Hoh Tribe Hatchery Manager Support

Project funding primarily covered salary and benefits for the Hoh Tribe’s Hatchery Manager, who supervised the operation, maintenance and upgrades of the Chalaat Creek Hatchery, located on the Hoh Reservation. Duties included supervision of hatchery staff, collection of hatchery-origin winter steelhead broodstock, incubation of fertilized eggs and care of juveniles from emergent fry to smolt stage. The hatchery manager also provided project management for facility improvements, recent upgrades include the installation of an Oxytower water recycling system, four fiberglass round tanks and two auxiliary pump systems, in an effort to address increasingly critical summer low flow conditions in Chalaat Creek, the hatchery’s water source. Facility improvements were supported under different funding sources. i.e. were not the focus of this particular project. This project contributed to release of two release groups of steelhead in calendar years 2015 and 2016.

With increased protection of dwindling stocks of native steelhead and salmon returning to the Hoh, harvest opportunities for Hoh Tribal fishermen have been drastically reduced causing severe local economic impact. The annual, early-December return of hatchery-origin winter steelhead, produced at the Chalaat Creek facility, provides a much needed economic boost to the on-reservation tribal fishery. Each year he has been in charge, the current Hatchery Manager has made great strides in solving water supply issues and insuring an annual release of healthy, young steelhead into the Hoh River.