Old is new; an experimental fish trap on the Columbia River/Wild Fish Conservancy photo
The handwriting might be on the wall for the commercial gillnet fisheries targeting Columbia River salmon in the wake of a new study documenting how almost unbelievably clean it is to fish with traps.
Traps, which steer fish into holding pens where they are kept alive until they can be sorted for harvests or upstream passage, have long been known to be a better means of selective harvest than gillnets, which indiscriminately snag and hold salmon of any species that happen to poke their heads through the mesh or become entangled in it.
But it was not known how much better, with some scientists thinking the stress of the time spent in holding pens might cause the later death of some trapped salmon eventually freed to continue on their way to the spawning grounds.
The problem gets especially difficult on the Columbia where struggling wild kings mix with kings returning to hatcheries built to maintain fishing opportunities along the more than 1,200-mile-long river that flows from the Canadian Rockies south through the state of Washington before turning west to form the Washington-Oregon border.
Using data from a genetic testing and tagging program that began in 2019, Fish Conservancy researchers were able to identify and then enumerate the number of Chinook surviving the trap and making it to spawning grounds above the Bonneville Dam more than 100 miles and about a week’s travel time for a salmon upstream from the trap.
“Based upon our tagged sample of fish that had genetically assigned to populations originating above Bonneville Dam,” they reported, every fish tagged in the trap had made it past that obstacle.
‘Remarkable’ results
The study is now in the peer-review process.
Given its small sample size – only 88 fish were identified as spawners headed upstream of Bonneville – it would be a stretch to say that it shows the use of traps could eliminate all bycatch mortality for Chinook in mixed-stock fisheries, but the study makes it clear that if the idea is to harvest salmon cleanly, traps are the way to go.
As the Conservancy put it, “the latest survival analysis provides some of the most irrefutable and persuasive evidence to date that passively operated fish traps may provide sustainable fishing opportunities for hatchery fish (or other healthy and abundant stocks) while eliminating mortality to threatened and endangered wild salmon that co-mingle in the river.”
Traps, however, are controversial.
In Alaska, commercial traps were banned at Statehood. They had been long resented in the territory as the tools of Outside interests that held too much power over salmon harvests.
Even then, however, it was known traps were a scientifically better means of harvest, as Rogers conceded:
“…It was the only way that salmon should have been harvested because the fish worked out to the runs. You could manage. You knew what was coming and going. You could control the escapement of the fish. You could then control the harvest. You didn’t have to chase mobile gear all over the place. And it was just perfect, but the trouble with the fish trap was that it was owned by the processors, the canners, and they were all Outside interests.”
Post Statehood, Alaska took a more democratic view of commercial salmon harvesting and let everyone have at it. By the start of the 1970s, state salmon returns were at record lows in part due to cold water in the North Pacific ocean and in part due to overfishing.
Alaska voters then approved an amendment to the constitution basically undoing the Statehood decision to take the vast majority of the salmon out of the hands of the few and share the catch widely among the many.
As a result, 1.5 percent of Alaska fishermen now catch more than 95 percent of the salmon while the other 95 percent hope to catch a fish, and salmon managers continue to struggle to find ways to get weak returns of some species like Kenai kings, past the gillnets used to catch salmon returning in large numbers, like Kenai sockeye.
And in Alaska, unlike on the Columbia, no one has even dared experiment with a trap to try to determine just how much of a difference technology could make in solving the bycatch problem.
Ive thought about it . I agree.fish traps reduce variables and maximize profits and increase the potential for ecological advantages. Less fuel, fewer injured seals , less by catch , more precise escapement management for each river, a fresher more valuable product that processors can work with without extreme glut and reducing potential decay as fish sit in holds ect. It could help create consistent sustainable jobs due to larger profit margins for all – potentially crew members could be shiftted to more reliable long term work if aquaculture laws are updated to the new realities of finace and demand for consistant fresh product. Win frocking win . Fill up empty semis and barges with back haul for reduced shipping costs.
Having had the negative view of fish traps, I was quite intrigued with your article. If a good test can reassure Alaskans that traps are better than gill nets for the fish population, then I say that is the way to go. The problem may be getting past the politics of the situation. If that can be surmounted, then let’s go!
When an industry becomes more efficient, one common result is fewer jobs in that industry. When machines started making auto parts with precision, a whole lot of machinists had to find new careers.
Since many of the commercial fishermen in Alaska are part time and already have a day job, that transition, while unpleasant, should be financially manageable for most.
Allow the building of processing plants and traps at the mouths of the rivers. Require employment priority at those facilities to those who used to work on boats or had setnet sites. Tax and regulate those facilities.
More precise management will hopefully provide more plentiful and consistent sport and subsistence fishing as an added bonus.
The power of the commercial fishing lobby will be reduced.
An interesting question is should the Bristol Bay or Aleutian fisheries be included or left as they are? If the Aleutian fishery can be shown to affect the Yukon, then it should be included.
Good science. I especially liked the experimental approach. I always wondered , spending years in AK, why terminal fisheries on streams did not replace commercial netting with all its fuel costs and marginal economics.
Craig, thanks for your interest in Wild Fish Conservancy’s fish trap research and our recent preliminary results for spring/ summer-run Chinook. I thought you might also be interested in this fascinating article in Hakai Magazine, which tracks the history of fish traps back even further to 4,000+ years ago:
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-ingenious-ancient-technology-concealed-in-the-shallows/
Thanks. I’m familiar. Some traps in Australia are thought to possibly go back 40,000 years, but they have not been well dated. It is clearly a very old technology, and one – as your researchers discovered – that can very efficiently discriminate between allowable catch and bycatch.
I have long advocated the “return to the past” and utilize fish traps in Cook Inlet. Nets, whether set or drift, are obviously unable to differentiate river bound salmon. Fish traps at the mouths of rivers can assure that the majority of fish detained there are returning to spawn in that river. Fish headed for the Upper Cook Inlet would rarely be caught. In addition to helping Upper Cook Inlet rivers, the benefit to the Anchor, Ninilchik, Deep Creek, and Kasilof Rivers would be impressive.
The migraine headache would be satisfactorily determining the allocation to individual drift and setnet fishermen…
As an aside, the majority of instances I mention “fish traps” people have such a negative reaction you’d think I was advocating trapping their beloved pet dog or cat. After they calm down and listen, 99% of the time they see my point and agree allocation is the big problem.
Marlin as far as fairness to permit holders go.
You could allow permits to be stacked.
It could work like a Co-Op.
Most crewmembers would probably take it in the shorts,the only fairness wrinkle that i could see