2 017 r e s e a r c h r e s u l t s During the 2017 study, 7,129 salmonids were successfully captured and released, demonstrating that fish traps can capture commercially viable quantities of fish. Post-release survival ranged from an impressive 94.4% for steelhead trout to 99.5% for Chinook salmon. These estimates of post-release survival represent significant and dramatic improvement over the performance of conventional gears.
sur vi val es t imat es gear
Chinook
Steelhead
gill net
52%
55.5%
beach seine
75%
92%
purse seine
78%
98%
tangle net
79.1%
76.4%
fish trap
99.5%
94.4%
When regulated and operated with a conservation-minded approach, use of modified fish traps and other stock-selective harvest gears can help reduce bycatch and hatchery impacts in mixed stock commercial salmon fisheries. Fishing more sustainably, fishermen may see increased fishing opportunity and higher prices through sustainable market certification. This would benefit working waterfront communities. Reducing bycatch and hatchery impacts to wild fishes may enable wild salmon recovery, providing ecosystem-wide benefit to Orca whales and other threatened species of the region.
a way forward Learn more by visiting wildfishconservancy.org or by calling the Wild Fish Conservancy office at 425.788.1167 This project received under award NA17NMF4720255 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service, in cooperation with the Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program (BREP). The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations from this document are those of Wild Fish Conservancy and do not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA Fisheries.
COMMERCIAL FISH TRAPS a way forward for fish and fishermen
the challenge
what is a fish trap?
Use of conventional commercial fishing gears in Pacific Northwest salmon fisheries can result in bycatch mortality of threatened and endangered wild salmon and steelhead. This impedes salmonid recovery and constrains commercial fishing opportunity.
A fish trap, or “pound net”, is a historical commercial fishing gear that was once widely utilized by tribes, first nations, and North American settlers from the Columbia River to Alaska to harvest abundant salmon runs. Hundreds of fish traps lined the shores of the Columbia Estuary, Puget Sound, British Columbia, and Alaska from the 1880s through the early 20th Century. The gear was recognized at the time as the most effective commercial fishing technique developed for the harvest of salmon.
a solution From 2016 through 2017, Wild Fish Conservancy conducted a research project in the Lower Columbia River to investigate the feasibility of an alternative fishing gear—specifically, an experimental fish trap—in selectively targeting robust hatchery-origin salmon stocks while reducing bycatch mortality of threatened wild salmon and steelhead. A paired mark-recapture study design was employed to estimate post-release survival of bycatch. Results were compared to that of previously tested commercial gears.
how does it work? Consisting of a series of pilings, stakes, or anchors and attached nets that extend from the high-water mark toward the river or estuary bottom, traps passively funnel fish from the shoreline “lead”— positioned perpendicular to shore—to a maze of walls and compartments that salmon cannot escape. Fish that enter the trap are captured from neither tangling of teeth nor the gills, reducing physical injury arising from conventional gears.
once a problem, now a sus t ainable t ool
Fish traps were banned in the 1930-40s in Washington and Oregon, and shortly after in Alaska. Prior to the ban, traps were the leading means for large salmon canning corporations to efficiently capture millions of returning adult salmon with minimal labor. Traps were viewed with contempt by many fishermen who felt that regional fisheries were being decimated and monopolized by salmon canning corporations. Political pressure mounted in the early 20th century, resulting in legislation outlawing fish traps and other fixed-gears. Gillnetting, seining, and trolling became the primary legal methods of capturing salmon across the West Coast. In the last 80 years, government subsidies to fisheries (in the form of hatchery production) and bycatch mortality from use of non-selective conventional gears in mixed-stock fisheries has resulted in the decline of wild salmon and the loss of long-term fishing opportunity.