Elwha Watershed Information Resource
Hatchery
The Lower Elwha Fisheries Office staff provides fisheries and resource management support and expertise for the Lower Elwha Tribe. The management philosophy of Fisheries Office staff is that the critical fisheries management components of Habitat, Harvest and Hatchery are fully linked and are dependent upon each other. Resource management as a result is pursued holistically, resulting in a fully integrated resource management program.
Facility History
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| The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe's fish hatchery. Robert Lundahl, National Park Service |
The Lower Elwha Hatchery like many of the tribally operated facilities has been a leader in the development and implementation of innovative hatchery management methods. The Lower Elwha tribal community has actively encouraged collaboration of its staff with scientists throughout the region including the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC), NOAA Fisheries, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), United States Geological Survey (USGS), Olympic National Park, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), University of Idaho, University of Washington, and Oregon State University.
Current Production Goals and Objectives
The hatchery has maintained an historical annual production goal of 750,000 yearling coho salmon smolts, 120,000 yearling steelhead smolts, and 75,000 chum salmon eggs. In conjunction with the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Recovery Act, Fisheries Office staff is developing a new hatchery-based steelhead population based upon the wild steelhead population in the river. Although the hatchery was initially constructed to produce 2.5 million chum salmon annually the production goals for the facility have evolved over time in response to changing community needs and values to include the production of Chinook, coho and steelhead.
Scientific Research and Support of Research Efforts
The staff of the Lower Elwha Fish Hatchery has been instrumental in conducting research into basic fish culture methodologies, developing innovative rearing strategies, and has provided support for scientists working throughout the North Olympic Peninsula in both the freshwater and marine environments.
Facility Layout
The existing hatchery facility currently consists of an adult recovery trap and holding facility for adult salmon, an incubation facility, 24 concrete raceways, 8 fiberglass circular tanks, 4 asphalt lined rearing ponds and one earthen rearing pond. Water for the hatchery is provided by surface water from the Elwha River and by two production wells.
Fish Culture Practices
Fish culture practices employed at the Lower Elwha Fish Hatchery emphasize production of healthy fish, utilize native in-basin stocks or those locally adapted to the Elwha River, and minimize potential genetic and ecologic impacts to natural origin populations of fish through the use of Best Management Practices (BMP’s).
BMP’s have been developed in cooperation with fish health specialists from the NWIFC, scientists from NOAA Fisheries, and from educational institutions throughout the Northwest. The BMP’s formalize and codify those fish culture practices that ensure that the goal of minimizing impacts to fish outside of the hatchery environment is met. BMP’s provide guidance and protocols to hatchery staff for:
- Providing a rearing environment that maximizes fish health and promotes achieving targeted rates of growth,
- Management of fish health at the hatchery and prompt detection, containment and treatment of agents of disease,
- Managing flows, feed and waste materials so as to maximize the safety of staff and the environment,
- Handling and spawning of adults,
- Fertilization and incubation techniques that promotes diverse genetic expression and high levels of survival in resulting offspring,
- Rearing techniques that produce fish capable of integrating into the natural environment, that will be able to interact in a manner that is appropriate both ecologically and genetically; contributing to the ecosystem in a predicted manner.
Annual Production Cycle at the Hatchery
The cycle of adult salmon returning to the hatchery is one of handling and assessment, of holding and spawning. Each fish is handled and is segregated based upon sex and state of sexual ripeness. As females ovulate they are spawned and their carcasses returned to the Elwha River to provide nutrients for insects, juvenile fish, birds and mammals in the basin.
Coho begin returning to the hatchery in October each year and this return continues through December or January. Newly returning fish are processed on a weekly basis and spawning of fish continues on a weekly basis throughout the return. Incubation of coho lasts 12 weeks, after which time, newly hatched fry are transferred to outside rearing ponds. Fish are reared for 16 months after which time they are allowed to leave the hatchery volitionally, enter the Elwha River and migrate to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Steelhead salmon begin returning to the hatchery in December and their run continues through February. Steelhead, like coho, are processed on a weekly basis. Spawning of steelhead does not extend beyond the first week in February, so as to reduce the potential for temporal overlap with the late-timed (March to June) wild steelhead run in the basin. Incubation of steelhead, while shorter in duration than coho, follows a similar pattern of hatching, rearing and emigration to the marine environment.
Chum salmon display a bi-modal entry timing in the Elwha River. In mid-October a unique native run segment of the population enters the Elwha. In late November a second pulse of chum enters the river. Genetic analysis of these two populations has revealed this second group is the remnants of the Hood Canal stock brought into the Elwha basin to support the Lower Elwha Hatchery in the first years of its operation. Unlike coho and steelhead populations, chum salmon adults do not return to the hatchery. Fisheries Office staff captures and spawns ripe fish in the river, transports the eggs and milt to the hatchery where fertilization and incubation occur. Following the completion of the initial phase of incubation, chum salmon eggs are outplanted in remote incubation units buried in select locations in side-channel habitat in the lower basin where they are allowed to complete the cycle of incubation, hatching, rearing and migration to the ocean.
Planned Facility Upgrades
To meet the goals of the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act the Lower Elwha Tribe is constructing a new hatchery and rearing facility that will replace the existing facility. The existing production facility will be replaced by a facility that will allow for greater flexibility in production while providing increased levels of control at each phase in the production cycle.
The new hatchery facility will allow for the concurrent handling and segregation of multiple stocks of adults based upon entry timing, genetic or morphological characteristics or other selected traits. Identify, rearing and release protocols that minimize possible adverse impacts on the natural ecosystem. Spawning and incubation facilities will utilize breeding protocols that promote maximization of genetic expression while minimizing possible adverse impacts on the natural ecosystem. The incubation facility will allow for thermal regulation of the embryonic development rates of fish and will enable these rates to match temperature regimes observed in the Elwha River basin.
The rearing facility will make use of innovative rearing methods and strategies pioneered by tribal staff and regional scientists. The rearing environments will maximize rearing space and water volumes provided to fish, will incorporate the use of complex habitat elements and cover during the rearing period to produce fish that will assist in the restoration and recovery of the ecosystem of the Elwha River basin.
At full capacity, the hatchery is designed to utilize 38 cubic feet per second (CFS) of water. Water will originate from two sources: Surface water delivered to the hatchery from a diversion structure and treatment plant (29 CFS) and groundwater from a series of 6 wells located on the Reservation (9 CFS).