Who owns and operates the hatchery?
The State Department of Fish and Wildlife. A public, non-profit group, Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery (FISH), provides educational services such as volunteer guides and school presentations. The City of Issaquah has contributed $500,000 for improvements to the hatchery, while the state has provided several million more for improvements and operations.
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I thought the hatchery was going to be closed. What happened?
The City of Issaquah, FISH, the Muckleshoot Tribe, and King County all urged the state to keep the hatchery open. Fifth District Legislators did a
tremendous amount of work in Olympia. In 1994 Kathleen Drew helped obtain an
additional year of operating funds while long-term plans got underway.
Representative Brian Thomas recognized the need for a formal facilities plan
to move improvements through the State budget process in three phases. With
the help of Representative Phil Dyer this plan came to be the blueprint for
improvements. The City of Issaquah put $500,000 on the table as matching
money to help our legislators get the ball rolling. The state matched the
money for the start of Phase 1. Senator Dino Rossi then worked
with Representatives Thomas and Dyer to fund Phase 2 at $3,000,000 and Phase
3 at $2,615,000.
With a new focus on education, watershed stewardship, and bolstering native and threatened salmon such as the Lake Washington
chinook, the hatchery's traditional role and a fish propagation facility is being expanded and presents new opportunities for the state.
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Can I schedule a classroom presentation or tour of the hatchery?
Yes. Classroom presentations and hatchery tours may be scheduled in the fall by calling the
FISH hotline at (425) 427-0259 and leaving a message for Education Coordinator
Celina Steiger.
Celina can also be reached via e-mail at
celina@issaquahfish.org.Click
here to
find out more about tours and
here
to find out more about in-class presentations.
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What do you feed the fish?
When the young fish are at the hatchery, they are fed blends of plant and animal proteins. These are specific to the species and their stage of development.
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Are fish allowed to move upstream past the hatchery?
Yes. The fish ladder on the south side of Issaquah Creek allows the fish to move upstream anytime hatchery personnel are not trapping them for propagation. Many thousands of fish continue their journey into the upper Issaquah Creek basin, where they are allowed to spawn naturally.
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Where are the adult fish?
Depending on the time of year, they are either in the ocean, the creek, or the holding ponds. They make their outbound journey through Issaquah Creek, Lake Sammamish, the Sammamish River, Lake Washington, Lake Union, the Ballard Locks, Puget Sound, and the Pacific Ocean. They return home in the reverse order.
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How do salmon find their way back to their home stream?
Incredibly, salmon can smell the unique broth of their spawning grounds: a combination of rotting algae, insects, fish, and dust leached from rocks in the area. However, the role of olfaction (smelling) in the ocean is still debated. Compass orientation based on magnetic or celestial cues, which has been demonstrated for juvenile salmonids in fresh water, could explain most, but not all, of the migratory behavior at sea. The sensory world of salmonids is far different from our own, and unexpected capabilities may yet be discovered in the future.
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Why are the fish killed to get the eggs?
They are at the end of their lifecycle and would soon die naturally in the creek. Taking the eggs while they are alive would be difficult and probably painful to the fish.
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What happens to the dead fish?
The Washington State Department of Health regulates what they can be used for. Sometimes they are sold to a fish processor. Sometimes dead fish are placed in local creeks that need the
nutrients that decaying salmon release. This aids the food web for all the
animals, birds and insects in the watershed.
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Does someone remove the dead fish from the creek at the end of the spawning season?
No. The dead fish are allowed to become nutrients and part of the food chain. The watershed ecosystem and its denizens depend on them to provide nutrients to stay healthy.
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Are hatchery and wild fish different?
Quite a bit has been said about the differences between hatchery and wild salmon
and science is still sorting out the extent of the genetic difference between
the two. What we do know is that more recent science has revealed that some
outdated hatchery practices have resulted in the declines of wild salmon
populations. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife is now working to
implement hatchery reform that will enable hatcheries to help restore wild
salmon populations to help meet conservation and harvest goals. Below are some
issues and responses that have been raised recently on this topic.
Issue:
Hatchery salmon compete with the wild salmon for food.
Response:
The Issaquah Salmon Hatchery produces approximately 2 million chinook smolts and
500,000 coho yearlings each season. These smolts are released when their bodies
are beginning to go through hormonal changes signaling their readiness to
migrate to saltwater. The release during the smolting stage is timed so that the
hatchery fish will migrate rapidly to the Ballard Locks, sometimes as fast as 41
miles in two days, to minimize competition with wild fish for food.
Issue:
Hatchery salmon can’t spawn successfully in the wild.
Response:
Hatchery salmon can and do spawn successfully in the wild. According to stream
survey data from the 2003 spawning season, Issaquah Hatchery chinook are
populating and spawning in many tributaries throughout the greater Lake
Washington basin. The 2003 season was the first year that the hatchery
contribution to wild spawning could be measured in this basin, because it was
the first year that all returning hatchery chinook could be easily identified by
the absence of their adipose fin.
Of the 797 carcasses
sampled throughout the basin, 48 percent were hatchery fish. Hatchery fish
included 54 percent of the spawning fish in Bear Creek, 58 percent in May Creek,
22 percent in the Cedar River and 72 percent in Issaquah Creek. The large
numbers of wild-spawning hatchery chinook straying throughout the basin may be
partly responsible for the re-establishment and continuation of viable wild runs
in several streams.
Issue:
Hatchery salmon have hurt the wild salmon populations in the greater Lake
Washington basin.
Response:
All the wild salmon in the Issaquah Creek Basin are the descendants of hatchery
salmon, so hatchery operations actually have helped reestablish historic salmon
runs rather than damaged them. Further, the result of dwindling salmon is more
likely the result of habitat damage and predation. Urban streams in the greater
Lake Washington basin have been the victims of gravel-scouring, silt-laden
floods during most winters, caused by stormwater runoff from impermeable
surfaces. This flooding damage to habitat is reflected in the large numbers of
hatchery fish that are spawning in uncrowded habitat of flood-prone streams,
where few wild fish were able to survive the incubation stage. Meanwhile, the
proportion of wild fish is much higher on the Cedar, where stormwater flow is
controlled at the Landsburg Dam and flooding is much less severe.
Predation is another
factor in the survival of juvenile wild salmon. The introduction of non-native
species such as perch and bass to Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish has shifted
the balance of survival. In addition, the ban on fishing for cutthroat and
rainbow trout in streams has resulted in predation of up to 25 percent of wild
juvenile chinook in the Cedar River. Hatchery salmon are protected in the
rearing ponds until they are large enough to avoid most freshwater predators,
thus improving their survival rate once they are released.
Issue:
Hatcheries are like zoos.
Response:
A number of endangered species have been rescued from the brink of extinction by
captive breeding programs in zoos. The Issaquah hatchery has a similar function,
however, salmon raised at the hatchery are released to the wild and are not held
captive for their entire lives. The hatchery provides enough brood stock to
supplement the numbers of wild fish and ensure the viability of wild runs. The
hatchery also provides great enough numbers of fish to allow sport and tribal
fishing in the greater Lake Washington watershed.
Issue:
Hatchery salmon are inferior to wild salmon.
Response:
In the Issaquah Creek watershed, hatchery and wild salmon are apparently
genetically indistinguishable based on recent
research, although additional genetic studies are ongoing to determine if any
stocks show significant genetic differences. This is because hatchery and
wild fish breed together in the four-mile stretch of stream between Lake
Sammamish and the hatchery. They are spawned together at the hatchery to ensure
that the broadest genetic diversity and strength is maintained, and those fish
released above the hatchery breed together in the upper watershed. The only way
to tell the difference between wild and hatchery salmon in this watershed is by
the missing adipose fin. In fact, hatcheries are scrupulous about making sure
the fish raised in the safety of a rearing pond reflect the whole population of
the stream, with the broadest possible genetic representation. Eggs and milt are
harvested each week during the salmon run to ensure a good sample of genetics
from the early, middle and late part of the run, and from large, medium and
small fish. The fish are spawned one male to one female, similar to what occurs
in the wild. They are reared in water from their home stream, with all the same
minerals and nutrients and even pollution that their wild brothers and sisters
encounter.
Genetics in other streams
in the basin are not so certain. Genetic studies are underway on fish from other
streams to determine if any distinct genetic strains exist. Salmon were believed
to be extinct in this basin before they were restocked from the Green River at
the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery in the 1930s. Some genetic differences could have
evolved over the subsequent generations in fish populating different streams,
and that is what the genetic studies aim to determine. If distinct
evolutionarily significant units are found, they could be treated differently by
the Endangered Species Act.
Issue:
Hatchery salmon are the same as farmed salmon and all the reports about farmed
salmon say they are bad for people and the environment.
Response:
Hatchery salmon are not farmed salmon. In the
hatchery, eggs are incubated and the juveniles are raised in raceways and fed
fish food, but only for a few months until they are ready to smolt at 5-7 inches
long. Then they are released into the stream and swim out to the ocean, where
they spend the majority of their lives living among their wild brothers and
sisters and eating plankton, shrimp, squid and herring. On the other hand,
farmed fish are produced for human consumption and spend their entire lives in
captivity, incubated in a hatchery, and then raised to the adult stage in a
saltwater net pen, where they are fed fish food enhanced with dye and
antibiotics. We don't farm salmon here.
Issue:
Hatchery operations have resulted in damage to wild salmon runs.
Response:
The mission of hatcheries has changed since the Issaquah facility was built in
1936. Originally, hatcheries were built in the early part of the 20th century to
replace habitat lost to development, logging and mining activities. Today,
hatcheries have evolved a two-fold mission: to provide enough fish for sport and
tribal fishing while allowing enough escapement for reproduction, and also
restoring and supplementing wild salmon runs. This effort is designed to work in
concert with habitat-restoration activities. However, it remains unclear whether
salmon spawning habitats in urban areas ever can be restored enough to support
viable salmon runs without supplementation from hatcheries.
Issue:
If hatcheries stopped producing salmon then the wild stocks would rebound.
Response:
This is unclear. There has been so much development in this highly urbanized
region that we might never see a day when we no longer need hatcheries to
supplement the historic salmon runs. Some years we see floods swollen by urban
stormwater runoff gouge out the naturally-spawned salmon nests and wash the
gravel and eggs downstream, while eroded silt piles up and buries the spawning
beds and hatching alevin. When the progeny of hatchery fish cannot survive in
urban streams it has little to do with the fact that their parents were
hatchery-born. Rather, it is because the natural habitat has been severely
compromised.
At least 169 species that
we know of depend on our salmon to survive, including
the
Puget Sound
orcas in J, K and L pods. If
we got rid of the hatchery tomorrow in hopes that wild salmon would rebound,
what would these other species do in the meantime? And what might happen to
these species if the experiment failed? FISH in
partnership with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife does not wish to
risk the ecosystem that has been so drastically altered by humans already. Our
goal is to educate the public about watershed stewardship so that we can ensure
that humans and fish can live together and share the ecosystem.
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