- Suquamish Tribe fish lab technician Kelly Browning prepares to remove a coded-wire tag from a chinook.
The Suquamish Tribe is helping to speed delivery of information critical to good salmon management in the Pacific Northwest.
Tiny coded wire tags inserted into the noses young hatchery salmon are part of the foundation of fisheries management in the Pacific Northwest, but they aren’t easy to retrieve when the fish return as adults. When combined with the large volume of tags recovered, it can take more than a year for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to analyze and report tag findings to the treaty tribal co-managers.
A metal detector is used to electronically sample for the tags when the fish are harvested, return to hatcheries, or reach spawning grounds. When examined under a microscope, the tag reveals where the fish originated; when that information is combined with where and when the fish were harvested, it enables managers to monitor survival rates, migration patterns, run timing and harvest levels.
Trouble is, the needle-thin 1 mm tags are inserted when the fish are fingerlings. By the time they return as adults weighing in at an average of 20 lbs the tag is buried deep in the fish’s head. That makes recovering the tags time consuming. Using a metal detector, scalpel and other tools, technicians must slowly dissect the head to find the tag, which is de-coded using a microscope.
“The state has five people processing a hundred thousand fish heads for the entire Puget Sound region and results typically don’t come back until the following fall,” said Anja Huff, the Suquamish Tribe’s fish lab manager. “Our small staff of three can remove 2,000 tags in few months and our biologists get the data about this fall’s run by January. This year we got back a large group of 3-year-old chinook. By being able to analyze this data sooner, we will be able to get an accurate idea of overall returns and can better plan for the future.”
The Coastwide CWT program conducted by the treaty tribes, State of Washington and federal government is the largest animal mark/recapture project in the world.
