TULALIP – Mary Jack was a commercial fisher as long as she could manage it.
When salmon prices fell and fewer fish found their way into her nets, Jack knew she, like so many others, had to leave the water.
Now, she’s part of the Tulalip Tribes’ effort to revitalize the region’s salmon runs.
Jack dips her weathered hand into a man-made freshwater pond and pulls out baby chinook salmon that measure no more than 2 inches long.
When she finds smooth backs where adipose fins once stuck straight up, she smiles.
It’s Jack’s job to make sure the two dozen tribal members standing in white trailers are snipping the fin off each and every one of the tribes’ 1.3 million chinook hatchery salmon.
“This is the next best thing to fishing,” she said.
For each marked hatchery fish that’s lifted out of the water by sport or commercial fishermen, one wild salmon can continue zipping through the region’s waterways.
Unmarked salmon caught in certain areas must be returned to the water. That’s the state’s way of encouraging salmon runs to return to the levels that once made this region famous for a seemingly-endless supply of the fish.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work, said Kit Rawson, a fisheries biologist for the Tulalip Tribes.
Evidence suggests that more wild fish die when they’re caught and released than the number of hatchery fish that are caught and kept, Rawson said.
More wild fish may survive if fishermen simply kept what they hooked or netted, instead of throwing back half a dozen wild salmon they know may die in the process, he said.
The state has initiated two-year pilot programs for selective fishing: the first began in 2003 in the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, and the second began in 2004 in the Port Susan area, near the Tulalip Indian Reservation.
Last month, before the Port Susan program completed its final year, the state suggested that selective fishing be widely expanded.
“The Tulalips and other tribes would have preferred to stick with the two pilot fisheries we have now until we have a few more years of information,” Rawson said.
In the first year, one fish died in the catch-and-release process for every hatchery salmon that was kept, said Craig Bowhay, a policy analyst for Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. During the first part of the second year, up to eight fish died for every hatchery fish kept, he said.
“It’s killing more fish than it’s bringing in,” Bowhay said. “That caused us some pause, and we felt we should be conservative in our expansion of selective fisheries.”
The state disagrees.
State wildlife officials say they’ve got plenty of data to support an expansion of selective fishing areas.
Pat Patillo, a state fisheries policy analyst, said the tribes are manipulating the data for their own purposes.
The numbers the tribes are using have “nothing to do with mass marking or selective fisheries,” he said.
In fact, he said, those numbers may indicate that salmon runs – both wild and hatchery – are strengthening, he said.
The Tulalip Tribes aren’t against selective fisheries, Rawson said. They just want to be sure that the methods fishermen use to release the fish don’t hinder wild fish.
In the annual fisheries negotiations last month, the state and the tribes agreed to a limited expansion of selective fishing zones.
Meanwhile, the Tulalip Tribes’ hatchery and fishery departments continue to farm 11 million fish each year: 8 million chum, 1 million coho and 1.8 million chinook salmon.
The 1.3 million chinook salmon tribal members have been marking for four weeks now started in incubation tanks at the Bernie Kai-Kai Gobin Salmon Hatchery on Water Works Road in the Tulalip Indian Reservation.
Hatchery workers change the water temperature, which creates an otolith mark – much like the rings in a tree trunk – on the ear bones of each fish.
That’s the only unique mark that sets Tulalip hatchery fish apart. Because of that mark, Tulalip officials say they know that at least 90 percent of the tribes’ catch comes from the tribal hatchery.
After the hatched fry grow a bit, workers add anesthesia to the water in the tank.
Hatchery workers scoop the fingerlings up into buckets and carry them into one of two trailers, where two dozen seasonal employees wait with tiny scissors in hand.
They clip off each fish’s adipose fin – a small fin on the fish’s back, in front of its tail. The fish then slide through a long tube into a freshwater tank.
From there, they’re transported by truck to a pond near Tulalip Bay, where they’ll grow for a few more weeks before they’re released into the bay in June.
After they grow to adulthood and return, tribal fishermen will cast nets and pull the salmon out of the water to sell, eat themselves, or offer to tribal elders.
To Jack, the former fisherwoman who now supervises at the hatchery, all of the effort is worth it.
“This is special,” she said.
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