Lower Columbia River Fisheries and Escapement Evaluation in Southwest Washington, 2012

In 2010, The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) began implementation of an expanded monitoring program for Chinook and coho salmon populations in the Lower Columbia River (LCR) region of Southwest Washington (WDFW’s Region 5) and fishery monitoring in the lower mainstem of the Columbia River. The focus of this expanded monitoring was to 1) gather data on Viable Salmonid Population (VSP) parameters – spawner abundance, including proportion of hatchery origin spawners (pHOS), spatial distribution, diversity, and productivity and 2) to increase the Coded Wire Tag (CWT) recovery rate from spawning grounds to meet regional standards, and 3) to evaluate the use of PIT tags to develop harvest rates for salmon and steelhead populations by having fishery samplers recovery PIT tags from fish being sampled for CWT in existing fisheries monitoring programs. Monitoring protocols and analysis methods utilized were intended to produce unbiased estimates with measurements of precision in an effort to meet NOAA monitoring guidelines (Crawford and Rumsey 2011).  These reports summarize the third year of the expanded monitoring program. Funding for this program came from multiple sources: 1) the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) through the Lower Columbia Coded Wire Tag (CWT) Recovery Project (BPA Project #: 2010-036-00) ; 2) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) via Mitchell Act Monitoring, Evaluation and Reform (MA MER) funds; 3) NOAA via Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Funds (PCSRF) (administered thru the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office (RCO); 4) Washington State; 5) PacifiCorp (NF Lewis River Chinook salmon monitoring) and 6) Tacoma Power (Cowlitz River Basin).