FY 2016 Upper Skagit Tribal Adult Chinook Population Monitoring

The project was started in July 2017 and was completed in June 2018. This support enabled Tribal staff to conduct; one year of spawning ground surveys for Chinook, almost two full return years of test fisheries to monitor Chinook and Steelhead by-catch during the overlap of chinook and sockeye management periods in the terminal areas of the Skagit, as well as monitor tribal commercial fisheries that include directed or by-catch of Chinook and steelhead. This information is vital for the management and recovery efforts for the Skagit 6 independent Chinook stocks. The data collected with this support enables the ability to track recovery implementation assumptions and agreements, and is critical to ensuring Tribal Treaty Rights are protected within the conservation guidelines of the Endanger Species Act. In addition to the three basic monitoring frameworks supported with this grant, the Tribe also been collected spatially explicit Chinook DNA collections in the terminal fisheries above the 20% needed for fishery monitoring. The management periods for the Skagit aggregate Management Units has not been updated in almost 40 years, and we are hoping the supplemental DNA and CWT may prove effective in checking on the current accuracy of management periods in the Skagit. The data collected under this agreement will be used and submitted in the post season reports, and the ongoing work to implement a new RMP for Puget Sound Chinook

Monitoring actions arise from need to evaluate the success of restoration, protection, hatchery and harvest actions in reaching recovery goals. The tribes’ programmatic monitoring program focuses on biological monitoring of returning adults at the basin scale. Three separate components are utilized to address the population viability assessment; test fisheries in the lower river, catch monitoring and sampling of all terminal fisheries, and spawning ground surveys. Chapter 16 Monitoring Actions in the Skagit Recovery Plan identifies these components and how data from these efforts are used for testing conditions and recovery assumptions. The data collected in these efforts are shared with basin co-managers to monitor fundamental population metrics for example but not limited to; the development of six independent population escapement estimates, timing and distribution of run, age composition data, hatchery and wild and CWT group composition of the run, population fitness, percent of juvenile life history strategy in adults, spawner recruit analysis, encounter rates, catch and harvest distribution between fisheries, and total exploitation rates. Age and CWT information is needed annually to monitor fishery management objectives, without these funds this critical information would lag years behind the need to shape international, national, and terminal fisheries on annual return year basis.