Central Valley Salmonid Project Work Team Meeting
June 8, 2006
DFG Conference Room
820 S Street Sacramento
Meeting Participants: Alice Low (CDFG), Jim Smith and Kim
Webb(USFWS), Jeff McLain (NOAA Fisheries), Ken Lentz (USBR) and Joe Miyamoto (EBMUD)
October Meeting Notes
The team reviewed the March 23, 2006 meeting notes. Alice will check with Pat Brandes on her edits to the mintues.
IEP Website
Neil Henderson (DWR under Carl Jacobs) has been very responsive in updating content on the web site. Links are available to each subteam’s mission statement and meeting notes. The team suggested that important presentations and documents be provided on the website. The 2004 report on the constant fractional marking program should be placed on the website. Powerpoint presentations might be converted into PDF format to reduce storage space requirements. Joe Miyamoto noted that Randy Brown will soon have the draft workshop notes from the CV monitoring workshop held at the SF State Romberg Tiburon Center.
Upcoming Conferences
Jeff McLain reported on the 2007 national AFS conference in SF. The conference organizers are expecting some 3000 participants. The SF Marriott, site of the conference will have rooms for 800 persons. This year’s annual meeting conference will be at Lake Placid on September 14th.
Ken Lentz reported on the new salmonid management technologies presentations by the Alaska Resource and Economic Development Corporation (ARED). The two technologies include a backpack salmon egg implanting device and a moist air incubation chamber. The incubators are made from old Pepsi dispensers that are waterproofed and fitted with egg trays, water chiller, heater, reverse osmosis filtration and UV for treating 35 gallons of recirculated water. Precise temperature control by the incubator provides a cost effective way for otolith marking. A daily change of three to four gallons of water is recommended to reduce ammonia build up. The cost for an 88 tray unit is $10,000 and $13,500 for a 120 tray unit. ARED announced they were working on laser technology to read otoliths in situ.
The egg implanting device cleans the gravel and then injects some 600 eyed eggs into the cleaned gravel bed. The cost of the implanting device is $2450. The device would be useful to evaluate gravel supplementation programs where a known quantity of eggs is needed to gage survival. Another application might be to re-introduce winter-run chinook into Battle Creek or species re-introduction upstream of impassable barriers.ARED’s website is
Alice reported the CALFED Science Conference will have a salmonid session. Abstracts were due last Tuesday. Bill Poytress will chair a session on green sturgeon.
Formation of San Joaquin Basin PWT – Jeff McLain
Tim Heyne has agreed to chair the re-vitalized subteam with help from Cark Mesick. The team will need to draft a mission statement, recruit members and will likely hold quarterly meetings. The geographic scope of the team will be from the Merced River north. Jeff noted the San Joaquin Settlement Agreement is going back to the judge, but the team will have a number of issues to discuss.
NMFS Salmonid Recovery Process – Alice Low
The NOAA Fisheries Technical Recovery Team (TRT) has met for three years and Phase I of the recovery planning will be complete within the next few months. The TRT produced two papers on 1) historical population distributions and 2) viability criteria. The viability paper will be published in the SF Estuary and Watershed Science on-line journal. The viability paper provides a general approach for setting recovery criteria.
Phase II will include the preparation of a recovery plan that will include recommendations where recovery actions will occur. The original plan was to form another recovery team with more stakeholders, but NMFS staff will draft the plan using input from public workshops. Phase II is to be completed by June 2007. The first public workshop will be July 20th and will review the threats that led to the species listings and develop a quantitative ranking of the threats by life stage.
Satellite Team Updates
The genetics subteam will meet when Sheila Greene gets back from vacation. Positive responses have been received so far on the proposal to upgrade the fish salvage facilities for collecting genetic samples.
The escapement monitoring subteam met on April 25th and toured a hydroacoustic site on Mill Creek. Monitoring is being done with both split beam hydroacoustics and Didson sonar. The output produced a bell shaped curve that will be compared with salmon redd counts later this year. The range of the Didson sonar is 20 to 30 feet and the range can be shortened for juvenile salmon monitoring.
The next meeting of the escapement monitoring subteam is August 2, 2006. The meeting agenda includes scale collection protocols. Alice announced the contract for the scale aging program has been finished and staff will be housed at the Santa Rosa office.
A pre-meeting notice has been sent out for the steelhead PWT. The team will meet to discuss the steelhead monitoring plan.
The Delta rearing subteam will meet next week on June 14th at the Yolo Wildlife conference room. The agenda will include the application of sonic tracking experiments in the Delta and the fall study plans, the draft report of the Fishery Foundation’s winter beach seine surveys, the FWS winter beach seine surveys and north Delta flows and juvenile salmon movements.
Steve Cramer gave an update of his model to the winter-run subteam. Steve did not ask the group for comments, but hoped to talk with individuals about the model updates. A technical group is working on a plan for the phase out of production from the Livingston Stone Hatchery.
Jim Smith provided an update on the winter-run escapement. Poor visibility is hampering the aerial surveys. Lots of fish are still showing up at the RBDD and numbers are at least as strong as last year.
Alice Low reported from information provided by Pat Brandes that Dave Vogel’s pilot telemetry study for VAMP was successful. Five receivers tracked the movements of juvenile salmon in the south Delta. A number of the tagged fish apparently were preyed upon at two predator hot spots. Fish movements and migratory pathways will be compared under different export rates.
Hatchery PWT – Jim Smith
A survey is needed on what is going on at each hatchery. Randy Brown at the UCD seminar on the role of hatcheries to species conservation provided information about hatcheries including their production levels, adult returns, cwt recoveries, fishery contributions and straying rates. Randy suggested science advisors review the hatchery programs and he noted the formation of the new hatchery PWT.
Jim Smith asked for some feedback on Kevin Niemela’s presentation at the seminar. Kevin did a good job presenting the supplementation program at the Livingston Stone Hatchery for winter-run chinook.
Alice reported a cohort reconstruction is being done for the Feather River Hatchery BY 98 and 99. Joe Duran was hired by DWR to process the cwt recovery data under Alan Grover. The composition of 60% natural production in the run was higher than expected.
Update on Constant Fractional Marking Program – Alice Low
The contract to the Pacific States Marine Fish Commission is still in progress. Northwest Marine Technology has begun building the Autofish systems. One unit may be available by August or September for tagging late-fall run chinook. Jim Smith declined on this offer noting they already had plans to bring down another proven working machine from the Pacific Northwest.
The team discussed the continuation of funding past the initial two years of the CALFED funded program. Jim Smith suggested the program be mandated by DFG so funding can be secured. DFG took similar action when they mandated that all steelhead be marked under the Steelhead Management Plan. Another approach would be to make CFM a term and condition in the hatchery BOs. Joe Miyamoto indicated EBMUD would participate in the program, but EBMUD preferred the funds not go in the hatchery budget where it would be subject to overhead costs.
Alice is starting to work on a CALFED proposal for the cwt recovery program. A centralized cwt processing laboratory is needed. Alice projected some 60,000 to 80,000 tags would have to be recovered from heads and processed each year. Rob Titus is working on a CV creel census program that will include the recovery of cwt’s.
IEP Salmon Review – Ken Lentz
The IEP managers have asked for a review of the juvenile salmonid monitoring programs. Similar reviews have been conducted for the environmental monitoring, Bay studyand Delta smelt program. A steering committee of six to ten people would do the review with a science advisory group. The steering committee would formulate the relevant questions and assemble the information for the advisory group. Workshops might be held to gather information. The advisory group would prepare a report for IEP. The review would evaluate methods to answer specific questions and would identify program needs and data gaps. The review would force the integration of the programs in the Delta with upstream programs. Ken asked that the CVSPWT provide input on the scope of the review. Alice Low suggested the review focus on water project operations and be limited to programs mandated by SWRCB and the BOs for CVP/SWP OCAP. The existing CV monitoring programs were listed in the reading materials provided ahead of the CV salmonid monitoring workshop at Tiburon. Alice will provide a link to the report on the monitoring programs.
Next Meeting
The next meeting of the team will be Thursday August 31, 2006 in Sacramentofrom 10 am to 1:00 pm.
P:\CVSPWT\Meeting Notes\Meeting notes 6-8-06 draft.doc