Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation

Transcription

James Ives, Biologist, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation: Each day in fisheries is different. You never know everything. You always learn something. This is a wonderful way for us to access our yearly catch versus the old-style of dip netting, snagging or gill netting. I think this is our future and I think we may even build up our fleet to another boat. Dave Roberts, Fish Biologist, Bonneville Power Administration: BPA is in collaboration with the Colville Tribes to recover the wild [salmon] runs. Therefore, we’re funding this live capture project in attempt to recover wild runs while being able to harvest the hatchery fish. The Colville Confederated Tribes have lost a lot of fishing opportunity and a big part of this project is teaching people to fish again. They started fishing in early July before the thermal barrier set up and the fishing was slower. They would make several sets of the net and catch a few dozen fish. Whereas now, with this thermal barrier set up, you can get several hundred fish in one set of the net, sometimes over a thousand. This purse seine can harvest the fish here because they’re concentrated in one location. The fish want to go up the Okanagan [river] toward their spawning grounds but the water’s too warm. So they’ll mill around at the mouth of the Okanagan and when the water gets below about 70 degrees Fahrenheit the fish will move. Above that they won’t. They’ll stay down here where it’s several degrees cooler in the Columbia [river]. This isn’t something that would work everywhere on the river [Columbia]. [music] When the fish are captured in the purse seine the mesh size is such that they don’t get hung up in it — fins and teeth. They just continually swim while fish are getting netted out for harvest or the wild fish getting pulled out for release. They’re stressed but they [fish] aren’t in there for very long. When there’s a good number of fish in the net, say a couple hundred or more, the sorting process takes 45 minutes, maybe, and the fish are all in the water and they are relatively unharmed. Dale Clark, Salmon Harvest Manager, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation: We’re releasing the wild origin fish so they can go spawn and the hatchery origin we’re keeping to dole out to our tribe. We’ve never had this many fish. We average, maybe, 300 to 400 sockeye and about 60 to 80 chinook per delivery. In my opinion, this is the way to harvest salmon. Mike Rayton, Fisheries Biologist, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation: We have to sort through all of those fish. We don’t want to pull a wild fish on board because that’s very stressful. So I’m grabbing for the caudal peduncle [tail] of those chinook and bring it the surface, twist it around and look for an adipose fin [on the back behind the dorsal fin and forward of the caudal fin], or not. If it’s an adipose fin, if it’s present, lower the cork line and gently try to get it over the cork line for a wild release. And when we say “wild release” that’s for the benefit of the data collector. James Ives: We’re setting the example here. We’re at the end of the line of these salmon and we want to make sure those wild ones get loose. We’ve had less than one percent fatalities over the past several years in our purse seine fishing, which shows us that it is successful and worth doing. I’m really proud to be a part of this. Mike Rayton: Sometimes it’s not what you do but how you do it. And I think we’re doing it right, and I can believe in that.