Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891
Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891
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Runs of Columbia River summer and fall chinook salmon, sockeye salmon and upriver steelhead are predicted to again have a poor year, but the forecasted run of coho will be higher than recent runs of the fish. Oregon and Washington recently considered these relative run sizes when setting seasons and regulations for 2019 summer and fall fisheries. As a result, those fish with continued below average projections – summer and fall chinook, sockeye and upriver steelhead – will require another year of reduced seasons and bag limits, and in some cas...
Oregon and Washington have opened this year a portion of the lower Columbia River to spring chinook fishing four times since March 1. However, passage of the prized chinook at Bonneville Dam is just 12 percent of the 10-year average as of May 1, and catch by recreational anglers continues to be low, according to a two-state Columbia River Compact Spring Fishery Update, released May 1. Still, passage of the chinook at the dam is showing some improvement: As of April 23, passage was just 1,250 fish, the second lowest in the last 10 years and...
Though Oregon and Washington added two more days of fishing for spring chinook in the lower Columbia River last Saturday and Sunday, there are signs of a lower than forecasted return of spring chinook. As of last week, just 184 fish have crossed Bonneville Dam, 9 percent of the 10-year average of 2,027 fish and the eighth lowest return on that date in the past 10 years. There has also been a drop in test fishing results. That had Bill Tweit, at a two-state Columbia River Compact hearing April 10, wondering if spring chinook angling should stop...
NOAA Fisheries saw the lowest number of juvenile coho salmon in 21 years in offshore test nets in 2017, leading to low returns of coho to the Columbia River basin one year later in 2018 when the fish were adults. However, in 2018 NOAA netted many more juvenile coho than in 2017 and that signals a better adult coho run in 2019, according to a briefing this week at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in Portland. Much of the reason is improving ocean conditions – cooler water than the ocean warmup during the 2014 – 2017 “blob” with mo...
Coastal waters are cooling and attracting higher value, more fat-rich food -- a good sign for salmon, steelhead and ocean predators, such as Orcas -- after several years of unusually warm conditions (2014 – 2016), when the warm water “blob” dominated coastal conditions, according to a report released last week by NOAA Fisheries. However, ocean conditions are still mixed. The good news is that copepods off Newport, Ore., are mostly of cool-water, lipid rich species; krill lengths off Northern California have increased, an indicator of avail...
Once spring-run chinook salmon disappear, they are not likely to re-emerge, indicates genetic analysis of the revered wild fish in a study led by the University of California, Davis. Prompt conservation action could preserve spring-run chinook, as well as their evolutionary potential. The study illustrates that when human actions alter the characteristics, or phenotypes, of wild species, these changes can become irreversible. This can have long-term evolutionary consequences because natural phenotypic variation buffers species from...
Once spring-run chinook salmon disappear, they are not likely to re-emerge, indicates genetic analysis of the revered wild fish in a study led by the University of California, Davis. Prompt conservation action could preserve spring-run chinook, as well as their evolutionary potential. The study illustrates that when human actions alter the characteristics, or phenotypes, of wild species, these changes can become irreversible. This can have long-term evolutionary consequences because natural phenotypic variation buffers species from...
From The Columbia Basin Bulletin Warm and dry has been the story for the Pacific Northwest in recent weeks, contributing to a region-wide snowpack deficit that may continue for months to come, according to speakers participating in a drought and climate outlook teleconference last week. The discussion, sponsored by the National Integrated Drought Information System (drought.gov), outlined a worsening outlook for drought across the region, particularly in Oregon. “As a whole, we can say that it has been unseasonably dry and warm across the P...
After last year’s winter weather that one meteorologist at a conference last weekend called boring, this upcoming winter for the Pacific Northwest will be largely the same – a little drier and warmer than normal. Four Portland weathermen spoke to a crowd on Oct. 27 at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. While one recapped last year’s weather, three offered their own predictions of what we can expect with this winter’s weather. The weathermen offered their predictions at the 26 Annual Weather Forecast Conference, which is sponsor...
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife staff completed a draft evaluation of the Columbia River Basin Salmon Management Policy that was enacted to assure recreational anglers would receive a larger portion of the non-tribal harvest allocation of salmon and steelhead and that removed commercial gillnetters from the mainstem of the river. The evaluation determined that the large economic benefits expected from the policy, also known as Columbia River harvest reform and orginally inspired by former Oregon governor John Kitzhaber, have not...
By The Columbia Basin Bulletin With the fall chinook run on the Columbia River running about 75 percent of what was already a low preseason expectation, Oregon and Washington closed salmonid fishing from the river’s mouth to the Oregon/Washington border. The complete closure on Sept. 12 applied to recreational fishing and non-Treaty commercial gillnetting for chinook, coho and steelhead. Retention of steelhead ended Aug. 27, also due to a lower than expected run of fish. The closure for chinook was just two days earlier than had been planned f...
By The Columbia Basin Bulletin With an estimated 40 percent decline in the forecasted steelhead run upriver of Bonneville Dam, the states of Oregon and Washington last week closed the mainstem Columbia River to steelhead retention. The states made the announcement Aug. 24 after the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee downgraded the expected run of both A- and B-run steelhead from the 182,400 fish projected by TAC at the beginning of the year to 110,300 upriver steelhead, a number similar to last year’s return of steelhead. TAC made that...
New research shows how accelerated melting of glaciers in the Cascade Mountain Range could dwindle late summer stream flows in decades to come, taking previous work on glacial melt to a new level. A peer-reviewed study is slated for publication in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, outlining a complex model for six drainages in the Cascades that are all fed by glaciers in varying degrees. Dr. Chris Frans, the lead on climate studies for the Northwest Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, led the...
Commercial fishing of fall chinook for both Treaty and non-treaty gillnetters opens over the next couple of weeks. The two-state Columbia River Compact at its meeting in Richfield on Aug. 14 approved 9 hours of commercial gillnetting each night August 20, 23 and 26 from Warrior Rock near St. Helens to Bonneville Dam (zones 4 and 5). Treaty commercial gillnetters begin fishing in zone 6 upstream of Bonneville Dam Aug. 27. They will fish 3-1/2 days, Aug. 27 at 6 am to Aug. 30, 6 pm, and 4-1/2 days 6 am, Sept. 3 to 6 pm Sept. 7. The fall chinook...
By The Columbia Basin Bulletin It's official: 2017 was the third-warmest year on record for the globe, behind 2016 (first) and 2015, according to the 28th annual State of the Climate report. The planet also experienced record-high greenhouse gas concentrations as well as rises in sea level. The annual checkup for the planet led by scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information and published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is based on contributions...
Hot and dry weather has yielded emerging drought conditions across much of Oregon and Washington, but healthy streamflows persist throughout much of the basin mostly due to last winter’s ample snowpack. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued a press release Wednesday announcing a drought emergency declaration for Wheeler County. It is the seventh Oregon county under a drought emergency, joining Klamath, Grant, Harney, Lake, Baker and Douglas counties. Drought declarations allow for increased flexibility in managing water to ensure that limited s...
A draft report to northwest governors on Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Program costs in 2017 was released in early May for review by the public, with the total program costs coming in at $450.4 million, about 18 percent of the Bonneville Power Administration’s power business line costs of $2.465 billion, and accounting for about one-third of the agency’s wholesale power rate. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council at its May meeting in Boise agreed to release the “2017 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program Costs Report” for pu...
New data indicates that gillnetting may not be as harmful to steelhead as previously thought. The ability of commercial gillnetters to fish the mainstem Columbia River has mostly been removed by harvest reforms in Oregon and Washington, citing gillnetting as non-selective and potentially damaging to salmon and steelhead, including the 13 species listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. Gillnet fishing continues, but almost all allowed gillnetting is in designated off-channel or select fishing areas where the...
The initial period after ocean entry for Columbia River basin juvenile salmon and steelhead is when most of the mortality occurs during their lives at sea, so ocean conditions – temperatures and nutrient supplies – during that period are critical to how many of the fish will return to the river as adults one to three years later. The path the fish take after they enter the ocean makes a difference, according Laurie Weitkamp of NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Newport, Ore., Field Station, especially lately with the “stra...
Colder and wetter-than-average conditions persisted across the Pacific Northwest in November, with a La Niña weather pattern becoming well established and strengthening during the month, and the outlook is for much of the same going into March. Those conditions starkly contrast with November weather and the outlook for much of the rest of the contiguous United States, particularly the Southwest, where Arizona and New Mexico had record-warm Novembers. From January through November nationwide, it was the third warmest on record, including the...
More spring chinook salmon will be heading upstream to the upper Columbia and Snake rivers in 2018 compared to 2017 returns, according to an early forecast of fish returns by the US v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee. TAC is forecasting a spring chinook run of 166,700 fish, slightly higher than its 2017 forecast of 160,400 fish and considerably higher than the actual run of spring chinook this year of 115,822 fish as tallied at Bonneville Dam. Willamette River spring chinook are forecasted by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to...
By The Columbia Basin Bulletin A forecast for La Niña conditions in the Pacific Northwest has been raised to an advisory, with colder and wetter weather seen in October now expected to continue throughout the winter. During a Nov. 16 teleconference, NOAA forecasters showed how colder and wetter conditions prevailed through much of October, but not all of the Pacific Northwest. For example, those conditions did not extend into most of the Northern Rockies. Temperatures in the Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of...
By The Columbia Basin Bulletin Meteorologists at their recent annual winter weather forecast conference came to near agreement on three things: The 2016-17 winter was unusually nasty; weather this coming winter will likely be influenced by a neutral to weak La Niña, as it was last year, and there will be near normal snowfall or more at higher elevations in the northern Cascade Mountains in Oregon. What they didn’t agree on was the strength of the La Niña, nor did they agree on what that could mean this year following a very dry summer, as wel...
By the Columbia Basin Bulletin A Washington State University researcher has found that the mating habits of salmon can alter the profile of stream beds, affecting the evolution of an entire watershed. His study is one of the first to quantitatively show that salmon can influence the shape of the land. Alex Fremier, lead author of the study and associate professor in the WSU School of the Environment, said female salmon "fluff" soil and gravel on a river bottom as they prepare their nests, or redds. The stream gravel is then more easily removed...
Researchers at NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center are reporting a never-before-seen phenomenon in Alaska waters—an influx of strange organisms that resemble flattened, translucent sea pickles. It may sound like déjà vu. A similar story made headlines along the West Coast last summer, but this is a new situation for Alaska. Scientists call these jelly-like organisms pyrosomes. The creatures typically live in tropical waters around the world, occasionally emerging a little farther north in sub-tropical waters. But no one has ever recorded pyr...
