A Prince William Sound seiner hauls in ton of pink during the bountiful 2021 season/YouTube

Hatchery tax to fund study of ocean takeover?

In what might be one of the bluntest, to-the-point abstracts every to top a fisheries science paper, a pair of Canadian scientists and a Seattle colleague have summarized the situation for salmon in the ocean off Alaska at this time:

“The North Pacific Ocean is warming and overall Pacific salmon abundance is higher now than at any other time in the past century. This increase in abundance is in large part due to warming-related changes in marine ecosystems at northern latitudes that primarily
benefit pink salmon, and industrial-scale hatchery production to support commercial fisheries.”

Or, in other words, global warming has been good for some salmon – most notably Bristol Bay sockeye and the smallest and least desirable of the species, pink salmon – while it has been generally bad for other salmon. And all indications are now that the massive, open-ocean farming of salmon that has been undertaken by hatchery operators in Alaska and Russia is making the situation worse for the more desired species of the fish – Gulf of Alaska sockeye, Chinook, and coho in particular.

“A large body of evidence indicates that increasing and more variable ocean temperatures, as well as competition among salmon at sea, are associated with shifts in salmon productivity, body size, and age at maturation. However, these relationships vary by species, location, and time, resulting in increased harvest opportunities in some regions and exacerbated conservation concerns in others,” says the paper published in the highly respected ICES Journal of Marine Science.

“The weight-of-evidence suggests North Pacific salmon nations should, as a minimum, limit further increases in hatchery salmon production until there is a better scientific understanding of hatchery and wild salmon distribution at sea, how they interact, and how the consequences of these interactions are influenced by broader climate and ecosystem conditions.”

ICES is the acronym for the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas. Established in Copenhagen in 1902, it is described by the European Evironment Agency  as “the oldest intergovernmental organisation in the world concerned with marine and fisheries science.”

The paper to which it has given its imprimatur was authored by Brendan Connors and James Irvine, scientists employed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Canadian federal agency responsible for ocean management of that nation’s fish, and Greg Ruggerone, an independent scientist with Natural Resource Consultants in Seattle.

All are highly respected fisheries biologists who have served as advisers to the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC), an intergovernmental organization the U.S., Canada, Russia, Japan and the Republic of Korea formed in 1992 in an effort to protect salmon from over exploitation on the high seas.

Capping hatchery releases

The scientists’ pitch for a freeze on the production of hatchery salmon echoes a pitch 19 conservation groups led by the Kenai River Sportfishing Association made to the Alaska Board of Fisheries six years ago. They argued for a limit on hatchery production in Prince William Sound until more was known about salmon interactions, but the Board that oversees both wild and free-range farmed salmon in the 49th state put the monetary interests of a Valdez hatchery ahead of protection of wild fish.

When the groups came back three months later to argue for a statewide freeze on hatchery production until more was known, they were met by a mob of angry commercial fishermen and an 84-screen Powerpoint presentation from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s head of commercial fisheries research, Bill Templin, who argued that the ecosystem of the North Pacific is so complex and tangled no one can explain the interactions between the thousands of species of fish, seabirds and marine mammals battling for survival there.

“Private, no-profit (PNP) hatcheries (now) account for a third of the (salmon) commercial harvest,” he added, while failing to disclose the more than $5 million PNP operators and the Pacific Seafood Processors Association were funneling into his department’s research budget.

The Seattle-based Pacific Seafood Processors, an industry trade group that at the start of the new millennium included the three largest salmon processing companies operating in the 49th state, was a driving force for expansion of free-range salmon farming using hatcheries based in Prince William Sound.

“From 2000-2009 the average statewide hatchery pink returns were 32.6 million in even years and 55.9 million in odd years – in both cases about 40 percent of total pink returns,” they wrote in an “Open Letter to Alaska Hatcheries” and Fish and Game in 2010. 

“We would like production to increase to 70 million in both even and odds years over the next five years, which would bring hatchery production to roughly 50 percent of that total.”

The hatcheries have yet to reach to the goal of 70 million pinks per year, but they have come close in odd-numbered years when pink salmon are dominant. The fish are in those years so plentiful that some argue returns of even-year pink salmon falter because the odd-year fish have put such a big dent in the North Pacific’s food supply.

In 2023, Fish and Game reported a statewide harvest of 152.4 million of pink salmon, the smallest, shortest lived and least valuable of the five species common to North America. The 2024 catch is about a quarter of that at just over 38 million, according to state data.  

Clearly something is happening with pinks in the North Pacific and Connors, Ruggerone and Irvine go a step beyond the Alaska conservation groups in asking for a freeze on hatchery production. They also suggest hatcheries should be taxed to pay for some research into just what is happening at sea.

Tax the ranchers

“Coordinated research to overcome knowledge gaps and develop strategies to reduce unintended interactions between hatchery and wild salmon could be funded (in part) by a tax placed on industrial-scale hatchery salmon releases,” they wrote. “A tax would formalize recognition that there are finite prey resources to support salmon in the ocean and that both prey and wild salmon represent a ‘common property’ whose use should not be without cost to those that seek to benefit from them.”

The references to “industrial-scale hatchery salmon” is meant to draw a distinction between the massive, free-range farming of Alaska and Russia pinks solely for profit and the comparatively tiny hatchery production of Pacific Northwest salmon for conservation and, in some cases, recreational fisheries.

The paper points a finger directly at Alaska, which pioneered the industrial scale production of pink salmon, and Russia, which subsequently copied Alaska’s success in ocean farming the smallish, cheap to raise fish.

“While these hatchery salmon benefited from relatively favorable northern ocean conditions during early marine life, unintended consequences may include exacerbated conservation risks for southern populations that often experience relatively poor early marine conditions and then to migrate north and have to compete with abundant salmon later in their marine lives,” the paper argues. “Large-scale hatchery releases may also further intensify direct and indirect competition among salmon for prey as thermally suitable habitat shrinks with ocean warming.”

The trio of scientists also pushes back hard on Templin’s argument that there is no concrete proof hatchery salmon are harming wild salmon, freely admitting that “correlations underpin our understanding of salmon responses to ocean conditions and density-dependent interactions.”

But adding that “while these correlations are usually assumed to be causative (for example, based on consistent relationships relating salmon density to diet, growth, survival, and abundance), we are often reminded of the adage ‘correlation does not equal causation.'”

Unfortunately, they add, correlations are sometimes all scientists have to work with.

In this case, “manipulative experiments, which are the gold standard approach to establishing causation, are logistically, socially, and economically impossible at the scale of the North Pacific,” the scientists wrote. “However, the natural experiment resulting from the strongly biennial patterns of pink salmon abundance (approximately a 25 fold difference in abundance between odd and even years in some major North Pacific ecosystems) provides strong andconsistent evidence in support of the hypothesis that pink salmon can directly and indirectly influence marine ecosystems. For example, 90 publications provide quantitative evidence in support of hypothesis that pink salmon can influence all five species of Pacific salmon, steelhead trout, four forage fish species, squid, 11 species of seabirds, and two cetaceans.”

Whether the scientists and ICES will gain anymore traction than Alaska conservation groups did with these arguments remain to be seen. The Russians appear little interested in listening to directives from outside of Russia these days, and Alaska’s industrial-scale hatcheries have become big businesses in parts of the state where they enjoy broad support not only from commercial fishermen but from communities to which they provide a sizeable economic boost.

The ocean farming business has been estimated to be worth $125 million per year to the few communities in the Soundwhere little of a pink salmon fishery existed prior to construction of the state hatcheries that were eventually put in the hands of corporations controlled by commercial fishermen.

“Five hatcheries in Prince William Sound (PWS), Alaska release more than 500 million juvenile pink salmon each year, constituting one of the largest salmon hatchery programs in the world,” University of Washington fisheries scientist Ray Hillborn and now retired state fisheries biologist Doug Eggers observed in 2000.

“Before the program was initiated in 1974, pink salmon catches were very low, averaging 3 million fish per year between 1951 and 1979.”

Harvests these days average about 45 million pinks per year, a 15-fold increase over the historic catch, but with wide swings between even- and odd-numbered years, according to state data. The catch hit a record high of 92.6 million in 2013, but has proven a huge bust this year.

The state is now reporting a harvest of fewer than 9 million pinks with more than half the catch made up of wild or feral fish, pinks that decided to find a stream in which to spawn instead of returning to a hatchery. 

The reasons for the unexpectedly low, 2024 returns are still being debated, but the one thing that is clear – given that the Sound’s hatchery salmon never enter a stream – is that whatever happened, it happened in the ocean where the secret lives of salmon have been long overlooked.