Mass Marking and Selective Harvest Techniques for Conservation and Sustainable Fisheries

Live capture, selective fishing offers an important and necessary tool to improve the viability of many salmon and steelhead populations in the Pacific Northwest.  In combination with external marking of hatchery-origin fish (adipose fin clip), selective fisheries have the potential for significantly increasing the harvest of hatchery salmon while concurrently increasing the survival and escapement of unmarked natural-origin fish.  In mixed stock fisheries, species with healthy populations (i.e. sockeye) can be harvested while non-targeted species (i.e. natural-origin Chinook) can be released.  Such actions increase the viability of salmon and steelhead populations and the long-term sustainability of fisheries.

 Analysis of salmon hatchery programs throughout the Columbia River Basin by the Hatchery Scientific Review Group demonstrates that hatchery reforms and prescriptive, selective fisheries can achieve conservation standards deemed essential to salmon recovery.  Selective fishing offers another tool to help reduce, where needed, the proportion of hatchery-origin salmon in natural escapements and simultaneously maintain or increase harvest opportunities.

 The Colville Tribes in the upper Columbia River are testing and successfully demonstrating that a selective harvest program can succeed in a mixed-stock fishery.  When marked adults begin returning from a new summer/fall Chinook hatchery later this decade, selective fishing will allow the Colville Tribes to maximize their harvest of both sockeye and hatchery-origin Chinook salmon while allowing thousands of natural-origin Chinook safe passage to spawning habitats.  Selective fishing gears also allow the Tribes to successfully collect natural-origin, local Chinook broodstock for their integrated hatchery program and local, hatchery-origin broodstock for a segregated hatchery program.