Backgroud/Historical Context

FY 2008-2010
The Hood River, Oregon Salmon Production Program is co-managed by the Confederated Tribes of the Warms Spring Reservation (CTWSR) and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) for supplementation of spring Chinook salmon in the Hood River system.  The Master Plan for the Hood River Production Program (March 5, 2008 Draft) called for a comparative hatchery release study designed to "provide co-managers with the best available information for determining a long term biologically sound and cost effective spring Chinook salmon production strategy for the Hood River Basin that balances harvest needs with ecological considerations".  Rearing facilities, both inside and outside the basin were evaluated for long-term use in the Hood River spring Chinook salmon supplementation program.  The objective of the evaluation was to conduct a multi-year (2008-2021) comparative study of Hood River spring Chinook reared at three different hatchery facilities prior to being moved to the West Fork Hood River for final acclimation and release.  The facilities include, Round Butte Hatchery/Pelton Ladder (RBH) on the Deschutes River, OR; Columbia Gorge Hatchery (CGH) a.k.a. Carson National Hatchery on the Wind River, WA; Parkdale Fish Facility (PFF) on the Hood River, OR.  Each year, starting Fall 2008, returning adults were collected in the Hood River, artificially spawned at Parkdale Hatchery, and gametes were distributed to each of the respective hatchery facilities for long term-rearing to the parr-smolt stage.   The Hood River Master Plan calls for monitoring fish health, size at release, specific growth rates, rates of precocious male maturation (age-2 minijacks, age-3 jacks) and ultimately smolt-to-adult returns (SAR's) for each brood year/release group.  Juvenile rearing results were described in a pair of peer reviewed publications (Spangenberg et al. 2014, 2015).

Spangenberg, D.K., D.A. Larsen, R. Gerstenberger, C.Brun, D.L. Harstad, S. Nance, L. Rohrbach and B. R. Beckman (2015) Stock differences in growth, smolting, and early male maturation in hatchery Spring Chinook Salmon: a common-garden experiment, North American Journal of Fisheries Management, 35:6, 1090-1100.

Spangenberg, D. K., D.A. Larsen, R. Gerstenberger, C. Brun, B.R. Beckman.  2014.  The effects of variation in hatchery rearing conditions on growth, smolt quality and minijack rate in spring Chinook salmon, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha: a hatchery scale experiment in the Hood River Basin, Oregon.  Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.  143:5 1220-1230.

The Hood River, Oregon Production Program co-managers made some programmatic decisions based on results from this project to focus Hood River spring Chinook salmon rearing at Pelton Ladder, Parkdale Fish Facility with potential for longer term in basin rearing at the recently completed Moving Falls Acclimation Facility on the West Fork of the Hood River.  Rearing of Hood River spring Chinook at Carson hatchery was discontinued.

FY2011-present:  We have continued to monitor the Hood River spring Chinook salmon reared at Parkdale (HR-Park) and at the Moving Falls Acclimation site on the Hood River (HR-MF) and Round Butte/Pelton Ladder (HR-Pelt) on the Deschutes River.  Data from these release groups will ultimately be correlated with adult return data collected over the course of this project.

In FY 2017 a third manuscript from this hatchery evaluation project focused specifically on the comparison between these three rearing groups and the relationships between smolt physiology, early male maturation and smolt to adult return rates (SARS) was published entitled:

Beckman, B.R., Harstad, D.L., Spangenberg, D.K., Gerstenberger, R., Brun, C. and Larsen, D.A.  2017. The impact of different hatchery rearing environments on adult survival of spring Chinook Salmon.  Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.  146:3, 539-555.

Additionally, a fourth manuscript focused on quantifying  steelhead residualism rates in the Hood River was compiled in 2017 as well under this contract, but unrelated to the Chinook comparative evaluation described above.

Larsen, D.A, Middleton, M.A., Dickey, J.T., Gerstenberger, R.S., Brun, C.V., and  Swanson, P.  2017.  Use of morphological and physiological indices to characterize life history diversity in juvenile hatchery winter-run steelhead.  Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.  146:4, 663-679.  

NOTE:   In FY2021 and 2022 we initiated development of a draft manuscript exploring the interaction between early growth, physiological development and jack rates in Hood River Spring Chinook Salmon.  However, as additional data has been collected and with a revised focus on summarizing data for a final report (potential publications) for the Deschutes growth/density study in Pelton Ladder in 2023 and a separate summary report (potential publication) on our multi-brood year research in the Hood River Basin in 2024 it is our belief that the results of that proposed stand alone publication regarding trends in jack maturation is no longer the most appropriate treatment of the data.  These data will be incorportated in to these reports and combined with additional relevant findings.  In the long run, it is our  belief that this approach will provide more useful information to the fisheries co-managers in these respective basins and to the management community at large.

FY2022  Hood and Deschutes River spring Chinook salmon comparative evaluation.
In FY2022 we conducted the sixth and FINAL year of a comparative physiological evaluation of brood year 2020 Hood River spring Chinook salmon reared at Parkdale Hatchery, Moving Falls Acclimation site and Round Butte/ Pelton Ladder on the Deschutes River and released in the Hood River as well as Deschutes Stock spring Chinook salmon reared under a Hi (Standard Deschutes Stock regime) and Lo (Hood River at Pelton regime) growth regime at Round Butte/Pelton Ladder and released in to the Deschutes River in spring.  The Hi growth treatment was reared in one Pelton Ladder cell at 8 fish/lb with 80,000 fish.  The Lo growth treatment was reared in two cells (Lo1 and Lo2)  at 15 fish per pound with 150,000 fish.  So, the density in biomass was equivalent, but the number of fish varried significantly.  Fish were sampled from all 6 treatments (HR-Park, HR-MF, HR-Pelt, Des-Hi, Des-Lo1, Des-Lo2) in Oct 2021, Jan 2022, Mar 2022, Apr 2022. Additionally, in 2021 subset of Deschutes stock were reared at Fall River Hatchery in Bend, OR for an additional out group for comparative evaluation.  This experimental construct allowed us to differentiate between differences in stock, rearing location, and growth regime and release location in order to better understand and refine rearing protocols for Hood River spring Chinook salmon as well as other hatchery spring Chinook salmon programs throughout the Columbia River Basin.  It should be noted that each of the rearing cells at Pelton Ladder presented a different rearing environment for each release group because some cells are downstream from others potentially affecting the water quality in downstream cells.  So, each year the treatment groups were moved to different cells and the analysis over replicate years allowed us to isolate the effect of cell position in the results. Furthermore since the Des-Lo treatments were replicated, the variable position of the cells were evaluated throughout the investigation as well.  

FY2023
In FY2023 we analyzed all data and results over the course of the growth / density  in the Deschutes basin at Round Butte Hatchery/Pelton ladder over BY2015-2020 (released in CY2017-2022 (6 years total). These data were compiled in a final report for use by co-managers to guide rearing and release strategies in the future. These data are bing combined in FY 2024 with all adult return data including CWT and PIT tag data to examined the overall impacts of rearing strategy on adult survival and age structure and examined these results in light of variation in ocean conditions.

FY2024 (Current SOW)
The primary objective of this FY 2024 contract is to prepare a final peer reviewed publication describing this multi-year study for publication in the Journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society to broadly disseminate these results to Chinook salmon hatchery supplementation programs throughout the Columbia River Basin.