Featured Article March 2004

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Survivor
Scott Kirkpatrick

A medical scare hit the world in the early 1990’s: Disease causing bacteria, normally cured by antibiotics, were now becoming resistant at an alarming rate. How did this happen? Ricki Lewis (1995), from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, explains:

To sum up, what Lewis has pointed out: any bacteria that didn’t get killed off by antibiotic drugs were resistant to them; a perfect example of Darwin’s theory of evolution in action.

A scare hit the east coast of Vancouver Island steelhead angling community in the mid 1990’s: Steelhead were disappearing. Many rivers which normally produced good angling were now producing mediocre catches on their best days. Dave Hadden, secretary of the former Campbell River branch of the Steelhead Society at the time, notes in his article in the Spring/Summer 1999 edition of “the Steelhead Release” :

Bruce Ward (2000), Ministry of Fisheries biologist who has studied the Keogh River, a small east coast of Vancouver Island stream for nearly thirty years, found that:

Ward (2000) also mentions:

The Pacific Ocean is uncharted territory as far as steelhead smolts are concerned. Where humans teach their children how to survive, fish do not educate or raise their offspring directly. Where a mistake often results in an “owie” for a toddler, a mistaken fish is dead. Steelhead have to rely on genetics to instinctively react to the various environmental cues they encounter. But what are genetics, really? According to the definition, found at http://www.dictionary.com :

Genetics are the comprehensive survival manual that steelhead reference; genetic instructions passed down from each of their parents who were survivors.

Any east coast of Vancouver Island wild steelhead that has managed to persist amidst the poor ocean survival conditions they have encountered in the past ten years, is believed by Steelhead Recovery Plan fisheries technician Mike McCulloch, to have inherited the right instruction book. They have managed to elude that which has caused fellow members of their race to disappear, and they have survived, albeit small in numbers. In this case, McCulloch and the rest of the recovery team are keeping their fingers crossed that ocean survival improves. It may be said that each steelhead race has fallen back on one of its last best survival mechanisms; that they are “saving their best for last.”

The best science of the day, as developed by biologists such as the above mentioned Bruce Ward, Ken Ashley, Pat Slaney and many others in the past thirty or more years, suggests that the only way to combat poor ocean survival is to increase freshwater survival. Simply put: if the quality of freshwater habitat is increased, more wild steelhead smolts will survive to reach the ocean. The hope is that then more will then survive to adulthood and return to the rivers.

Steelhead hatcheries are playing an innovative, yet experimental, role in the recovery plan on four East Coast Rivers. The Living Gene Bank program had some success in 2002-03 on the Keogh, but recent adult assessment on the Quinsam, and Little Qualicum (and the captive brood program on the Puntledge) for 2003-04 have seen meagre returns. Estimated at less than ½ percent survival based on limited and preliminary monitoring, this is disappointing considering the expectations and faith senior fisheries biologists have put into this project. The full scope of any benefits derived from this experiment will not be fully understood until it has run its five year course (one cycle of steelhead production) for every stream it has been tried on. Subsequently, when DNA from returning adults offspring has been studied and conclusions drawn, the potential for rebuilding extremely depressed steelhead populations using LGB will be better understood (B. Ward, personal communication, March 8, 2004).

According to Blouin (2003) in a final report on the reproductive success of different “brands” of steelhead studied on the Hood River in Oregon, (“regular” non-LGB) hatchery steelhead (from wild native parents) produced offspring 85 to 108% as well as wild fish, in the wild. So if hatchery fish procreate as well as wild fish, why aren’t all steelhead streams with hatchery programs reporting strong wild runs?

In approximately twenty-five years of steelhead enhancement in British Columbia, not one hatchery program has rebuilt a steelhead run by itself (McCulloch citing Downs, personal communication, January 31, 2004). Before jumping to conclusions, the definition of ‘rebuilt’ must be clearly established to understand the truth in this statement. A rebuilt race would be such that the services of the hatchery are no longer required for it has bolstered the numbers of wild fish to near historic or “routine management” levels.

In some cases, especially in poor ocean survival years, some hatchery programs have poor results at best, in producing enough spawners to make a significant contribution to the stock. On the Keogh River, Ward and Slaney (1990) found that hatchery smolt to adult survival, from a one year smolt program, was approximately 1/3 that of wild smolt survival. In other cases, hatchery steelhead programs that have success in returning strong numbers of fish, such as the one found on the semi-pristine Chilliwack River, seem to have seen wild fish numbers that have reached a plateau. Analyzing this, it seems that a finite carrying capacity for smolts on this stream may have been reached, and simply producing more spawners may not be having the effect people thought it should have.

With the abovementioned in mind, the need to address habitat issues first assumes paramount importance. Preservation, restoration, and improvement of habitat should be the number one recovery priority.

The Georgia Basin Steelhead Recovery Plan is a diverse project. Every river presents a different set of circumstances and problems to overcome with respect to achieving recovery. A river with a dam may require mitigation works such as gravel, nutrient, or woody debris augmentation (often problems caused by dams on rivers). Another stream with intact or restored main stem habitat might require an influx of spawners from a hatchery program for one cycle of production to bolster recruitment levels.

"Survivor" by Bruce Muir, a limited edition print, is for sale with all proceeds going towards the Recovery plan. For more information go here: Survivor

Funding for steelhead recovery faces unprecedented challenges. The provincial Fisheries Renewal, Forest Renewal and Watershed Restoration Programs have been completely scrapped. Between 1996 and 2004, technical and enforcement staff have been cut from provincial ministries by 54.2% in Water, Land & Air Protection, by 77.5% in Sustainable Resource Management, and by 52.9% within Ministry of Forests (from Coalition for Sustainable Forest Solutions, 2004). The steelhead recovery team has been forced to prioritize and utilize its available resources and money as efficiently as possible. Thus, they are working at implementing the best recovery science of the day by trying to form funding partnerships and committees aimed at doing main stem steelhead habitat restoration projects. As mentioned above, in some cases hatcheries are playing a role as well.

But McCulloch is adamant about leaving the “aces in the hole,” in the hole. “Programs like the Living Gene Bank were specifically created to leave as many wild adult spawners in the river as possible [by taking wild smolts for broodstock and raising them to adult instead]”. They don’t want to alter or impact the special balance these [wild, adult] fish have found by removing too many of them as broodstock – which could take them out of the loop forever. “This isn’t going to happen overnight, something many expect,” McCulloch says. “We are in for the long haul, and what we need to focus on is increasing the quality of the habitat, and let the steelhead that have survived, pass these survival traits onto their progeny.”

Now if only they would increase their numbers a million-fold per day.

Special thanks for their insight and help on this article to: Mike McCulloch, Bruce Ward, Poul Bech, Mark Chilcote, Bob Hooton, and Dave Hadden.

To learn about the recovery plan go here: http://www.steelheadrecoveryplan.ca

The Steelhead Society is involved as a member of the South Coast Steelhead Coalition and very much an advocate for the recovery of steelhead. To join the Steelhead Society click here

Sources:

Blouin, M. (2003). Relative reproductive success of hatchery and wild Steelhead in the Hood River. Retrieved from http://www.nativefishsociety.org/docs/Hood%20R%20Stlhd.pdf

Lewis, R. (1995, September). The Rise of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections. F.D.A. Consumer, 29 (7). Retrieved from http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/795_antibio.html

Ward, B. (2000), Declivity in steelhead (Oncorhynchus Mykiss) at the Keogh River over the past decade [Electronic version]. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 57, 298-306.

Ward, B., Slaney, P. (1990). Returns of Pen-Reared Steelhead from Riverine, Estuarine, and Marine Releases. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 119, 492-499.

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