Chinook Salmon

[ONCORHYNCHUS TSHAWYTSCHA] After one to five years roaming the ocean and building up powerful muscles, mature chinook salmon return to the streams of their birth each fall. Taking advantage of water levels raised by fall rains, they thread their way upstream against swift currents and surging waterfalls to reach ancestral spawning grounds.

The Food and Drug Administration released long-awaited documents Dec. 21 on genetically modified salmon: an assessment of the fish's potential environmental effects and a preliminary “ finding of no significant impact ” of the fish on the environment. This brings AquAdvantage salmon -- Atlantic salmon that has been modified with a growth hormone gene from chinook salmon so that it reaches maturity faster -- a significant step closer to FDA approval.   Astute readers will notice that the recently released documents are dated May 4. So why were they just released Dec. 21 -- seven months later?

Even among those who seek to protect wildlife above all, there are moments of great conflict. One of those moments is playing out near Portland, Ore., as sea lions gorge on endangered chinook salmon that gather at the base of the Bonneville Dam, preparing to make their way up the fish ladders to spawn. Last week and this, wildlife officials have killed six of the most incorrigible of the animals, which have refused to be dissuaded by noise, rubber bullets or other harassing techniques.

Genetically modified salmon moved closer to the market last week with release of draft documents from the Food and Drug Administration that assessed the environmental risks posed by AquAdvantage salmon, which grow faster than regular Atlantic salmon. The agency found, on a preliminary basis, that the GM fish, produced by AquaBounty Technologies of Massachusetts, posed no significant threat. Both documents -- an environmental assessmen t and preliminary “ finding of no significant impac t,” known by the policy wonks as a FONSI -- will be published Dec. 26 in the Federal Register and be available for public comment for 60 days.

Once, Lake Michigan was stuffed to the gills with alewives, an Atlantic invader that washed up on beaches by the smelly ton. But now, fishery managers fear the fish's population has plunged -- and that could crash the lake's ecosystem. Biologists blame the turnaround on the Chinook salmon of the Pacific Northwest. The most voracious fish in the lake, Chinook feed on alewives. Fishery managers have stocked Chinook since 1967 to hold the alewives in check.

Citing new surveys that show the winter-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River perilously close to extinction, a group of fishery biologists is preparing to petition federal authorities to declare the fish an endangered species.

  The once-legendary salmon streams of the Pacific Northwest have been battling steep declines in the celebrated fish for years, and nowhere has the challenge been tougher than on the Klamath River, with salmon struggling to survive the perils of dams, drought and water wars on the river that flows from southern Oregon into California. But in a stunning reversal that state wildlife officials are at a loss to fully explain, nearly 1.6 million chinook salmon, the big, meaty fish most prized by fishermen, are expected to try to make their way into and up the river to spawn this fall.

A $1.4-billion project to remove four hydroelectric dams and restore habitat to return Chinook salmon to the upper reaches of the Klamath River amounts to an experiment with no guarantee of success, an independent science review has concluded. A panel of experts evaluating the proposal expressed "strong reservations" that the effort could overcome the many environmental pressures that have driven the dramatic decline of what was one of the richest salmon rivers in the nation.

Game wardens on Friday arrested nine people for allegedly poaching sturgeon and chinook salmon from the Sacramento River and the delta. Wardens made the arrests after raiding seven homes in Sacramento. They said the suspects illegally netted young, fall-run chinook salmon to use as bait for sturgeons. The sturgeons' eggs were sold illegally as caviar on the black market. The populations of salmon and sturgeon have dropped in the last few years.

The Sonoma County Water Agency plans to reduce the amount of water flowing from dwindling Lake Mendocino, but it is asking water users to conserve to help chinook salmon migrating upstream to spawn. About 1,650 threatened chinook salmon have entered the Russian River via the agency's fish ladder near Forestville.

  The once-legendary salmon streams of the Pacific Northwest have been battling steep declines in the celebrated fish for years, and nowhere has the challenge been tougher than on the Klamath River, with salmon struggling to survive the perils of dams, drought and water wars on the river that flows from southern Oregon into California. But in a stunning reversal that state wildlife officials are at a loss to fully explain, nearly 1.6 million chinook salmon, the big, meaty fish most prized by fishermen, are expected to try to make their way into and up the river to spawn this fall.

A judge ordered a federal agency Tuesday to rewrite protections for migrating salmon that have reduced water shipments from Northern California, concluding that some of the pumping curbs were based on "equivocal or bad science. " But in a mixed ruling, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger also said that the National Marine Fisheries Service was justified in finding that government water operations that export supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta jeopardize dwindling populations of chinook salmon and several other fish on the endangered species list.

A $1.4-billion project to remove four hydroelectric dams and restore habitat to return Chinook salmon to the upper reaches of the Klamath River amounts to an experiment with no guarantee of success, an independent science review has concluded. A panel of experts evaluating the proposal expressed "strong reservations" that the effort could overcome the many environmental pressures that have driven the dramatic decline of what was one of the richest salmon rivers in the nation.

When Peter Moyle began studying an obscure little Northern California fish in the early 1970s, he had no inkling of the role it would come to play in the state. No one had paid much attention to the delta smelt. "They were just there," recalled Moyle, then an assistant professor at UC Davis in need of a research topic. "We knew nothing about it. " Nearly four decades later, the delta smelt is arguably the most powerful player in California water. Its movements rule the pumping operations of the state's biggest water projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel debated Monday whether to endorse the safety of genetically engineered salmon, but instead urged the agency to require more studies to demonstrate the fish's safety. The North Atlantic salmon developed by AquaBounty Technologies Inc. of Waltham, Mass., would be the country's first genetically engineered food animal. The Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee did not vote on the FDA's preliminary findings that the fish was safe for people to eat and did not pose a significant environmental risk.

Even among those who seek to protect wildlife above all, there are moments of great conflict. One of those moments is playing out near Portland, Ore., as sea lions gorge on endangered chinook salmon that gather at the base of the Bonneville Dam, preparing to make their way up the fish ladders to spawn. Last week and this, wildlife officials have killed six of the most incorrigible of the animals, which have refused to be dissuaded by noise, rubber bullets or other harassing techniques.

Almost two-thirds of winter-run chinook salmon captured for a special spawning run failed to survive, dimming prospects in an already poor spawning season, government wildlife officials reported. Most fish died before they could spawn and none of the 15 surviving fish is mature enough to reproduce, officials said. "The hard thing is that whatever has happened has occurred at a time when--for unknown reasons--there is an unfortunately low run," said Roger Wolcott, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

A federal judge extended a ban on commercial chinook salmon fishing in southeast Alaska on Thursday, saying Alaska had failed to make a good-faith effort to abide by the 10-year-old Pacific Salmon Treaty. U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein's preliminary injunction, issued at the request of Pacific Northwest Indian tribes and the states of Washington and Oregon, extends the ban through Sept. 30. Rothstein ruled that Alaska was jeopardizing the salmon run by overfishing.

Despite a historic shutdown of coastal salmon fishing, the number of salmon returning to the Sacramento River is collapsing, according to preliminary data released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council. Returning fall Chinook salmon numbers have dropped to their lowest level since monitoring began in the 1970s, the report said. The finding means it is unlikely that fishing will resume this year, disappointing fishermen who have eked out the last two years on disaster aid, waiting for salmon fishing bans to be lifted.