The Outdoor Line Forum

Hey Nellie, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind looking into this. I know Alaska has Pinks that run even years as well as odd years. I think it would be great for the resource if we could get some egg/milt "seeds" from Alaska where they might have a surplus and supplement our rivers with them to increase opportunity for all groups. I know several of our rivers do have pinks during even years, but their numbers are very small. I had this same discussion with the outdoor writer for our local newspaper (now retired) and he said they tried this on a limited basis back in the 40's or 50's but they did not have good success. I am thinking that with efficient air travel and advanced technology that we have today, I think it could succeed. The salmon runs in the great lakes is a great success story for this kind of thing. I personally do not target them, but I will care for them properly if I do catch one. I think this would be worth pursuing from a resource and economic position.

Hey Oly,
You're asking a mouthful there... But, I'll do my best

Like you correctly point out, the lower 48 has predominantly odd year pinks while several central British Columbia and southeast Alaskan streams play host to pink runs every year. Farther to the north, roughly beginning in Prince Williams Sound the dominant year class of pink salmon occurs in even years.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a satisfactory, well-accepted scientific explanation for this pattern of pink salmon abundance. However, a chinook abundance pattern related to pinks has been identified that would make any even-year pink enhancement project ill-advised.

The University of Washington's Dr. Greg Ruggerone has studied pink/chinook interactions and has determined that juvenile chinook survival is affected negatively by pink salmon populations.
Here's a link to the paper:
http://home.comcast.net/~ruggerone/ChinookSurvival.pdf

Sorry to throw cold water on your pro-pink population position but in this day of WDFW budgetary constraints, in my opinion, getting the funding for a project of the scope you're suggesting just is not in the cards.

Thanks for your response on this. Sorry to hear the chinook survival rate of the smolts takes such a hit when they are competing with the pink smolts! Do the hatcheries adjust the release dates of the chinook and coho smolts when the pink smolts are present in the rivers? I wonder if that would help in boosting the survival rate of chinook and coho smolts.

Olympic -
Move stocks from one area to another can be an iffy proposition. Typically those more north stocks have a different timing (run and spawning) than our Puget Sound fish. That tends to put those fish out of sync with our local environments which may explain why past introductions were not successful.

The Snohomish system has long had an even run of pinks though it usually has been a very small run. Until the mid 1980s only a had full of even year spawners were seen. During the period from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s the run was usually a few thousand fish (1 to 3 K). For some reason at the point the population rose dramatically and by 2004 the escapement was estimated to have been 140,000 fish. Unfortunately the population dropped equally dramatically with 26,000 fish spawning in 2006, 350 in 2008 and 24 in 2010.

Some have speculated that at the extremes of the species range the fish are limited to even or odd runs due food limitations. Those dominate runs may reduce the forage (small zooplankton type critters) so extensively that it takes a year for the forage to recovery to support the next run. But as Nelly points out no one knows for sure.

In the last decade interesting things have been going on with Puget Sound pink salmon. For example on the Puyallup from 1959 to the mid 1990s the pink escapement was typically in the 10,000 to 30,000 range with a high of 50,000 or so. In the late 1990s the escapement dropped to just 3,000 to 5,000 range. Over the last decade the population exploded to some huge numbers with over a million fish escapement in 2010.

Clearly pink abundances can be pretty variable and one has to wonder what is the "norm" and how long these huge (record) runs that we have seen the last couple cycles can be maintained.

Curt