relief for  
Drought-Impacted San Joaquin Valley, no discussion is focused on the  
needs of Delta farming and fishing communities, coastal fishing  
communities, or the health of the SF Bay-Delta estuary," said Barbara  
Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. "No  
discussion is intended to focus on gross mismanagement by the  
Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Reclamation that has  
helped bring us to the precipice during this water crisis."

“There is no focus on how upstream reservoirs at the beginning of  
2013 were over 100% of historical average storage, and how by the  
beginning of 2014 they were at dangerously low levels," she stated.  
"This Committee should investigate how the State has promised 5 times  
more in water rights than there is water available in the system  
during years of average rainfall. This Committee should investigate  
how water officials have failed to plan for drought management, even  
though droughts occur 40% of the time in California.”

Barrigan-Parrilla also urged the Committee to examine how, even in  
2013, the Westlands Water District continued to plant almond trees,  
bringing their total almond acreage to 79,000 acres, despite knowing  
they are only guaranteed surplus water in the system.

You can read my investigative piece on the mismanagement of Central  
Valley reservoirs and rivers in 2013 here:http://www.dailykos.com/ 
story/2014/02/07/1275862/-The-Emptying-of-Northern-California-Reservoirs

Meanwhile, the Brown and Obama administrations are fast-tracking a  
twin tunnel plan that will make prospects for salmon survival even  
worse than they are now. The Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to  
build the peripheral tunnels will hasten the extinction of Sacramento  
River Chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and  
other fish species, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead  
populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.

The so-called "habitat restoration" proposed under the widely-opposed  
plan will take vast tracts of Delta farmland, some of the most  
fertile soil on the planet, out of agricultural production in order  
to continue irrigating mega-farms located on toxic, drainage-impaired  
land on the west side of the Joaquin Valley. The water destined for  
the proposed tunnels will also be used by the oil industry for steam  
injection and fracking operations to extract oil from Monterey Shale  
deposits in Kern County.

For more information, check out the following:
• Golden Gate Salmon Association (GGSA): http:// 
goldengatesalmonassociation.com
• Restore the Delta: http://www.restorethedelta.org
• Media Advisory regarding March 25 media events:
http://www.fws.gov/sfbaydelta/documents/ 
media_advisory_contingency_strategy_release_3-21-2014.pdf
• Map of State/Federal Hatcheries and release sites:
http://www.fws.gov/sfbaydelta/maps/ 
chinook_salmon_relocation_20140321_Final.pdf
• The USFWS Contingency Plan released March 10:
http://www.fws.gov/sfbaydelta/documents/ 
contingency_release_strategies_for_coleman_national
_fish_hatchery_3_7_14_draft.pdf
• The CDFW Contingency Plan released March 10:
http://www.fws.gov/sfbaydelta/documents/CDFW-Spring-Run-Drought- 
Contingency-Plan.pdf Federal Hatchery Salmon Avoid Drought, Get Ride  
to Delta

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