Race to save salmon for spawning

Giant salmon mill in the water below Elwha Dam on the Olympic Peninsula, fenced out of their traditional spawning ground by the concrete and flirting with death by drought.

State and tribal biologists and volunteers are waging an effort to move them for spawning — seining the fish from the Elwha River and moving them by net, carrying case, and truck to colder, cleaner water in a holding pond. There, when the salmon's eggs are ready, they will be artificially spawned.

It's not the first time: Biologists have had to move the fish in low-flow years before, because two dams on the river make the salmon more vulnerable in a drought. Scientists say these fish are too valuable to lose, descendants of the legendary June Hogs, or giant chinook of up to 100 pounds that used to lumber up the river.

The transferred fish are the genetic bank for restoration of the river. When two dams on the Elwha are taken out, beginning in 2004, the big fish will once more have access to spawning grounds in Olympic National Park.

"They are special in that in the Olympics, they are the only fish that ever reached 100 pounds in size," said Brian Winter of the National Park Service, who is director of the Elwha recovery effort.

"And they are uniquely adapted to this river. There are no other fish quite like them."

Near-record low flows on the river due to this year's drought and rising water temperatures have put the chinook, a threatened species, at risk. State biologists, fearing losses of up to 80 percent of the fish in the river, decided to intervene.

Together with volunteers, they pitch a seine net into the river to capture the big fish, some as large as 40 pounds, and haul them to the bank. That's when it gets tricky.

They scoop powerful, thrashing salmon out by the dozen, then reach into the flashing silver mass to grasp fish one at a time by the tail, a hold that quiets them.

"They are slippery. Shaking hard. Quite vigorous!" said Steve Keller of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Each fish is lowered head-first into a kind of salmon-carrying case: an inner tube sealed at one end and partly filled with water. The darkness helps keep the fish quiet as they are walked to a tanker truck full of water.

The salmon are trucked to a nearby state fish hatchery and then released through a door in the bottom of the truck into a holding pond full of clean, 55-degree well water.

Normally, biologists would leave about a third of the run in the river to spawn and would capture the rest for spawning at the hatchery. But this year, with river-water temperatures on the cusp of turning deadly, biologists want to rescue every fish they can.

Rain may lower water temperatures, but biologists can't take that chance: Temperatures over 60 degrees are lethal to salmon and breeding grounds for disease. And the temperature is already about 60.

The two dams on the river contribute to the warm water temperatures and block access to all but five miles of the lower river.

But while dammed, the river may not be doomed: A $142 million restoration effort is under way.

The first step is rehabilitation of the water system for the city of Port Angeles. Toward the end of 2004 comes demolition of the two dams.

Fish advocates think the Elwha poses one of the best opportunities for salmon recovery anywhere, because the habitat above the dams lies entirely within Olympic National Park and therefore is pristine.

Taking the dams out will mean colder water for salmon and reduced risk of disease and death in a drought, Winter, of the National Park Service, said. This spawning season, biologists hope to rescue 1,000 or more adult chinook.

Once the fish are in the holding pond, biologists will watch for the moment, usually early next month, when the females are ready to spawn.

They will know by feel, waiting until the fish are like a sock full of tapioca pudding, with their eggs loose and lumpy in their swelling bellies.

When ready, the fish are clubbed over the head and cut open to harvest their eggs. The semen from male fish is harvested as well and mixed with the eggs to fertilize them. The offspring from these eggs will return in the next three to six years.

They could also spawn the first generation of chinook salmon since 1914 to return to an open river.

Lynda V. Mapes can be reached at 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com.