Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009

Yakama Nation restores sockeye run

By John Trumbo, Herald staff writer

DESERT AIRE -- With a counter in one hand and a trigger switch in the other, Arnold Barney decided Tuesday which sockeye salmon was destined for a new home and which would return to the river of their origin.

Starting at 6 a.m. Tuesday, Barney's sharp eye selected only sockeye salmon for capture, letting chinook and steelhead have a pass at the Priest Rapids Dam fish trapping station.

The sockeye he picked constitute the new stock of fish that members of the Yakama Nation hope will seed the return of sockeye to Lake Cle Elum after an absence of more than 100 years, said Brian Saluskin, a Yakama fish passage biologist.

"This is a big deal," Saluskin said while three other tribal members manned the fish trap, netting sockeye so they could be transferred to a tank truck for the two-hour drive to Cle Elum.

"These guys are migrating now, and are strong moving fish," Saluskin said of the sockeye.

Smaller than chinook, but much quicker, sockeye can swim from Bonneville Dam to Priest Rapids in 24 hours, he said.

"These guys are going all the way to Wenatchee Lake and Osoyoos Lake in Canada," Saluskin said.

All except those the Yakama Nation extract for relocation.

The goal is to place 500 adult sockeye taken from this month's run in the Columbia River at Priest Rapids and have them spawn at Cle Elum, hoping that their young will become established in the Yakima River system.

If it works, there will be succeeding generations of sockeye returning to the waters of their origin, spawning and rebuilding the long-lost Yakima River sockeye run.

Saluskin said capturing fish in one river system and relocating them to another river system is not a new idea, but this is the first time it has been done with sockeye in the Pacific Northwest.

Tuesday's activities were getting extra treatment because of a ceremony planned at Lake Cle Elum later in the day.

Tuesday's ceremony included a prayer for the fish, a welcome dance and a dinner, with several tribal leaders speaking.

Saluskin said the relocation of sockeye to Lake Cle Elum has special significance for the Yakama Nation because it will "restore a precious resource back into our waters."

Representatives of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Grant County Public Utility District, U.S. Forest Service and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife were invited to the ceremony.

Arnold grinned every time a fish slithered down the stainless steel chute. The bigger the fish, the bigger the grin.

Each salmon, from the pan-sized to 20-pounders, struggled to escape the slide toward capture. Arnold lifted a gate to let the fish go by, allowing the sockeye to drop into the fish tub.

But he pushed a trigger that flipped a gate and sent the steelhead and chinook to a bypass chute and back to the dam's fish ladder leading to the Columbia River.

The fish trapping station at Priest Rapids Dam was built by the Grant Public Utilities District specifically to capture steelhead and assess their health, said Pat Burdick, a Grant PUD civil engineer. Burdick oversaw the design and construction of the fish trap, which began operation two years ago.

The trap takes water diverted from the dam's fish ladder and channels it through a system of stainless steel chutes and gates that lead the fish up a "false rapids," Once at the top, the fish discover no way out except down a long slide, where an operator decides to send them to the tub or back to the river.

"We've had up to 900 fish come through in an eight-hour day," Burdick said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Yakama Nation and state Department of Fish and Wildlife contributed to the design of the fish trap, Burdick said.

Saluskin said the fish trapping station is easy on the fish and an efficient way to capture salmon for relocation.

"We plan to do this every year, taking up to 1,000 fish," he said.

But withdrawing sockeye from the run can't be done until the quota of fish passing through Bonneville Dam en route to Wenatchee and Osoyoos lakes is met. This year that is 75,000 fish.

"Sockeye runs have been declining for 50 or 60 years, but last year the run was one of the biggest. There were 147,000 sockeye at Priest Rapids and 214,000 at Bonneville," Saluskin said.

That opened the door for this year's relocation effort.

"As soon as Bonneville met its target escapement we were there the next day," he said.

-- John Trumbo: 582-1529; jtrumbo@tricityherald.com