Design

The First Basin-Wide Supplementation Experiment

The Hood Canal Steelhead Project is a 16-year study (2007-2022) that:

• Employs replication and controls over the entire Hood Canal region to answer critical questions about the benefits and risks of conservation hatchery programs and about the life-history of steelhead;
• Simultaneously attempts to recover three Hood Canal steelhead populations to a point where they are self-sustaining; and
• Provides guidance to federal and state fisheries managers as they design and implement new steelhead hatchery, management, and recovery policies.

The project implements the Before-After-Control-Impact experimental design to determine whether innovative supplementation techniques can increase abundance and, subsequently, the productivity of three Hood Canal wild steelhead populations while maintaining their respective demographic, life-history, and genetic characteristics. Both supplemented and control rivers are monitored for baseline information for four years before hatchery-reared adults spawn in the supplemented rivers. Supplementation occurs for eight years, and then the rivers are monitored for an additional four years post-supplementation to assess long-term outcomes.

Research for the Hood Canal Steelhead Project occurs on eight rivers that feed into Hood Canal: three supplementation rivers (Duckabush, Dewatto, South Fork Skokomish), four control rivers (Little Quilcene, Tahuya, Big Beef Creek, and Dosewallips), and the Hamma Hamma River that was previously supplemented and is now being monitored. 

Innovative Recovery Techniques

The Hood Canal Steelhead Project applies propagation techniques that minimize human and hatchery influence. These techniques were pioneered by Long Live the Kings and NOAA Fisheries to supplement the Hamma Hamma River steelhead population from 1998-2008 (the Hamma Hamma Winter Steelhead Project).

In traditional steelhead programs, adults are collected and spawned artificially and then their progeny are raised quickly so that they can be released as one-year old smolts. Hood Canal Steelhead Project staff wait to collect eggs from adults until after they spawn in the wild, allowing for natural selection. Eyed eggs are collected from naturally formed steelhead redds (nests). After the eggs hatch, the juvenile steelhead are reared in similar conditions to and at the same growth rate as what they would experience in the wild, resulting in releases of predominantly two-year-old smolts. Some steelhead are also reared and released as four- and five-year-old adults to provide immediate contribution to the naturally spawning populations.

A Collaborative Effort

Participants from all partnering organizations, as well as community volunteers, take part in surveys, egg collection, monitoring, and other field activities. Fish rearing activities for the Dewatto and Duckabush rivers occur at LLTK's Lilliwaup Hatchery (with early rearing at the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Quilcene National Fish Hatchery). Rearing for the Skokomish River occurs at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's McKernan Hatchery.