Special Presentation

Fate of the Fisheries in Olympic National Park

Presentation by Dick Goin
OPA Board meeting, November 15, 2000

Author Dick Goin has spent 60 years as a conservation fisherman, keeping tabs on the status of the fisheries in Olympic National Park and on the peninsula. He serves on the Technical Advisory Group of the Governor's Salmon Review Program, and is chairman of Olympic Park Associates' fisheries committee. This paper is based on an oral report by Goin to the OPA Board of Directors at their November 2000 meeting.

Three Key Points to Remember

1. The fisheries of Olympic National Park (ONP) are an integral part of the park.

A large volume of recent literature documents the importance of the fisheries to the health of the park ecosystem. Studies have recorded data on the nutrient return to rivers, predator scavenger relationships, and fertilization of riparian zones, including benefits to plant life as well as to large ungulates, aquatic mammals, and so on. Fertilization by fish carcasses has a huge impact. This is now gospel.

2. Formerly enormous fisheries are dwindling; some stocks are already extinct.

Volunteers harvesting chinook eggs in spawning area on lower Elwha River, circa 1988.

The fisheries are disappearing. Once enormous, their numbers will continue to fall. Some stocks are already extinct. This is happening with the full knowledge of ONP administration; in many cases even with a little help, overt and deliberate.

As recently as 1963, there were 400,000 pinks entering the Dungeness. I have records of 1,000,000 sockeye in the Quinault, and 55,000 in the Queets. The Ozette River from 1952 to 1954 produced an average of 22,000 sockeye caught. The estimates of the Elwha in the past are absolutely staggering.

We are losing all species fast. Some species are in worse shape than others.

Chinook. Chinook numbers are falling very rapidly. The stocks in Olympic National Park that are of particular concern are the spring and summer components of the run. Spring/summer Chinook are at all-time lows in their streams. They are found in the park in the Sol Duc, Bogachiel, Calawha, Hoh, Queets, Quinault, and Gray Wolf.

Coho. There are up-river Coho that go well into the park. There are also late Coho that spawn lower in the streams. Coho in most of the upper streams are in very poor shape.

Steelhead. Steelhead enter the large rivers on the Olympic Peninsula 12 months of the year. There are two runs: summer and winter. These runs differ both physically and in their habits. In some areas they go way inland.

Winter steelhead in the Hoh are collapsing rapidly. Eight years the game department reported that they had not documented one redd [nest] in the entire North Quinault.

Beardsley. The famous Beardsley trout of Lake Crescent is in terrible shape.

Bull trout are still being evaluated. Some good research on bull trout has been done on the South Hoh. Outside of that, not much work at all. There is a tribal problem because the tribe does not want bull trout. They get in the way of salmon harvest.

The Fate of the Elwha. Saddest of all is the Elwha. Here we stand on the eve of restoration of a river that was the kingpin river, and could be once again. And yet we have lost so much. It is such a specialized river and so demanding. Stocks lost are gone forever.

The summer Coho has been gone these 35 years. The native summer steelhead is probably gone. The sea-run bull trout is very rare. The pink has been judged extinct, but now and again we have some strays. We have a few sockeye each year. Remnants? Strays? Who knows? Spring Chinook are gone on the Elwha. I saw a few in the forties. The tribes netted for four years and could not confirm that any are left.

The spring Chinook was the grandest fish of them all. When we get rid of the dam, they will not be there. We have lost a fish that was never documented. The Elwha River had a sea run form of a rainbow-cutthroat hybrid, a natural hybrid, running twelve to fourteen pounds. I am not sure that the resident form is still there. I have not seen one of the anadromous forms of this hybrid for over 30 years.

It is unlikely that we will ever find anything to replace the lost Elwha stock, because...

3. Wild / native fishery stocks are not replaceable.

This is a crucial point that few people grasp. The genetic characteristics of a wild stock of salmon are uniquely adapted to a specific river. These unique, successful collections of genes are not replaceable. Once they are gone they will never be seen again.

Diversity is the key to survival of any species. Through the centuries salmon stocks have become diverse in many ways in order to survive. Nature seeks to use every portion of a river. A stock is adapted to spawn in a very specific portion of a specific stream. If they all sought to spawn in the same place, that would be the end of that!

However, specialization limits the survivability of a particular stock. Because each stock has adapted very specifically, they have absolutely no option of going elsewhere. Once we lose the stock, we lose the diversity.

For example, if we were to discover that in a particular watershed the elk were gone, we could bring a Roosevelt elk over from the Calawha, Sol Duc, or Hoh watersheds. That cannot be done with a wild salmon stock. The genetics of a wild stock of salmon cannot be replaced.

Can a new stock evolve to replace one that is lost? If a ruined stream were restored, how do we know that some new strain of salmon would not evolve?

It takes thousands of years for the evolutionary process to produce new stock. When the rivers were reviving during the vast thousands of years after the ice sheet, a period of rebuilding came along with the emerging of old-growth forest. The fisheries evolved while there were few people bothering them. But mankind will not leave the river alone for thousands of years. In the past salmon repatriated from other streams. This cannot happen either because other streams do not have enough salmon to have the large amount of strays necessary for repatriation.

Our Best Chance:
The Four H's - Harvest, Habitat, Hydro, and Hatchery

The reasons the stocks are disappearing are mostly from causes outside the park. The Governor's Salmon Program [with which Goin is involved] has listed the causes of salmon decline as the Four H's: harvest, habitat, hydro, and hatchery.

Marie Goin with 47 pound chinook near the mouth of the Elwha River, circa 1980. Photo by Dick Goin.

We must try to save the best stock in the best rivers. Even the experts on the Technical Advisory Group of the Governor's Salmon Program do not believe we can do more than that.

And Olympic National Park has the best stock and the best rivers.

This is why it is so disappointing to see Olympic National Park doing nothing.

Habitat. Streams have been degraded more in the last decade than in the previous five decades, probably because of warmer winters and more rain falling on snow, leading to much higher flows, even inside the park. The result is truncating of the meanders. Rivers are straightening and the holes are disappearing. So the refuges are gone. A lot of the riparian zone is gone.

Outside the park where there has been logging, the habitat destruction of course is much greater. The worst places are the Hoh, Bogachiel, and the Queets.

There is also man-caused degradation in several streams in the park, including the lower Dickey, upper Sol Duc, upper and lower Hoh, Quillayute, Queets, and all the small streams going through the coastal strip.

Finley Creek is lost. ONP actually moved Finley Creek years ago. It previously was joined with the next stream downstream. Each year they put a Caterpillar in the river, messing up 1700 feet while making a long ditch out of it. The one side they push the gravel up on is a Wilderness boundary. Finley Creek now is dry about 9 months out of the year, but it probably was not when it joined the other stream. Similar Cat work was done on Morse Creek and the Dungeness outside the park.

Harvest & Hatchery. Over-fishing is the monster. Tribal and non-tribal fishermen are taking park fish that come by while they are harvesting their own fish.

The state and the tribes have operated under the policy of maximum sustained yield. The yield has been maximum, but not sustainable. Salt water used to be open to fishing 12 months out of the year. Now it is 3 1/2 months. And 95 percent of the steelhead rivers are either closed, or they can't afford to take any wild fish. The tribes have spent a lot of money and a lot of time, and have gathered a lot of good data. But despite the data they are still adhering to the failing formula.

Hatchery fish are killing us, too. Hatchery fish can easily be harvested at 90 percent. Nobody in their right mind believes we can harvest over 50 percent of the wild fish. Fishermen are harvesting huge amounts of hatchery fish but, again, harvesting our wild fish as they go by. This is an absolute disaster in most if not in all rivers in the park. The Bogachiel, Queets, Sol Duc, Quinault, Gray Wolf all suffer from excessive amounts of harvest on weak, wild stocks.

The low reproductive capability of hatchery fish is another problem. One study on the Kalama River found zero reproduction in one generation. When hatchery fish spawn with wild fish, we are in deep trouble.

ONP Doing Nothing, and Worse:
Habitat Destruction by Rip-Rap in the Park

Doing nothing to preserve the fisheries is bad enough. But ONP is making matters worse.

Rip-rapping comes under the heading of "worse". In the park there is over a mile of rip-rap on the Hoh River alone. The park has been in the rip-rap business for some time: on the Hoh you can see a lot of rip-rap that is overgrown with vegetation. And it has cost the park a lot of money. Three years ago a neighboring landowner sued the park when the current bounced off the rip-rap and into the other side.

All rip-rap is destructive. There are many other options. When rip-rap is placed on a corner, it provides nothing for fish, and the opportunity is lost for a log jam to grow at that point, which is the number one place they naturally form.

Unlike rip-rap, a log jam slows the velocity of the current, and the hydraulics around a log jam digs holes. The first salmon I saw as a six year old was my pa gaffing a salmon in the hole under the log jam. At that time there was a fish in every one of them.

ONP Ignores National Parks' Mandate

Dick Goin, the late Glen Gallison, and other volunteers harvesting eggs. Goin holds a 65 pound chinook, circa late 1980s.

The park's mandate is preservation of its native species, and they are not doing it. ONP uses precisely the same fishery regulations as the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW), regulations based on data that are gathered and sent to the Pacific Management Council by the state DFW and the tribes. Yet the tribes' mandate as well as the state DFW's is to harvest fish and to work to maximize harvest. The park has no harvest mandate whatsoever.

ONP sets no regulations of their own for many of the streams in the park. Goodman Creek is a good example. Goodman Creek has two and one half miles in the park and no fishery data. The state DFW has very few data on the creek. But ONP acquiesces to the DFW, who have concluded that Goodman Creek has enough wild steelhead for a limit of 30 per season. (Hoh has two; Sol Duc has 10.)

On the Pacific Management Council, where the seasons and the escapement goals are set each year, Olympic National Park is without a spokesman at the meetings. They send a field biologist with no data. Clearly ONP should have a seat at that table.

ONP Fails to Give Fisheries High Priority

Down through ONP history to the present, most superintendents have given no priority to the fisheries. This lack of priority has greatly hampered the concerned public's efforts to preserve native fisheries.

Lake Crescent and the Beardsley trout are examples. For seven years I have protested the brush cutting on Lake Crescent along Highway 101. This brush is critical to the survival of the immature fish. Prior to brush cutting there were a lot of insects in that brush, and the young Beardsley used the shelf along that shoreline. But we can't get the park to stop cutting. Whatever the reason, it demonstrates the low priority of the fishery.

Nor is there any priority for enforcement. There are terrible things happening on Lake Crescent. For example, I have heard people bragging about fishing with a big deep line and taking Beardsleys this year, contrary to regulations.

Need to Change Priorities of ONP

Top Priority for Fisheries: Data and Enforcement

If we hope to preserve our remaining native fish stocks, we need to persuade ONP to adopt a commitment to raise the priority of native fisheries. The fishery must be recognized as equal in importance to any other resource in the park.

The first order of business should be fishery data gathering. The second should be enforcement.

We have a lot to lose and we can't replace it.