[ODFW-News] Strange lights signal salmon spawning study

[ODFW News]

For immediate release Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2005
 
Strange lights signal salmon spawning study
 
NEWPORT - A research project now in its seventh year on Oregon's coastal
rivers has some people calling to report strange lights on the rivers at
night, but officials assure area residents that the "Unidentified
Fishing Objects" actually are part of an important assessment of fall
chinook populations that help establish salmon harvest levels from
Oregon to Alaska. 

Each fall, biologists with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's
Coastal Chinook Research and Monitoring Project set entanglement nets in
several Oregon coastal rivers to help them capture, count, weigh and
mark fish as part of the state's obligations under the U.S.-Canada
Pacific Salmon Treaty.

An important part of the work involves live capture and marking of
incoming chinook in the Siletz and Siuslaw rivers. This is done at
night, when the fish are on the move.  

"We don't want people to be alarmed when they see our field crews
working with lights on these rivers at night," said Ethan Clemons, an
ODFW analyst overseeing the study.

The chinook are tagged, either with a small hole punched in the fish's
gill cover or with a radio transmitter. Anglers can identify a
radio-tagged fish by a black wire antenna protruding from its mouth. The
radio transmitters can be returned to Clemons at the ODFW Marine
Resources Program office in Newport.
"We handle the fish gently and return them to the river as rapidly as
possible, often in less than a minute," Clemons said.

Upriver from the tagging areas, information on marked and unmarked
chinook is recorded by crews finding carcasses in survey areas after the
fish spawn from September to December. Marking allows researchers to
more accurately determine the number of spawning adults and where they
spawn. 
Crews also are conducting angler creel surveys to better estimate
recreational harvest levels.

"Spawning-ground surveys are much less expensive than mark and recapture
studies, and checking angler harvest cards is less expensive than creel
surveys," Clemons said. "However, fish escapement varies from year to
year. And weather conditions influence survey effectiveness, so we are
trying to get a handle on a lot of variables all at once."

Clemons and his crew work with coastal watershed councils, local citizen
groups and landowners who are actively involved in the Oregon Plan. The
study is funded through the Pacific Salmon Treaty councils.

"These studies help ODFW to manage our coastal chinook fishery," Clemons
said. "They also help ODFW meet its obligations under the Pacific Salmon
Treaty. When a troller catches a chinook off Southeast Alaska or British
Columbia, chances are one in four or five that the fish is from a
coastal Oregon stream."

So far, the study has documented increasing numbers of fall chinook in
most of the coastal river basins. The characteristics of fall chinook
runs on other coastal rivers can be estimated using the data collected
on these representative watersheds. 

For more information about a particular marked fish or the research
project, contact Ethan Clemons at ODFW's Marine Resources Program office
in Newport at 541-867-4741 or Ethan.R.Clemons at state.or.us.
 
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