The mountains had turned orange and yellow above Kodiak’s Pillar Creek hatchery as James ‘Hawk’ Turman waited at the hatchery gate last month.
“It smells a little bit right now, because you got a bunch of pink salmon out there dying in the river,” he said as he unlocked the gate. “I'm waiting for a bunch of rain to just wash them all down.”
Turman manages the Pillar Creek hatchery. Most of the time, it’s home to the Kodiak Regional Aquaculture Association’s sockeye and silver salmon operations. But something new is happening here. The aquaculture association is trying to rehabilitate a crashing king salmon run from the Karluk River, on the southwest side of the island.
Eggs collected from those wild salmon are now incubating at the hatchery. And although many support the project, some scientists worry it could do more harm than good.
Alaska’s king salmon runs are in trouble
The Karluk run is one of only two native king salmon runs on Kodiak Island, and it has deep cultural and historical significance for the Alutiiq people. But the run is in major trouble. Last year, only 93 kings returned to the Karluk River. The year before, it was just 76.
Across Alaska, king salmon populations have been returning in record low numbers. Turman said the Karluk project, which according to the aquaculture association is the first of its kind in the state, might be the start of something bigger.
“Our efforts are being used as kind of a test case for other stocks of concern around the state,” he said. “Someone had to finally kick the can off the bridge, and why not us?”
But he said the project’s first year has not gone off without a hitch. The first part of the plan required catching a certain number of wild kings. The challenging terrain and the Karluk’s fast current meant staff had to catch the kings using the same method as a sportfisherman: a rod, reel and lure.
Only 300 kings returned this year, and they were swimming among 1.5 million pinks — several times what they expected. That made catching the kings like finding a needle in a haystack.
And the kings they did catch were mostly males.
“For the purposes of genetic diversity, we do have a minimum target of 25 females for that project, but we were not able to pen those up,” Turman said.
Ultimately, Turman said they spawned the five females they had with four different males each, and sent milt from some of the males to a lab in Seattle to be frozen and preserved.
Hatcheries are a controversial solution
Hatcheries have become increasingly controversial over the years, as evidence mounts that hatchery fish can harm wild fish populations.
Conservation hatcheries have gotten some flak, too.
“A conservation hatchery, all well-intentioned, absolutely can come at a detrimental cost,” said Peter Westley, a fisheries ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Westley said hatcheries can’t perfectly replicate wild reproduction. Hatcheries spawn fish by mixing the eggs from a female with milt from one or more males, usually chosen at random.
“However we choose to do it, the choice that we make is inevitably different than the choice that the female would have made,” Westley said.
Westley said that over time, this has consequences for the genetic strength of the population.
In the Lower 48, the results from conservation hatcheries have been a mixed bag. Some research has found that conservation hatcheries helped salmon and steelhead populations survive tough times in Washington and Idaho. Other conservation hatcheries, Westley said, have been less successful.
Westley said that in Oregon’s Columbia River, hatchery fish have largely replaced the wild stocks.
“Efforts in places like the Columbia River, functionally have not worked,” he said. “What has worked to restore salmon populations is restoring habitat and restoring the root causes of the problems.”
Restoring the run is about more than fisheries
Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game is one of the aquaculture association’s partners in the Karluk effort. Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said they are doing everything they can to avoid an outcome like the Columbia River’s.
“We have so few kings coming back right now, we have to make sure that we're not causing long-term genetic implications,” he said.
And with the dire state of the Karluk run, the choice may be between allowing the introduction of hatchery-raised fish, or ending up with no fish at all.
Stacey Imaq Simmons is a vice president of the Koniag Native Corporation, another partner in the project. She said the recent low king returns mean “doing nothing is no longer the low-risk option.”
Our Karluk kings have sustained our Sugpiaq Alutiiq people for more than 7,800 years,” she said. “So this isn't just about restoring the fisheries. It's about protecting a resource tied to subsistence, our culture, food security, and really the relationship our people have had with that watershed for thousands of years.”
Back at the hatchery, Turman said they’re still waiting on decisions from Fish and Game about what to do next. Vincent-Lang has voiced concerns that releasing so many fish from just a few parents could compromise the genetic diversity of the wild run.
But they have time. The baby kings likely wouldn’t go back into the river until at least 2028. If they do release them, the project’s managers would have several more years to decide whether to let wild fish spawn with hatchery fish, if any make it back to the river.
In the meantime, Turman said he’ll keep raising the kings, the same way he’s raised generations of salmon before them.
In one of the hatchery’s rooms, kept dark to mimic the lightlessness of a riverbed, he pulled out a tray of eggs taken from the Karluk kings.
“If you look closely at the eyes, you can see the shiny iris,” he said. “That's the sub-stage we call golden eyes.”
That was the second part of a two part series on hatcheries. You can listen to the first part, which explores a potential moratorium for hatcheries across the state, online at KMXT.org.
