Hatchery Salmon Clubbing to Resume
September 26, 2001, 02:00 PM
By AP Staff
from KGW News -
http://www.kgw.com/kgwnews/oregonwash_story.html?StoryID=27599
Oregon hatchery workers will use clubs and electricity to
euthanize thousands of surplus salmon this fall to avert a deluge of
hatchery fish that would weaken the dwindling gene pool of wild coho.
Earlier this year, state officials said they'd use overdoses of
carbon dioxide to kill off extra hatchery fish, but changed their
minds after discovering the gas didn't kill fish quickly.
"Clubbing is by far the most effective and most humane method
of killing fish," said Steve Williams of the Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife's fish division.
Home videos of state hatchery workers clubbing salmon in 1999 at the
Fall Creek Hatchery near Alsea spawned lawsuits and criticism that
still reverberated in the state capitol this spring.
Gov. John Kitzhaber vetoed a bill which would have placed a
moratorium on destroying hatchery salmon, and a state judge upheld
the department's right to club fish.
"We've been clubbing fish at hatcheries forever," said
Steve Sanders, a lawyer in the Oregon attorney general's office who
works on fish issues for the government. "What do they think,
that we can just let the (hatchery-bred) fish swim free in the wild?
No way."
Hoping to avoid a public relations nightmare this fall, the fish and
wildlife department will donate more than 100,000 hatchery coho to
food banks, sell some lesser-quality salmon for pet food and spread
other carcasses in spawning streams to decay naturally and fertilize
the organic food chain.
Williams said Monday that hatchery workers will use carbon dioxide
to temporarily immobilize the fish, then will kill them with sharp
blows to the head with clubs.
Bonneville, the state's largest hatchery, is using electrocution to
kill hatchery fish.
Oregon also is building two guillotines to remove the heads of many
dead hatchery salmon used for stream fertilization.
Taking the fish's heads off is necessary to differentiate hatchery
carcasses from those of wild fish, which are routinely counted by
researchers during individual stream surveys.
Oregon and Washington won't know coho totals for a few more months,
but the run into the lower Columbia alone is predicted to be more
than a million fish before angling and commercial gill-netting.
Only a small percentage of hatchery salmon and steelhead, from a few
hundred at smaller hatcheries to a few thousand of each species at
Bonneville, are needed to generate new generations of fingerlings.
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