FY 2002 Columbia Plateau proposal 25035

Additional documents

TitleType
25035 Narrative Narrative
25035 Sponsor Response to the ISRP Response
25035 Powerpoint Presentation Powerpoint Presentation

Section 1. Administrative

Proposal titleEvaluate adult fall chinook salmon fallback at Priest Rapids Dam, Columbia River
Proposal ID25035
OrganizationPacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (PNNL/WDFW)
Proposal contact person or principal investigator
NameDavid R Geist
Mailing addressP.O. Box 999, MS K6-85 Richland, Washington 99352
Phone / email5093720590 / david.geist@pnl.gov
Manager authorizing this projectDavid R. Geist and Paul Hoffarth
Review cycleColumbia Plateau
Province / SubbasinColumbia Plateau / Mainstem Columbia
Short descriptionImprove estimates of Hanford Reach fall chinook salmon escapement by assessing the rate, route, fate, and energy-use of adult fall chinook salmon that fall back at Priest Rapids Dam.
Target speciesFall chinook salmon
Project location
LatitudeLongitudeDescription
[Columbia River]
Hanford Reach, Columbia River
46.644 -119.9099 Priest Rapids Dam
Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives (RPAs)

Sponsor-reported:

RPA

Relevant RPAs based on NMFS/BPA review:

Reviewing agencyAction #BiOp AgencyDescription

Section 2. Past accomplishments

YearAccomplishment
New project

Section 3. Relationships to other projects

Project IDTitleDescription
University of Idaho adult salmonid telemetry study Our project uses fish tagged by this study. Data will be shared between projects.
Grant County PUD Telemetry Studies Our project will use existing radio telemetry equipment in use at Priest Rapids Dam by GCPUD contractors
Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission CWT recovery program Our project will improve escapement estimates of adult fall chinook salmon which will assist PSMFC predict juvenile abundance.

Section 4. Budget for Planning and Design phase

Task-based budget
ObjectiveTaskDuration in FYsEstimated 2002 costSubcontractor
Outyear objectives-based budget
ObjectiveStarting FYEnding FYEstimated cost
Outyear budgets for Planning and Design phase

Section 5. Budget for Construction and Implementation phase

Task-based budget
ObjectiveTaskDuration in FYsEstimated 2002 costSubcontractor
1. Identify cause of fall back at Priest Rapids Dam and provide accurate estimates of adult fall chinook salmon escapement above and below Priest Rapids Dam. 1.1 Prepare study plan including set-up of receiving stations at the dam, equipment purchase, and organization of personnel. 2 $29,169
1.2 Set up receiving stations at dam and calibrate receiving systems. 2 $47,679
1.3 Manually track tagged fish in the study area. 2 $117,256
1.4 Monitor fixed receiving stations, download data, back-up, and manage data.. 2 $17,646
1.5 Analyze data. 2 $63,525
1.6 Prepare annual report including escapement estimates of Hanford Reach fall chinook salmon. 2 $53,760
2. Compare the energy expenditures of hatchery and wild adult fall chinook salmon passage through the Hanford Reach as compared to passage and/or fallback past Priest Rapids Dam 2.1 Prepare study plan including set-up of receiving stations at the dam, equipment purchase, and organization of personnel. 2 $15,961
2.2 Measure oxygen consumption rates of fall chinook salmon adults swam at a range of temperatures over a range of swim speeds. 1 $34,826
2.3 Set up receiving stations at dam and calibrate receiving systems. 2 $25,839
2.4 Capture fish, insert radio transmitter, and release fish. 2 $123,611
2.5 Manually track tagged fish in the study area. 2 $16,540
2.6 Monitor fixed receiving stations, and download and back-up/manage data. 2 $1,587
2.7 Analyze data. 2 $21,353
2.8 Prepare annual report. 2 $34,313
Outyear objectives-based budget
ObjectiveStarting FYEnding FYEstimated cost
1. Identify cause of fall back at Priest Rapids Dam and provide accurate estimates of adult fall chinook salmon escapement above and below Priest Rapids Dam. 2003 2003 $143,371
2. Compare the energy expenditures of hatchery and wild adult fall chinook salmon passage through the Hanford Reach as compared to passage and/or fallback past Priest Rapids Dam 2003 2004 $597,673
Outyear budgets for Construction and Implementation phase
FY 2003FY 2004
$490,623$250,420

Section 6. Budget for Operations and Maintenance phase

Task-based budget
ObjectiveTaskDuration in FYsEstimated 2002 costSubcontractor
Outyear objectives-based budget
ObjectiveStarting FYEnding FYEstimated cost
Outyear budgets for Operations and Maintenance phase

Section 7. Budget for Monitoring and Evaluation phase

Task-based budget
ObjectiveTaskDuration in FYsEstimated 2002 costSubcontractor
Outyear objectives-based budget
ObjectiveStarting FYEnding FYEstimated cost
Outyear budgets for Monitoring and Evaluation phase

Section 8. Estimated budget summary

Itemized budget
ItemNoteFY 2002 cost
Personnel FTE: PNNL - ~1 FTE ($33,368); WDFW - ~2 FTE ($83,062) $116,430
Fringe PNNL - $11,785; WDFW - $30,733 $42,518
Supplies Transmitters ($120,000), RT gear for dam ($20,000) $176,035
Travel Ephrata, Portland, AFS meeting $6,244
Indirect PNNL - $93,178, WDFW - $32,404 $125,582
Capital $0
NEPA $0
PIT tags # of tags: 0 $0
Subcontractor 3 GSA vehicles, LGL Limited, rental of SRXs $136,256
Other $0
$603,065
Total estimated budget
Total FY 2002 cost$603,065
Amount anticipated from previously committed BPA funds$0
Total FY 2002 budget request$603,065
FY 2002 forecast from 2001$0
% change from forecast0.0%
Cost sharing
OrganizationItem or service providedAmountCash or in-kind
Grant County Public Utility District Cash and/or in-kind services (e.g., use of equipment, staff, facilities) $50,000 cash

Reviews and recommendations

This information was not provided on the original proposals, but was generated during the review process.

Recommendation:
Fundable only if response is adequate
Date:
Jun 15, 2001

Comment:

Do not fund unless a response is provided that adequately addresses the ISRP's concerns. The reviewers' general appraisal was fairly negative. However, we are requesting a comprehensive assessment of the Hanford Reach by all the proposers of Hanford Reach projects and this project should be included in the mix. That assessment may better explain the relative priority of this particular project. This project, to be funded, would also need to address the many serious design problems raised in our review.

This is a complicated proposal that in the end seemed confused and inflated. There are two kinds of counts made of adult population of fall chinook in the Hanford reach. These are aerial redd counts and spawning escapement estimates obtained as the McNary dam adult count minus the sum of the Priest Rapids dam adult count, the adult count (where?) in the Snake, the adult count in the Yakima (where? Prosser dam?), the rack count at Priest Rapids hatchery, the rack count at Ringold hatchery, and the harvest estimate. The adult fish passing Priest Rapids dam are presumed to be escapement to the population that spawns in the tailrace of Wanapum dam.

Allegedly the two kinds of counts for the Hanford reach have correlated well historically, but no numbers are presented. More detail is needed here.

There is also a need to factor in the statistical properties of the aerial redd counts. How much noise would be expected in the redd counts? For that matter, how much noise should be expected in the dam counts and the harvest estimates? Note that the spawning escapement estimate involves a sum of several such counts and estimates, so the total error variance in the spawning escapement is bound to be large.

The claim in the proposal is that for the period 1988-1999 an "average" escapement estimate of ~42,000 was associated with an "average" redd count value of ~6,000. But in 1999 the escapement estimate suddenly dropped to 9,812 while the redd count estimate stayed in the former range at 6,086. In 2000, the escapement estimate fell further to 6,997 and the redd count dropped only a little to 5,381. The redd count seemed consistent with an "estimate" of ~10,000 spawned out carcasses (no real paper trail on the reliability of the latter). But the proposal acknowledges an "undercount" at McNary for 1999-2000 owing to "misplacement of guidance racks."

They claim that in 2000, numbers of fish were observed passing back over the sluiceway at Priest Rapids dam. In 2000, 32 of 73 radio tagged fish fell back. This fallback rate is higher than is usual for most Columbia system dams, but note that they cite a 31% fallback rate at Ice Harbor dam.

They hypothesize that the disconnect between the escapement estimate and the redd counts in 1999-2000 was due to fallback causing an overcount at Priest Rapids. But there are lots of loose ends in accounting for the disconnect between the escapement estimate and the redd counts in 1999-2000: bad dam counts at McNary, noise in the escapement estimate, unknown properties of the redd counts, and possible deviations in operation of weirs and outlet channel flows at the nearby Priest Rapids hatchery. Note that under the fallback hypothesis, the question arises why did fallback suddenly become much larger in 1999-2000?

One hypothesis they float is that the fish that are falling back are disproportionately fish that originated from the Priest Rapids hatchery, and there is a little bit of a story suggesting some differences in operation in 1999 and 2000 of the channel that the hatchery fish return to. The hatchery is located 4 km below Priest Rapids dam. The proposal does not state how or where smolts are released from Priest Rapids-- need to check. The collection of broodstock is "volunteer" fish that enter a channel that leads from the hatchery to the river. Evidently there is some sort of control of flow in that channel, and it can be shut down when the hatchery doesn't want to collect fish. It would be good to learn a little more about that, and also to learn where the outflow water goes when this channel is not flowing. When the hatchery does want to collect fish, the flow is about 100 cfs, of the same mix of water that is used in the hatchery: 120 parts Columbia River water drawn from upstream of Priest Rapids dam, to 16 parts well water. The story is that in 1999 the channel was shut down till later in the season than usual, and that in 2000 a weir was installed in the channel mouth, and then removed when concern developed that it was interfering with the adult return behavior.

The proposal views the ambiguity in the Priest Rapids dam counts as causing a problem for estimating spawning escapement in the Hanford Reach, and also in the Wanapum tail race. Not clear why this is important if the redd counts are viewed as reliable. The proposal also raises the possibility that fallback exacts an energetic cost which might cause stress or eventual pre-spawning mortality, to the detriment of the population. So the goal of the proposal is to get better estimates of fallback rates to correct the spawning escapement estimates, and to obtain energetic measurements to quantify the potential cost of fallback, and to attempt to relate the fallback rate to hatchery and dam operation in the hopes of finding a way of managing these operations so as to reduce the fall back rate.

The substantive proposed activities are to carry out more precise tracking of a sample of 1,200 fish that will be radio-tagged at Bonneville by another project of University of Idaho, and to instrument another sample of fish for the energy studies.

But there is a design problem that looks fatal, as far as relating the migration route at Priest Rapids to the stock origin of the fish. The proposal, at the top of p 12 states: "At present we can not determine stock origin of adults at the time of tagging." They intend to "assume" stock origin based on location of capture: hatchery, ladder (unclear whether they mean the ladder at McNary or at Priest Rapids), or the fishery in the river (not specified where in the river).

Hard to believe. Is it really true that this stock has achieved poster-child status without an ongoing tagging program to sort out the respective roles of hatchery production and natural spawning in the dynamics of the population? The proposal mentions a PSMFC"CWT recovery project" in the Hanford Reach, that they will "coordinate" with. What is this CWT project doing? Isn't there some PIT tagging?

There are just too many pieces missing from the puzzle. What if the cause of the high fallback rate is simply poor location of the ladder exit in the forebay, at a place where fish may have difficulty orienting to the upstream direction? The study does not address this question.

It appears that the data collected will be insufficient to resolve the role of the hatchery homing in the fallback phenomenon, and without a real dynamics model of the population it is not even clear that fallback is causing an actual biological problem. It is just a book keeping annoyance for the way they estimate spawning escapements, which is unsatisfactory in any case.

The budget seems out of proportion - $600,000 for this year, $46K just for a "plan". There are some logistic details that would need to be resolved if this project were implemented: notably, some coordination in operation of the hatchery intake to ensure that changes in that protocol do not create another "outlier," and some coordination with the shad project (#25037) so that the shad effect could be incorporated as a measured covariate rather than unknown background noise.


Recommendation:
Recommended Action
Date:
Aug 3, 2001

Comment:


Recommendation:
Fund
Date:
Aug 10, 2001

Comment:

Fundable in part - fund objective 1 only. The response adequately documents that the discrepancy in escapement estimates and the rate of fallback were both unusually large in 2000. This warrants continued monitoring both to rectify escapement estimates and to attempt to determine whether the fallback is related to operations at Priest Rapids hatchery. The significance of fallback, and the interpretation of escapement estimates, cannot be properly evaluated until a comprehensive stock assessment is carried out, which would include quantification of the relative roles of hatchery and natural production for this stock. Until this is done investment in the energetics component of the project (objective 2) is not warranted, especially since stock origin at present would not be known for the individual instrumented fish.
See detailed ISRP comments on Hanford Reach projects
Recommendation:
Date:
Oct 1, 2001

Comment:

Statement of Potential Biological Benefit to ESU
N/A (for RPA ESUs)

Comments

Already ESA Req? NA

Biop? no


Recommendation:
Rank D
Date:
Oct 16, 2001

Comment:

This project is a funding responsibility of Grant PUD. The proposal does not address a listed population, but a healthy one. The proposal requires considerable funding for studying fallback at the dam when the problem may be caused more by the new operations at Priest Rapids Hatchery that prevents hatchery fish from entering the facility. This should be addressed prior to an expensive fallback study.
Recommendation:
Do Not Fund
Date:
Jan 3, 2002

Comment: