Captive Brood Mating, Egg Incubation and Rearing to Release

The South Fork Nooksack Supplementation Program on the South Fork Nooksack River in Whatcom County, Washington involves the rearing of captive chinook brood at Manchester Research Laboratory and Kendall Creek Hatchery.  As captive brood are identified as sexually maturing, they are transferred to Skookum Creek Hatchery and held until spawning.  An implanted PIT-tag and a corresponding genetic profile for each captive brood provide the ability to select mating crosses at the time of spawning based upon the least amount of genetic relatedness.  An initial release of 1,954 smolts in 2011 grew to a release of 677,540 smolts in 2014.  This program is in the process of gradually transitioning from exclusively spawning captive brood to incorporating captive brood progeny returning as adults into mating crosses.  The first adult males released from this program returned to the hatchery in the summer of 2014 and were mated with captive brood females.  Infrastructure additions have been completed at the hatchery to accommodate this program, including a large partial reuse rearing and incubation system to overcome capacity and water availability conflict with other concurrent hatchery programs.  Several challenges have arisen in most years of the program, but results so far look promising.