An Interview with Jim Scott, WDFW Chief Fish Scientist Jim Scott is chief fish scientist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. He holds a master's degree in Fisheries from the University of Washington and has worked in the field of salmon recovery for 15 years in positions that include the Point-No Point Treaty Council, the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service. He and his wife Teresa have two young sons.

Q: How did you become interested in fish science, and how did you come to work for the WDFW? A: When I was growing up, I lived in Renton, and I had much interest in fish. I lived pretty close to Lake Washington and spent a lot of time there looking at fish and bugs and and eventually began to go to the Cedar River whenever I could get my family to take me there. I spent most of my time on the creek fishing and collecting insects for my aquarium, which was in my room. I called it the Sport Fisheries Research Center. I kept a log of river conditions, recorded what the fish caught, what their stomach contents were. From an early age, I knew I wanted to be in fisheries. I was also interested in math, so college at the University of Washington was a real opportunity to combine those two interests. I went into mathematic modeling of fish populations and pursued bachelor's and master's degrees. From there, I went to Point-No Point Treaty Council, so I worked there for two years and then at the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. A couple of years at Point No Point were an incredible learning experience. People were trying to work cooperatively through the effects of the Boldt decision. On the Chinook Technical Committee for the Salmon Commission, I spent a lot of time learning about what was happening in Alaska and Canada. Q: We currently have 15 stocks of salmon and trout listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Why is it important that we try to recover these salmon? A: There are really three or four reasons. The first is the desire to have functioning ecosystems, and recent scientific studies have shown that salmon are an integral part of the ecosystem. They circulate nutrients back out of the ocean and bring them back into the freshwater where they are essential not only for salmon, but we're increasingly learning about other freshwater and terrestrial organisms. Those range from large carnivorous animals, such as bears, which now have decreased populations, to smaller animals such as mussels in the Columbia, which rely on salmon as intermediary hosts for their reproductive cycle. There's also the growing recognition that we need to select and preserve genetic diversity to serve as a cushion for environmental changes that we can't predict. That if we have all fish of this one size and type, when conditions change, that size and type may not be the one that's able to function. My personal view and a perspective from the tribes, wild salmon are an essential part of their culture, and for some of us who have come here more recently, they are an essential part of what's unique about the Northwest and a reason that we live here. There's also an economic perspective. Producing fish through hatcheries is expensive, and it would be better from an economic standpoint to be able to rely on natural systems for fish. Q: What is the biggest challenge, from a scientist's view, to recovering wild salmon runs? A: The biggest challenge from my viewpoint is monetary. If you compare the dollars allotted for natural resource management in Washington to the amount for transportation or any other standard state function, what's available for natural resources management is minuscule. And natural resources management is at least as complex and at least as important or more important than managing the road system. Q: Can we realistically expect to recover all the wild stocks? A: No. The key word is realistic. I believe some stocks are located in areas that the people of the state will prioritize to use for purposes other than salmon habitat. Primarily, I'm talking about areas around Puget Sound and the Columbia River. Some of these areas simply won't be put aside for salmon. Q: How would you sum up the state of wild salmon recovery efforts today. Has there been progress? A: I think there's been a huge amount of progress on wild salmon recovery. I have been in the business for 15 years, and the types of questions that we're asking now are completely different from the questions we were asking at the time I started, and the result is that there's a much stronger recognition of the need to monitor and evaluate harvest, enhancement and habitat programs and their effect on salmon. And as a result, harvest rates on wild salmon have dropped considerably for every stock. I think enhancement has changed radically in its focus even from five years ago, and for the first time, we are getting broad interest on the effects of habitat on salmon. That's something we have had great difficulty doing previously. Q: Some people think "a fish is a fish is a fish." What is your view? Are there important genetic differences between hatchery and wild stocks? A: Yes, there are important differences between hatchery and wild stocks. There can be significant reductions in the productivity in the fish originating from hatcheries, once they reproduce in the wild. We're spending research money now attempting to understand why there is that loss of fitness among hatchery-originated fish. Q: Where is our science the strongest, and where is it the weakest? A: I think we have gotten a very good handle on the effects of harvest, where fish are caught, how many are caught. Now we need to put that information in the context of habitat. We are just beginning to develop the tools to pinpoint the changes that habitat will have on salmon stocks. Q: Has enough been done in the harvest sector to restrict and direct the catch? A: I think we have made an incredible amount of progress on improving our harvest management systems. We are still in the process of developing recovery programs for species recently listed, and in some cases, there will still be some harvest actions we will have to take. But compared with harvest rates of 20 years ago, they have been reduced by 60 to 90 percent on wild salmon. Q: Is it important to salmon recovery to continue allowing harvest of salmon? A: A lot of the interest in salmon is by people who fish for salmon, and if we don't permit any fishing, then many of the volunteer efforts would be lost, much of the funding would be lost, and much of the people and governmental support and programs would be lost. So it's important to plot a deliberate focus toward salmon recovery that includes fishing, because we need the people who fish to be a part of the effort. Q: We have said that past hatchery practices may have been detrimental to salmon. How are we changing hatchery practices in order to help salmon recovery? Are hatcheries important to salmon recovery? A: I spoke before about the loss of genetic diversity, and we are addressing that by making sure that we use local stocks for hatchery programs so that we don't transfer a Cowlitz fish to, say, the Samish hatchery. There's a loss of productivity that happens in a case like that, and we're addressing that by using wild fish in our broodstock, reducing the number of hatchery fish that spawn in the wild. There are also physical changes; we're modifying hatchery facilities to make them more like a wild environment. The intakes haven't always been screened well, so they cause mortality. We're getting funding to make sure that all the intakes are screened properly. The secondary effect of the use of hatcheries is that they have led to a condition where we have had many hatchery fish we have wanted to harvest, and in some cases that has resulted in too-high harvest rates on wild fish -- rates that the wild fish couldn't sustain. We're addressing that by making sure that harvest rates on wild stocks are appropriate for their production, by selective fisheries and developing gears for commercial fishers that allow them to release wild fish with limited mortality. For example, tangle nets decrease the mortality. The use of these is in the developmental stage. For stocks that are in severe jeopardy of extinction, hatcheries are the only tool that we have available to maintain them. Examples of this are in the White River spring in Puget Sound, the North Fork Nooksack spring, Columbia River sockeye, Dungeness spring. There a large number of stocks that we're going to monitor and do our best to try to increase their numbers. Q: Where do you see success with salmon recovery occurring first? Of the stocks presently listed as threatened or endangered, which ones have the best chance, in your view, of being recovered to healthy, harvestable levels? Why is that? A: There are two key things here. Public support. Where you have public support for wild salmon, that's going to be an area where you're likely to have success. And second, where you don't have large investments from a different era – such as dams and cities – and policies and such considerations that limit your flexibility in recovering salmon. Q: Looking into the future, what do you think will be the state of salmon recovery in 10 years? A: I think we will see three things – there will be some real success stories, but these will be small. And there will be a large number of salmon populations that will be doing slightly better, though not at the level we would like them to be. And there will be large numbers that will not have improved much beyond where we are. Hopefully, these populations won't be in worse conditions. Recovery of salmon is a very long, slow process. Q: In general, people tend to feel overwhelmed by reports of widespread pollution and species of fish and wildlife threatened or endangered. Can individual people make a difference for salmon? How can they make a difference? A: When I came to WDFW, I didn't recognize the degree to which I would be involved with volunteer groups, individual people working in the area of salmon recovery. What is astounding to me is how large an effort individual people can have when they have that perspective. They are going to do something about salmon recovery. The effect they can have on the agency, legislature, on the governor, is important. Individual people make a huge difference. All of us make hundreds of decisions every day that have an effect on salmon.