Wisconsin DNR sets open house events and tours at egg collection facilities in Racine, Kewaunee, Sturgeon Bay. You can tour a Wisconsin salmon hatchery.
from The Fishing Wire

MADISON — Up and down the Wisconsin shores of Lake Michigan, chinook salmon are staging for the biggest race of their lives – a final run to spawn in rivers including the Root in Racine, Kewaunee in Kewaunee County and Strawberry Creek in Door County.

Workers at DNR’s Strawberry Creek Chinook Facility outside Sturgeon Bay crowd salmon in a pen before spawning.
WDNR Photo

When the time is right – likely starting in the next week or so – Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources staff will be there waiting to collect eggs and milt used in producing the next generation of fish for Lake Michigan stocking.

Visitors will be able to see the action firsthand at open house events at the C.D. “Buzz” Besadny Anadromous Fish Facility on Saturday, Oct. 3 and Root River Steelhead Facility on Saturday, Oct. 10. At the Strawberry Creek facility, another key source for chinook salmon eggs, visitors are welcome during daylight hours.

“What started in the 1960s as an effort to control alewife populations by stocking Pacific salmon has turned into a sport fishery that generates some $4 billion per year for the economy of the Great Lakes region,” said Justine Hasz, DNR fisheries bureau director. “Each year the fall spawning runs are a reminder of how our stocking efforts contribute to this economic impact by creating recreational opportunities for anglers of all ages. We look forward to welcoming visitors to our open houses where they can learn more about our fisheries management and propagation efforts.”

The open house events at Besadny and Root River feature egg collection demonstrations as well as fly casting and tying lessons, youth instruction and opportunities to learn Lake Michigan fishing tips from expert anglers. The Besadny open house features an opportunity to sponsor tagged fingerling sturgeon and participate in the river release of these young fish.

Mike Baumgartner, who supervises the Besadny facility in Kewaunee, said based on reports of salmon staging near the mouth of the river, he expects a strong run of fish again this year.

“Visitors can expect great viewing along the banks of the river, a fish-eye perspective through the underwater windows and a look at egg collection through a window in the processing area,” Baumgartner said. “We’ll also offer guided tours of the facility, fish print t-shirt making and fishing lessons along with other activities. Visitors can park in a lot down the road and walk or take the horse and wagon ride to get here. It should be a great day.”

The open house events are free and open to the public with food and beverages available from local groups as well as guided facility tours and activities geared to youth. Trails and paths near the facilities offer opportunities for families to explore the river environment and enjoy wildlife and bird viewing.

The Oct. 3 event at the Besadny facility in Kewaunee runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The facility, on the Kewaunee River, was built in 1989-1990 and collects eggs from chinook and coho salmon as well as brown and steelhead or rainbow trout for rearing in a series of ponds. A processing building featuring a lobby with displays and a public viewing window was completed in 1996.

The Oct. 10 event at the Root River facility in Racine also runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The facility was built in 1993-1994 along the Root River by DNR in partnership with the Salmon Unlimited fishing club. It serves as a significant source of coho salmon, steelhead and brown trout eggs and plays an important role in the collection of biological data relating to overall fish health, growth rates, migration patterns and other data. In addition, DNR crews collect seeforellen brown trout from the river in November to ensure the ability to stock this important strain in the future.

Fisheries staff members anticipate processing fish at the third egg collection facility, the Strawberry Creek Chinook Facility outside Sturgeon Bay, on Oct. 5, 8, 12, 15 and 19.

The fall egg collection marks the start of DNR’s propagation process. The eggs will be hatched and raised at DNR facilities until they are ready for stocking at about four months for chinook and at one and a half years for coho, steelhead and brown trout. The different species are stocked according to the stage in their lifecycle at which naturally reproducing fish would normally leave the tributaries to live in Lake Michigan. That stage is much earlier for chinook.

To learn more, visit dnr.wi.gov and search “fisheries open house.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Mike Baumgartner, C.D. “Buzz” Besadny Anadromous Fish Facility supervisor, michael.baumgartner@wisconsin.gov, 920-388-1025; John Komassa, DNR southeast hatchery group section chief, john.komassa@wisconsin.gov, 608-275-3315; Brad Eggold, DNR Lake Michigan fisheries supervisor, Bradley.Eggold@wisconsin.gov, 414-382-7921; Bob Fahey, DNR fisheries operations supervisor, Root River, 608-275-3251, robert.fahey@wisconsin.gov; Jennifer Sereno, DNR communications, jennifer.sereno@wisconsin.gov, 608-770-8084.

For Endangered Salmon in California, a Very Measured Sip of Cold Water

With Chinook salmon facing lethally high stream temperatures, scientists deploy a new device to help manage the dwindling supply of cold water that the fish need to survive.

By Rich Press, NOAA Fisheries Science Writer | Follow Rich on Twitter: @Rich_NOAAFish
from The Fishing Wire

Chinook Salmon. Credit: Michael Humling/USFWS.

The State of California, now in the fourth year of a historic drought, is parched. But in the north of the state, at the bottom of the reservoir behind Shasta Dam, lies a big drink of cold water. For salmon in the Sacramento River, especially winter-run Chinook—considered by NOAA Fisheries to be among the eight endangered species most at risk of extinction—that cold water is a lifeline. Water managers tap it to cool off the river in summertime, when streams become hot enough to kill developing salmon eggs and newly hatched fry.

The cold water flows in from the mountains as snowmelt. But with winter snowpack at record lows, the supply of cold water is dwindling. If it’s not managed carefully, winter-run Chinook might be lost forever.

So last month, scientists from NOAA Fisheries and the University of Nevada, Reno, installed a new system to measure the temperature of the water behind Shasta Dam. The temperature profiler, which is based on fiber optic technology, will allow scientists to accurately estimate how much cold water is available so it can be used as efficiently as possible.

“The big question we’re facing, especially during this drought, is how much of the river can we keep cool enough for salmon eggs to survive?” said Eric Danner, the NOAA Fisheries biologist and salmon expert who is leading the project. “And can we keep it cool through October without running out of cold water first?”

Measuring the Vertical Temperature Profile

Cherisa Friedlander and Skip Bertolino of NOAA Fisheries and Scott Tyler of the University of Nevada, Reno, lower a fiber optic cable to the bottom of the reservoir behind Shasta Dam. The fiber optic system will provide a continuous, real-time temperature reading at every depth of the reservoir, allowing for more efficient management of the dwindling supply of cold water that endangered salmon need to survive. Credit: Rachel Hallnan/University of Nevada, Reno.
Cold water is heavier than warm water, so when it flows into the reservoir, it sinks to the bottom like hidden treasure. The agency that operates the dam, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, manages downstream water temperatures by mixing cold water from the bottom of the reservoir with warm water from above before sending it through the dam.

Until now, technicians from the Bureau of Reclamation measured the cold-water pool manually by going out on the lake every 2 weeks and dropping a temperature probe at various locations. That method is time-tested, but it left a lot of uncertainty in the results.

At the heart of the new system is a fiber optic cable that runs from the surface of the reservoir to the bottom. Photons are shot through the cable, and the backscatter can be interpreted to measure the temperature at every point along the cable. This will provide a continuous, real-time temperature reading at every depth.

The temperature data will be freely available online. In addition, water managers will be able to run computer simulations to predict how long the cold water will last, and what stream temperatures will result, given different scenarios of weather and dam operations.

Surviving in a New Environment

Scientists from NOAA Fisheries and the University of Nevada, Reno, install a fiber optic-based temperature sensor in the reservoir behind Shasta Dam. Credit: Rachel Hallnan/University of Nevada, Reno.
Before Shasta Dam was built, Chinook salmon traveled far upstream to spawn. Today, the dam blocks their passage, forcing them to spawn downstream, where water temperatures are higher. Because they didn’t evolve under these conditions, Chinook and many other species are not adapted to the hot water they find themselves in today.

Winter-run Chinook are especially vulnerable because of their timing. As their name indicates, they swim upstream in winter. Most spawn in late spring, and their eggs and newly hatched fry—the life stages most at risk from high temperatures—must survive the heat of summer.

“If the water gets too warm, the eggs are stuck in a tomb under the gravel,” said NOAA Fisheries biologist Garwin Yip. If high temperatures don’t kill the eggs outright, they can cause higher rates of disease. And even if the young fry do make it out of their nests, they face long odds as well, as high temperatures make predators more voracious.

The goal of water managers is to keep the average daily stream temperature no higher than 56 degrees Fahrenheit through October. Last year, due to imperfect estimates of its volume, the cold-water pool was unexpectedly drained by mid-September, and stream temperatures soon shot up to 62 degrees. Scientists estimate that only 5 percent of winter-run Chinook eggs survived as fry in the upper Sacramento River, compared to 25 percent survival in an average year.

Chinook salmon. Credit: NOAA.

“We don’t want a repeat of what happened last year,” Danner said.

Hopefully, with the new fiber optic temperature profiler in place, water managers will be able to take very controlled sips from the cold-water pool, and make sure it lasts until the salmon are out of danger.

Conservation Genetics Steers Gila Trout Management
Craig Springer
from The Fishing Wire

A trout that once stared at extinction offers wilderness angling opportunities

The trout stole its color from a southern New Mexico summer sunset. Gila trout sport a painter’s pallet of pink and olive, rose, yellow and copper and a few tones in between. Beneath the black pepper flakes that fleck its side lies a lexis—a language carried forward from another time. It’s an ancient language coded in molecules of proteins written by the press of time and experience in a land turned arid.

Gila trout, native only to headwater streams that vein over the Mogollon Rim of New Mexico and Arizona, have expressed in their genetic makeup a mapping of how to survive in the vestiges of what surely was a large and contiguous range. Their genetics equip them to face what nature may hurl at them in an already harsh environment.

It’s those innate characteristics coiled in the double-helix of DNA that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists strive to preserve in the fish. Conservation genetics is at its heart an investment in the future with an eye on the past. Dr. Wade Wilson with the Southwestern Native Aquatic Resources and Recovery Center in Dexter, New Mexico, knows Gila trout like few others can; he’s a geneticist and can de-code the language. It’s his charge in the conservation of Gila trout to help ensure that the diversity of genetic characters unique in this fish stay in the fish going forward.

Wilson works adjunct with another U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service facility in New Mexico, the Mora National Fish Hatchery near Las Vegas where captive stocks of the rare yellow trout are held. Hatchery biologists are fully immersed in Gila trout captive breeding, and it’s done smartly, carefully, through the consult of Wilson.

“We monitor genetic diversity in captive trout to ensure that what we have in the hatchery represents what we have in the wild,” said Wilson. That mixture is essential for the future. “The more genetic diversity that exists among the fish, the better chance those future generations of Gila trout can adapt to changing environments and stressors and diseases in wild populations,” Wilson adds.

“Here’s how we get it done,” explains an enthusiastic Nate Wiese, Mora’s manager and lead fisheries scientist. “Each fish gets a microchip injected just under the skin just like your vet can do for your dog. That chip gives each fish a personal ID, like a social security number. Knowing each fish at an individual level is a first step in securing the future of Gila trout.”

With every captive fish in the hatchery marked as such, biologists take non-lethal tissue samples from the fish, a tiny piece of fin. From there it’s up to Wilson and his staff using leading-edge technology to look deep at each fish—at the molecular level. Wilson will pinpoint individual fishes with the rarest of genetics in the captive populations and suggest what Wiese calls “pair-wise spawns.” It’s akin to arranged marriages but with the express scientific purpose to ensure that the rarest of genetic characters found by Wilson are carried forward in the next generation of fishes. Males and females that differ among various genes make the best partners.

The Gila trout was described by science a mere 65 years ago. Through much of that intervening time—50 years—it had been closed by law to angling as the fish stared at extinction. Its lot improved with conservation and was down-listed from “endangered” to “threatened” in 2006, and opened to fishing a year later. And so it remains, threatened and fishable, despite a welter of catastrophic wild fires—the sort that makes the evening network news broadcast for days on end.

“An integral part of the conservation strategy calls to replicate in the wild the distinct genetic lineages,” said Wiese. It’s a measure of conservation security to give a geographic spread between populations. “But what happens when a massive fire threatens to gobble up the original and replicate populations? The hatchery is the back up.”

Fire is hard on trout, particularly when a mountain stream turns into a slug of ash slurry at first rain post-fire. The Whitewater-Baldy Fire that decimated the Gila Wilderness in 2012 necessitated a trout rescue ahead of such circumstances. New Mexico Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office biologist Dustin Myers based in Albuquerque led such rescues involving pack horses and helicopters and hatchery trucks from streams sure to be slugged by ash. Now, Mora National Fish Hatchery is home to the only known population of the Spruce Creek lineage of Gila trout. Three other strains are held there, too: Main Diamond Creek, Whiskey Creek and South Diamond Creek lineages.

Aside from the robust genetics plans that steer captive breeding, Wiese manages the hatchery to produce Gila trout conditioned toward a wild environment. Instead of growing lazy trout as fat as toads, they are in a captive environment that mimics nature—like boulders, plants and fast-flowing water. “We get them off the couch and on a treadmill,” said Wiese. “They are going to be better suited for real streams. It’s like tough-love for your children.”

Those real streams are still healing from the 2012 fire and the Silver Fire that scorched headwaters atop the Black Range in 2013, and fish will return to them this autumn. Myers makes that call as to what streams are ready for trout. “Since the Whitewater-Baldy Fire we’ve replicated Whiskey Creek lineage in McKenna Creek and Upper White Creek,” said Myers. “Whiskey fish will also go into Sacaton Creek this year. But Whiskey Creek itself is still healing and we have to wait for habitat conditions to improve.”

It’s about the habitat—including ensuring that Gila trout waters remain free of mongrel or nonnative trouts that compromise the genetic integrity of pure lineages via interbreeding. Barriers, made on site, or natural waterfalls are a means of segregating fishes. Toward that end, Myers recently worked with the Forest Service to restore a vital barrier, a natural waterfall, by blasting out lodged boulders to ensure 21 miles of prime Gila trout habitat in the West Fork Gila remain free of unwanted fishes.

The lack of habitat has been a vexation in Gila trout conservation. But science married with the resolve of individuals who care about this beautiful bright trout is a way forward. A certain splendor in the spectra of inspiring pigments reflected by a wet Gila trout call to mind Emerson: “If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.” But the beauty is richer than what strikes the eye; it’s that Gila trout sheltered in a hatchery and those facing the rigors of the wild still carry today the impress of the past.

Craig Springer works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Learn more at www.fws.gov/southwest

Editor’s Note:

The Southwest Region recently introduced Emphasis Areas as a way to focus our limited resources on geographic areas with the highest conservation need and potential for success, which also have opportunities for leveraging funding. The Mogollon Rim, home to Gila trout, is one of five geographic areas determined by the Regional leadership team to be an Emphasis Area.