Salmon Habitat Quality Questions in 2009 Will Be More Serious in the Yukon River

I. One of the results of focus since January 12th on the food and fuel crisis in villages of the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta has been some attention revisited upon the long-term health and viability of Yukon and Kuskokwim salmon stocks. A significant part of this winter's crisis is a result of poor fish returns in 2008 to the Yukon River. The Kuskokwim also saw very low returns of most species. In the Yukon, returning fish who make it upriver have recently been afflicted with a disease related to global warming, called “white spot disease.” It is caused by a microscopic parasite called Ichthyophonus hoferi. It renders the fish inedible.

First noticed in Yukon King populations in 1988, the disease's identification was botched at first by Alaska state-run labs, but the Center for Fish Disease Research at Oregon State University came up with the parasite's identification in 1989. Since then, the problem, experienced upriver from the delta, has gotten more serious, year by year. Coupled with the low numbers of Chinook, Chum and Coho entering the river, the subsistence economy for some Alaska Natives living upriver has been at least as devastating as it has been for communities like Emmonak in the delta.

Much written about the problem this winter in communities like Emmonak has focused on short-term solutions. Food and fuel have been flown in. Money is being raised for village infrastructures. The State of Alaska is finally contemplating competing with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to provide fuel vouchers for needy rural families in Westward Alaska. But little has been written about the long-term relationship the Yupik of the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim share with the rapidly declining salmon stocks in their rivers.

II. The health of Chinook Salmon stocks along the Pacific coast of the United States and Canada has long been a subject of concern. The history of these magnificent fish in their habitat is almost universally a history of decline or extinction. This past summer saw a complete closure of salmon fishing from the southern border of California, to the northern border of Washington (see photo at top left).

There are several hundred rivers along the North Pacific coast that have suffered salmon declines or extinctions. One of the best examples of a mighty salmon course devastated by human selfishness and stupidity is that of the Elwha River on Washington State's upper Olympic Peninsula. Historically, the river hosted all five major Pacific salmon species, including a famed Chinook. Each yeat almost 500,000 salmon returned to the Elwha. The Klallam tribe based one of their main population groups upon the river.

Between 1910 and 1913, Thomas Aldwell built a dam (pictured at left) about 5 miles inland from the Straits of Juan de Fuca. It destroyed over 95% of the run. Today, about 4,000 salmon return to the Elwha.

The largest Federal ecosystem restoration project outside of the Everglades is the ongoing restoration of the Elwha watershed's water course. Reading about this project, from its proposal to current status, one can only observe with wonder at how easy it is to ruin salmon habitat, how difficult and expensive to restore it.

Those 4,00 salmon per year that still return to the lower Elwha to spawn are emblematic of both human carelessness and the hardiness of some species. 4,000 salmon. That's about how many salmon spawn in or pass through Neklason Lake, where Judy and I live. Here's a picture of our dog, Strider, watching about 150 of them pass by last August.

When Judy was a child and teenager, her family would journey every summer from their home in Mt. Vernon Washington, up to Campbell River, BC, on Vancouver Island. Campbell River was the home of a famous type of Chinook salmon, called the Tyee. The saltwater area around the town of Campbell River was, for decades of the 20th century, home of one of the great sports salmon fisheries of the world. From Seymour Narrows down to Cape Mudge, hundreds of sport fishing rigs would catch Tyee and Coho salmon by the thousands.

There was - and still is - a Tyee Club in Campbell River, dedicated to catching these wily Chinook in small, wooden, rowed Whitehall dories. Ernest Hemmingway was a member. So was Judy, along with her family. The club is, as is the fishery, now a mere shadow of its former self.

British Columbia has to be one of the most remarkable examples of how to ruin salmon habitat, one stream or bay at a time. I've witnessed, since I was a kid, the degradation of BC's immense salmon resource, to one staring starkly at possible extinction in several major river systems. At the same time BC and Canadian governments have folded to mining and logging interests in water quality and stream-side habitat protection, the Canadians have embraced some of the shoddiest aquaculture and salmon farming practices on the planet.

In a 25-year span of bringing boats up or down the Inside Passage from Seattle to Alaska, it seemed like every year we would see less salmon in the waters of BC. In 1999, when bringing the tug boat Ruby XIV from Kodiak to Seattle, I wrote about it.

III. The decline in Yukon River salmon stocks has little or nothing to do with overfishing by the Yupik fishers who intercept the fish once they enter the giant river. Or with over-fishing by other Natives upriver.

The Yukon is the longest of the major salmon rivers. Some of the fish that go right by Emmonek go through fish ladders near downtown Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory. The warming of that long stream has been blamed for the emergence of Ichthyophonus hoferi. Offshore salmon fishing in oceanic habitats and changes in the ocean have been blamed for the dwindling populations of both Yukon and Kuskokwim river stocks.

Tim Mowry wrote in Sunday's Fairbanks News-Miner about the 2009 salmon return prediction for the Yukon:

FAIRBANKS — Alaska fish managers are telling villagers along the Yukon River to brace for another poor king salmon run this year and are fishing for ideas on how to get more fish across the Canadian border.

“We are projecting a below average to poor chinook run in 2009,” Steve Hayes, Yukon area biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, reported in a teleconference with fishermen on the upper Yukon River on Thursday. “There is unlikely to be any directed commercial chinook harvest in the main stem Yukon, and we believe subsistence fishing will need to be reduced at the beginning of the season.”

Just how drastic conservation measures will be taken in the state’s’ largest subsistence fishery remains to be seen. Managers on both sides of the border are still in the process of formulating a management strategy for the upcoming season, Hayes said.

Thursday’s teleconference was one of three sponsored by the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association to break the bad news to fishermen and ask for ideas how to handle the expected crisis. Teleconferences with residents on the lower and middle Yukon were held earlier in the week.

Some subsistence fishermen on the upper Yukon River are suggesting the closure of all king salmon fishing this season, as well as in future years, to help rebuild what they say is a dwindling king run.

“We need to lay off kings up and down the river both commercially and for subsistence,” Andy Bassich, a subsistence fishermen in the village of Eagle, said. “Every fish counts right now.”

That may be the most unassuring harvest prediction report to emerge from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in history. Mowry's article continues:

According to genetic studies, about half the king salmon that enter the Yukon River — an average run used to be 250,000 — and are caught by subsistence fishermen in Alaska are produced in Canada. But Department of Fish and Game statistics show that fewer of those fish have been reaching the border in recent years.

Last year, of the approximately 180,000 kings that returned to the Yukon only about 38,000 made it to the border, according to sonar counts in Eagle, about 100 miles from the border.

That was about 7,000 fish shy of the 45,000 objective established by managers. In 2007, just under 40,000 of the 175,000 kings that returned to the Yukon made it to the border. That was about 3,000 fish shy of the border passage goal, which fluctuates slightly from year to year.

“There aren’t enough fish being delivered to the border,” said Frank Quinn, regional director for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Whitehorse, Yukon.

Biologists aren’t sure why fewer Yukon kings are returning. King salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock industry, changing ocean conditions and a warming climate have all been mentioned as potential reasons for the drop in the chinook run.

As Dennis Zaki and others have observed, none of the Palin administration officials who traveled so hastily to Emmonek and Marshall early this past week were fisheries officials. It doesn't appear from any of the stories I've read that emerged this past week, that Emmonek officials were in on the ADF&G teleconferences held last week, referenced in the Mowry article. I'm trying to get information on that right now.

A long-term solution for the viability of the scores of villages on the Kuskokwim and Yukon drainages must include healthy salmon returns to those immense rivers. Alaska has a history of effective salmon management second to no other place in the world. Reading through the coverage of this in the establishment press, in comments to those articles, and on the blogs, it appears that we've only scratched the surface of how to help the hardy people in Alaska's most impoverished census district - Wade Hampton - survive and thrive through the unnerving changes our new century seems to have so many of in abundance.

images, top to bottom: 1) Philip Munger, 2) wikipedia, 3) Philip Munger, 4) Tyee Club, 5) & 6) oysters4me