Salmon Finally Appear to Be Back in the Pink : Ecology: The worst declines have been turned around, thanks to U.S. and Candian efforts.

“And the rivers ran red with salmon. . . .” It is one of the most haunting images of the Old West, a staple of diaries, journals and newspaper accounts of early white explorers and settlers, recited like a mantra by Native American tribal elders to this day.

Each year, as surely as summer followed spring, the succulent fish returned to their streams of origin in seemingly boundless numbers to propagate and die.

From San Francisco Bay to Puget Sound, that vision of plenty faded over the years.

Salmon stocks were decimated by dams, slashed by logging, shriveled by poisonous runoff from cities and farms, mills and mines. Fish stacked like cordwood by Indians along the Columbia River at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition are now listed as endangered species.

But along the 850-mile Fraser River in western Canada, that flow of history was reversed. Officials hope the upward trend continues, but last season has them worried.

In half a century of cooperation through the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission, established in 1937 and replaced by the Pacific Salmon Commission under a new treaty in 1985, Canada and the United States each spent more than $23 million to build fish passages, remove dams, protect stream beds, dig spawning channels and regulate fishing to ensure adequate escapements.

(Salmon watchers refer to the number of fish that manage to make it back upriver to the spawning grounds as the escapement. Many who set out on the return from the ocean never make it.)

Sockeye salmon returns now exceed the estimated annual average for the 20 years before rock-dumping and slides from railroad construction devastated most of the runs in 1913.

“It was very effective,” said John F. Roos, a former staff director for the original salmon commission. “The runs have continued to increase, based on what we did in all those years.”

Until last season. Overall, 44% fewer fish than expected showed up last summer and fall.

Worse declines have been turned around, but many experts fear the loss of rivers running red with salmon once again.

To Roos, vice president of Pacific Seafood Processors Assn. in Seattle, the runs remain strong, but the treaty intended to preserve them is increasingly fragile.

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Other salmon--chinook, coho, pink, chum and steelhead--swim the Fraser, but it is best known for sockeye.

Lakes dotting the 142,000-square-mile drainage area, more than twice the size of Washington state, nurture inch-long fry for a year before they head to sea as sardine-size smolts.

Four to 11 pounds at maturity, sockeye are rarely caught by recreational anglers, who prefer the larger chinook and coho, but they are prized by fish processors for their deep red, flavorful flesh.

Returning to spawn and complete the cycle at age 4, sockeye turn from shiny silver to brilliant crimson.

The name comes from “sau-kai,” a Salish Indian word variously translated as “chief” or “fish of fishes.”

For coastal Indian nations and inland bands, in gold rush boom towns and timber camps, at trading posts and railheads, salmon was a mainstay of existence well into the 20th Century.

Fraser tributaries ran red together. At the turn of the century, until about 1913, the average total run--escapement plus harvest--exceeded 12 million.

Fraser sockeye returns from 1990-1993 averaged 16.3 million, or about a third more than in the pre-1913 years.

On the Adams, the British Columbia Parks Branch and Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans have sponsored a “Salute to the Sockeye” festival during the years of its dominant runs since 1958.

“I sort of hesitate to use the word, but it’s almost like a religious experience,” said Duncan Myers, former manager of tourism in Salmon Arm.

The Adams, a 7 1/2-mile stream that drains Adams Lake into Shuswap Lake near the Trans-Canada Highway between Chase and Salmon Arm, accounts for as much as 90% of Fraser sockeye production in some years, with returns as large as 15.8 million fish.

But some years are not so good--including last year. More than 3 million offspring from a record escapement in 1990 were expected for the festival last Oct. 8-30. Instead, there may have been as few as 621,000.

Trouble began early.

In January, 1994, the commission predicted an escapement of 408,000 sockeye in the early Stuart River run. By mid-July the estimate had been halved. An echo-sounding device at Mission, about 40 miles east of Vancouver, later indicated about 183,000 were heading upriver. At the spawning grounds northwest of Prince George, the count was 68,000.

Nearly a million of the next 2.3 million fish counted at Mission also vanished short of their destinations.

Fraser sockeye returns were estimated at 16.5 million fish, 25% fewer than in 1990. The commission had predicted 29.6 million on Jan. 26, 1993, and 19 million a year later.

The loss was barely a blip on world markets, dominated by Alaska and increasingly influenced by fish farming, but it sent shock waves through British Columbia. Salmon, principally Fraser sockeye, accounted for about $337 million of the province’s $780 million wholesale seafood production in 1993.

Indians along the river were hard hit. Debate arose over competing theories to explain the decline.

Dave Zirnhelt, provincial minister of agriculture, fisheries and food, called the situation a crisis. “I’m looking for any signs that there’s been more to this than meets the eye,” he said.

At his urging, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Brian Tobin formed an advisory panel of scientists, government officials and fishing industry representatives called the Pacific Resource Conservation Council.

Experts point out that in the past salmon runs have run red again after even bigger dips.

“There is certainly and categorically not a state of conservation concern,” said Wayne Saito, a fish biologist assigned to the Fraser River Action Plan.

“Relatively speaking, it’s still a healthy group of stocks. I feel they will rebound very quickly in 1998.”

Scientists now blame the early and midsummer escapement losses on warm, dry weather that boosted stream flows from mountain snowmelt and produced record high river temperatures.

Warm water confused the fish, causing many to reverse course. By the time they turned around again, they were doomed. The combination of high water and high temperatures depleted their reserves faster and made them more susceptible to disease.

Theories of massive poaching by Indians along the river or by commercial seiners were widely aired, then dismissed.

“Unless they were all in one conspiracy of silence, it just does not seem possible,” said Ian Todd, executive secretary of the salmon commission.

Typically, a female sockeye on the Adams deposits more than 4,000 eggs, of which 800 hatch into fry, 200 head to sea as smolts, 10 return as adults and two are harvested. Two return to spawn.

Bigger escapements don’t always produce bigger returns.

Sometimes nature compensates for lower numbers of spawners with higher survival rates for their offspring. Huge spawning runs may be followed by higher mortality among fry, smolts and juvenile salmon.

“These are temporary setbacks,” said Roos, a fish biologist who spent 26 years at the old salmon commission. “The basis for continued good production from the Fraser River is still there.”

His concern is more about the basis for good management.

The slump in the Adams and other late-run escapements was “largely a man-made event,” Saito conceded. “We made a mistake. We didn’t get enough fish to the spawning grounds.”

Bud Graham, the department’s West Coast fisheries manager, later admitted that, “in hindsight, we probably wouldn’t have allowed that opening.”

That’s what worries Roos.

Under the old treaty, Canada and the United States split catches and restoration costs 50-50. The commission handled stream-bed rehabilitation, spawning counts and fishing seasons to keep the rivers running red.

The current treaty was designed to resolve disputes over fisheries from Alaska to Oregon. Key principles were that each nation’s catch should be roughly proportionate to its production of salmon and that each would be responsible for its own habitat and fishing seasons.

The Canadians maintain that a disproportionate number of fish spawned in their country wind up in U.S. nets. In 1992 and 1994 the two nations failed to agree on salmon allocations.

Caught in the cross-fire, Todd insists that the treaty is sound, but admits the dispute “did make it difficult to carry out the commission’s management activities.”