Thompson steelhead presentation last night

Derby said:
Subject: Thompson steelhead presentation



If you are on Facebook and missed the Thompson steelhead presentation last night here is a link to the BCWF Facebook page where they have it posted.. found it very imformative and worth the time...





https://m.facebook.com/BCWildlifeFederation/?__tn__=C-R
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Thanks for posting the link. I watched it last night as well and learned a lot. Very technical but well thought out.
 
Rob B has a lot of years up there.. I remember when he was working under Ian up there... yes he did what i thought was a great job & put into prespective of what really needs to be looked at & seriously needs to be do done to atleast start to change the tide :)
 
The Province will never manage water in the interest of fish and thus the Interior stocks of steelhead are doomed even without climate change impacts to water availability in the critical rearing tribs. All the key tribs for Chilcotin and Thompson steel are already oversubscribed with legal licenses while the Province has documented illegal use and overuse at over 10x licensed use on tribs like the Coldwater and the fate of these stocks has been inevitable for a while (Don’t even get me started on the lack of fish screens and the death traps known as ditch/flood irrigation!). Add to that the fact the Province has never prioritized freshwater habitat protection and the feds have never really stepped back up to the plate in that area since Harper gutted the fed Habitat Protection program.

There may have been a glimmer of hope for these Interior stocks during the emergency Recovery assessments but the fact the govt Bios and staff at both the Fed and Prov levels caved to political pressure and thus wouldn’t support freshwater habitat capacity and instream flows as critical for these stocks pretty much sealed the deal for them. Very sad to see such majestic and iconic animals “managed“ to extinction. Our generation, our legacy .... tragic!

Cheers!

Ukee
 
Interesting enough Bison didnt really indicate habitat/water as a lead probem in the decline in the thompson river run
 
Derby said:
Interesting enough Bison didnt really indicate habitat/water as a lead probem in the decline in the thompson river run
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Yeah, I found this quite fascinating. The comparison of the Chilcotin and Thompson watersheds really punctuated this point. You'd have to imagine it was playing a significant role, but, if it was the major player, then why are the Chilcotin fish also doing so poorly? Although, I'm sure some better water management would be helpful for the Chinook and Coho populations that are a little less resilient to variable and poor water conditions. Rainbows are notoriously good invasive species, so it's not surprising (but it still is...) that they are fairing well in the juvenile stages of life in the more variable water quality.

Indicated by what I thought were the most fascinating figures he showed - the fry and parr densities that were observed at the various levels of spawner abundance. Virtually no variability among the years with thousands of spawners and those years with only a couple hundred?! The truly remarkable ability of Mykiss to fill the available carrying capacity is quite something. If only we could GMO Chinook to do this a little better...

Again, the devil is in the seal-tails... (yeah, that was a bad attempt at a joke). Remarkable the level correlation with the seal population increase. But not overly surprising considering the size of the Steelhead smolt that would be entering the SoGeorgia. Although I'm still skeptical about this overall impact. Maybe skeptical isn't the right word, I believe it, just very surprised they are SO effective when the vast majority of their diet are herring. It's amazing the smolts aren't more sheltered by the sheer abundance of herring...

Definitely worth a watch to anyone interested in Steelhead.
 
Have to agree.. some of the take aways

Predation by far most severe threat followed by by-catch in more abundant salmon stocks

Inshore & Georgia Strait & Johnstone Strait mortality 63% of steelhead smolts

Estimated 360,000 smolts consumed through predation primarily Harbour seals.

Sea Lions factor on returning adults
 
Just because the government employees aren’t allowed to talk water and freshwater habitat doesnt mean they’re not the critical factors. Water availability during key rearing times (not necessarily the same timing as juvenile abundance audits!), poor water extraction practices and watershed-scale habitat loss and alterations are significant and widespread issues in both the Thompson and Chilcotin watersheds.

Effects like predation and fishing bycatch are known as depensatory effects, meaning that they tend to remove the same # of individuals, whether juveniles or adults, from the population regardless of the overall abundance of the population (and counter to common logic that fewer smolts or adults would equal less being predated upon, unfortunately predators - whether seals or gill net fishers, are extremely effective regardless of popn density). The term Depensatory is derived from the fact these effects keep small, at risk populations from reaching the exponential growth phase required for meaningful recovery at the population scale.

100’s to 1000’s of fry are pumped or diverted in to farm fields and irrigation ditches daily on all the critical rearing tribs in both systems, critical juvenile side-channels and riffles go dry most years and instream temps exceed 20C for most of the late summer, often exceeding 28C in the most water-challenged systems like the ironically named Coldwater. Without an “over” abundance of fry and smolt production from freshwater habitats those systems will never be able to overcome the depensatory mortality effects and thus recover.

Again, just because the government folks aren’t allowed to acknowledge those critical issues due to their political masters doesn’t mean they don’t exist!

Cheers!

Ukee
 
thank u for that :0 we do know that system connect to the Thompson for many years there has been an water issue for sure so that would make sense :)
 
Stoisy said:
Yeah, I found this quite fascinating. The comparison of the Chilcotin and Thompson watersheds really punctuated this point. You'd have to imagine it was playing a significant role, but, if it was the major player, then why are the Chilcotin fish also doing so poorly? Although, I'm sure some better water management would be helpful for the Chinook and Coho populations that are a little less resilient to variable and poor water conditions. Rainbows are notoriously good invasive species, so it's not surprising (but it still is...) that they are fairing well in the juvenile stages of life in the more variable water quality.

Indicated by what I thought were the most fascinating figures he showed - the fry and parr densities that were observed at the various levels of spawner abundance. Virtually no variability among the years with thousands of spawners and those years with only a couple hundred?! The truly remarkable ability of Mykiss to fill the available carrying capacity is quite something. If only we could GMO Chinook to do this a little better...

Again, the devil is in the seal-tails... (yeah, that was a bad attempt at a joke). Remarkable the level correlation with the seal population increase. But not overly surprising considering the size of the Steelhead smolt that would be entering the SoGeorgia. Although I'm still skeptical about this overall impact. Maybe skeptical isn't the right word, I believe it, just very surprised they are SO effective when the vast majority of their diet are herring. It's amazing the smolts aren't more sheltered by the sheer abundance of herring...

Definitely worth a watch to anyone interested in Steelhead.
Click to expand...

theplanetmagazine.net

HOW SEALS MAY BE IMPACTING SALMON CONSERVATION

Researchers examine the link between seal diets and the declining salmon populations.
theplanetmagazine.net theplanetmagazine.net
 
The big take away for me from Rob's presentation was if we doubled the survival from inshore predation alone, that would produce a benefit of 486% change in spawner abundance. You can look at all the usual suspects like water, habitat, fishing related mortalities, and none come even remotely close to contributing to steelhead recovery like dealing with predation. If you read Dr. Carl Walters research, he too has identified seal and sea lion predation as a very significant contributor to salmon declines. Large out-migrating smolts such as steelhead, stream-type chinook whom over-winter in-river for 1 to 2 years, represent a significant caloric meal for the effort expended to chase down a meal. Steelhead populations being very small, were the first we humans noticed being impacted by the increasing populations of seals and sea lions. Now we have a Chinook crisis that is creating all kinds of havoc. You can spin your wheels chasing down habitat improvement, hatcheries, fishing restrictions....those actions will not make any meaningful difference. Address the predation folks. Why is it that rivers like the Gold on Vancouver Island and many other examples have no steelhead? There are no nets on those rivers, no kill recreational fishery, no commercial fishery. Their habitat's are for the most part producing fish and smolts. The fish go out as smolts and don't make it back. Why waste time chasing shinny pennies, when the research is pointing us toward the most significant issue facing salmon and steelhead - predation.
 
searun said:
The big take away for me from Rob's presentation was if we doubled the survival from inshore predation alone, that would produce a benefit of 486% change in spawner abundance. You can look at all the usual suspects like water, habitat, fishing related mortalities, and none come even remotely close to contributing to steelhead recovery like dealing with predation. If you read Dr. Carl Walters research, he too has identified seal and sea lion predation as a very significant contributor to salmon declines. Large out-migrating smolts such as steelhead, stream-type chinook whom over-winter in-river for 1 to 2 years, represent a significant caloric meal for the effort expended to chase down a meal. Steelhead populations being very small, were the first we humans noticed being impacted by the increasing populations of seals and sea lions. Now we have a Chinook crisis that is creating all kinds of havoc. You can spin your wheels chasing down habitat improvement, hatcheries, fishing restrictions....those actions will not make any meaningful difference. Address the predation folks. Why is it that rivers like the Gold on Vancouver Island and many other examples have no steelhead? There are no nets on those rivers, no kill recreational fishery, no commercial fishery. Their habitat's are for the most part producing fish and smolts. The fish go out as smolts and don't make it back. Why waste time chasing shinny pennies, when the research is pointing us toward the most significant issue facing salmon and steelhead - predation.
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As I tried to explain above, there has always been, and always will be, depensatory mortality effects like seal predation, that anadromous fish stocks must overcome. History has shown us that we can literally spend billions of $$$ in the PNW on salmon “enhancement” to virtually no effect using artificial approaches like hatcheries, predator control, window dressing “habitat” construction, etc, etc, etc. These approaches have the very rare “win”, but as current stock status from Cali to Alaska shows us it isn’t working at the larger population and stock scale - not even close.

We can continue to test the insanity theory of doing the same thing and expecting different results by employing yet another flavour of the day “silver bullet” approach vis a vis predator control (ask the caribou guys how that’s working), or folks can accept what fish and wildlife bios have been preaching for years - if you don’t take care of ecosystems holistically (in the freshwater environment, that means managing water and habitat at a watershed scale) self-sustaining wild populations will be at risk even without harvest exploitation.

One last time, just because a government presentation down plays the critical importance of water and freshwater habitat, especially when it’s not in that governments interest to manage those effects, it’s on the individual whether to accept that at face value or apply critical thinking and analysis.

Cheers!

Ukee
 
I’ll add that, wrt what “the research” is telling us, the volumes of proven scientific literature relating to the effectiveness of ecosystem/watershed scale management of wild populations vs theoretical or actual predator control effectiveness studies isn’t remotely comparable.

I’m not saying predator control, or removal of the chum gillnets for that matter, can’t help avoid an extremely depressed stock going extinct but seals and gill nets are not what drove these Interior steelhead stocks from healthy populations numbering in the thousands to their current status in the dozens!

It also shouldn’t surprise folks that fringe issues like predator control always come up and get studied because humans rarely want to take responsibility for the consequences of our historical actions and are even more hesitant to want to change our current behaviours. Governments never want to say a watershed has been over developed and not only will all future development be halted, but current levels rolled back - that cant happen because our economic system requires perpetual growth and expansion. Much better for a government to study and champion fringe issues and hope a silver bullet solution, especially one that would mean you dont have to regulate ranchers, loggers, miners and developers, exists. However, ask yourselves- how often has the latest, greatest silver bullet solution approach worked for our salmon and steelhead stocks to date?

Cheers!

Ukee
 
Hey @UkeeDreamin you've referenced the need for an "over" abundance of smolts. I know there are issues with water quality and washed out smolts, but what are your thoughts on juvenile abundance measures that are nearly identical across spawner abundance measures? I assume the water quality issues have gotten worse over this same time period of reduced abundance? So why do you think we aren't seeing that show up in the juvenile counts? If you need an over abundance of smolts, then why was that not the case 30 years ago?

Also, thoughts on the water quality issues being more marine based? We know steelhead (and in second place, sockeye) migrate in the shallowest parts of the marine water column. I'm curious if there is not more impact from warming sea-surface temps that are causing changes in metabolism and food web dynamics that are driving these declines. Fraser sockeye are not far behind IFR steelhead in their catastrophic decline in productivity. Yet, populations of Bristol Bay sockeye, that reside in cooler waters during marine life stages and especially during the early marine components, are seeing some of their greatest population returns of all time? Different species, yes, but similar very marine ecologies.

@wildmanyeah I know the science behind all the predation issues, not saying it's not an issue. I'm sure it plays a role, but I hesitate to think it's quite as strongly or directly correlated with productivity declines. Trying to model these declines is inherently complex and I think the increased abundance of pinnipeds is also correlated with numerous environmental factors, like warming SST and declining forage fish (herring) populations. Because we aren't accounting for these in the models, or specifically, because these other factors are very difficult to model, the predator abundance importance might become inflated relative to other measures (aka colinearity). Some cool work in Puget Sound on Nisqually steelhead shows a reduction in predation in years of high anchovy abundance. Maybe we should be looking at increasing herring abundance locally?
 
Don’t worry about it to much @Stoisy. The do nothing strategy and close down rec fishing seems just as valid as all the rest.

for Thoes around the decision table all the calls are not that different then these fourms endless disagreement about the causes. Often leading to call for studies to prove to one side who is right or wrong and in return more studies are called for.

so if there is one thing you can be sure of its that more study will happen and no meaningful action will result.
 
First off, just because Derby inferred I was suggesting nothing be done in no way reflects what I actually wrote or my stance on this subject. In fact, I’m advocating for a whole lot more to be done than what either the Prov or Feds are proposing.

With regard to juvie or smolt abundance, I’m calling ******** as I’ve been out there for the past three decades. Using the Thompson stock as an example, it consists of a population with a very few mainstem spawners with the vast majority spawning and rearing in the smaller tribs of the Nicola/Coldwater, Bonaparte and Deadman systems. In the last decade alone, the entire Bonaparte has been mostly inaccessible with extremely compromised habitat for those that have accessed. We’ve pretty much lost Guichon Creek and many other significant spawning/rearing tribs as a result of fires, floods, droughts and mudslides. Water availability continues to dwindle while use increases and temperatures rise. While I doubt many readers on here have conducted juvenile abundance or density surveys, I can assure you they are very hard to develop for populations that utilize such a vast geographic area, and very difficult to deliver in a manner that doesn’t unintentionally affect the results: particularly with differing timing of emergence, migration/distribution, different life-history strategies, etc, etc, etc btwn the various tribs and sub-populations. Delivering a study design that provides reliable results is extremely costly and is a logistical nightmare! What typically happens instead is a limited # (often VERY limited #) of indicator sites are utilized as indices. This runs a great risk of the indicator sites being the prime areas that still produce fish (because fish bios and field techs like to catch and observe fish) which are then extrapolated and obscure the lost or low productivity in the majority of the historic distribution.This exact phenomena was recently exposed on a different stock in a different watershed where biased indicator sites showed a healthy juvenile population while a concurrent, multi-year intensive population study showed a catastrophic population collapse.

As I’ve stated before, we have over a century of “management”, restoration and enhancement in the PNW to learn from. With very few exceptions, looking for an obscure “silver bullet” solution while continuing on our merry way of habitat degradation and water abuse simply hasn’t worked and we all know the status of our salmon and steelhead stocks as a result. This is particularly true in BC for the Interior stocks that are reliant on the freshwater ecosystem for a larger proportion of their life-history.

Finally, while I dont think seal predation or gill net bycatch were the cause of the collapse of these stocks, I do agree that now that they’re critically low, addressing these sources of mortality is required to avoid the extinction of these stocks and give them a chance to recover. However, I feel strongly that if we simply cull seals and further reduce bycatch but continue degrading the habitat and water on which these animals rely, we’ll have yet another stat of a lost stock in our long history of degrading this resource.

Cheers!

Ukee
 
I believe the province is.. The water issue and its relationship to the Thompson river has been a on going issue for over 30 years yet and as u see its one of many that plague the river..Complicated doesnt even scratch the surface and yet still nothing is even being done to at the very lease help this run of fish out or river systems..sad :(
 
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