Why are so few sockeye returning to the Ballard Locks?

Two years ago, millions of ocean-bound juvenile sockeye passed the locks in Ballard. The numbers were promising -- delighting both anglers and biologists.

This week, when the fish should be returning in force, observers were distressed. Tourists frequently outnumbered salmon passing through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks.


		Niki Desautels / P-I
	Fish biologists from the state and Muckleshoot Tribe measure and take samples from a sockeye salmon to determine the age and origin of the fish going through the Ballard Locks.

"We should be getting 10,000, 20,000 fish a day, and we're getting 1,000 to 2,000," said Mike Mahovlich, a fish biologist with the Muckleshoot Tribe. "We've lost 90 percent of our fish in the marine area."

The situation is so dire the tribe is forgoing its usual harvest of about a thousand sockeye for ceremonial events and needy tribal members.

"That tells you there's something really wrong with the run," Mahovlich said. "That's a huge sacrifice for the tribe to do that."

The tribe and state officials had predicted nearly 400,000 sockeye would return to the locks -- and ultimately find their way back to rivers and streams to spawn.

As of Wednesday -- a day shy of the traditional halfway point for the returns -- fewer than 30,000 had made it. Today, officials will release their revised return predictions.

It's clear that something went terribly wrong for the fish in the two years they were eating and growing in the Pacific Ocean. What's murky is exactly what that was.

The prime suspect is an influx of warm water flowing north to Canada and Alaska, bringing with it hungry tuna and mackerel that may have gobbled up the salmon. Those conditions could be related to climate patterns, such as shorter-term El Niño warming events or the longer-lasting Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Other local sockeye stocks and Canada's Fraser River are showing poor returns, said Jim Ames, a salmon manager for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. "Everything before they went to the ocean was very positive. This is a fundamental breakdown in marine survival."

Tribal and state scientists are catching a fraction of the returning sockeye for a variety of tests, some of which could help unravel the mystery.

The fish, which have silver bellies and greenish-gray mottled backs, are caught coming through the locks. The scientists measure them, take a hole punch of fin out of their tail for DNA testing and save a couple of scales.

They also remove their ear bones, or otoliths, which grow in rings like a tree and can be used to determine their age and whether they came from a hatchery on the Cedar River.

The research project is new this year and will become part of the annual monitoring program. The data can help answer a variety of questions, including whether naturally spawning and hatchery fish return at the same time.

Sockeye aren't native to the Cedar and were introduced there in 1935. Environmentalists have challenged plans to rebuild and expand the existing hatchery, which releases about 17 million sockeye a year. They say that the hatchery fish compete with native chinook, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The city of Seattle is working on a revised plan for the hatchery after the environmentalists' challenge.

"There's no relationship between the hatchery and recovering a run depressed for other reasons," said Toby Thaler, an attorney fighting the new facility. "Hatcheries are not part of the solution. They're part of the problem."

Supporters of the hatchery say those fish don't pose a threat to the chinook and can provide a needed boost to the sockeye. Their numbers can fluctuate widely between years -- in 1995, only 37,000 fish returned, but the following year, more than 500,000 came back.

The hatchery "is a buffer in the bad years," Ames said. "When you've got a good production of wild fish ... there's plenty of fish coming back. But where the hatchery is most valuable is when you have a situation like this."