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Roger Peters, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Well, there are a number of aging dams throughout the country that eventually will need to be removed because they are going to fail or other cases where maybe it makes sense to remove them to restore ecosystems including salmon populations.
Roger Peters, U.S. Fish and Wildlife However, these projects are relatively expensive and so it’s really important to that we understand whether or not that expense is worth it in order to recover these natural ecosystems.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife I’m working here on the Elwha weir project, which is the first time that this project has ever been done, putting a floating weir across the Elwha River in order to determine what the salmonid response is to the dam removal.
Dan Spenser, U.S. Fish and Wildlife A fish weir is essentially a fence that spans across a stream and blocks fish from migrating up river with the exception of a passage zone that leads to a trap box.
Dan Spenser, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Fish weirs have been used thousands of years as a harvesting tool.
Dan Spenser, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Modern biologists have taken that concept, use of modern tools, to use it for capturing fish and enumerating fish populations as opposed to harvesting fish.
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Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife We’ve trapped Chinook, Coho, chum, silvers, pinks, sockeyes, steelhead, cutthroat and bull trout.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife Three of those fish are either threatened or endangered, that would be the bull trout, the Chinook salmon that are out of the Elwha River as well as the steelhead.
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Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife There are 52 three-foot panels, so the weir is about 160 feet across. They hang on a rail that is made up of 16 ten-foot sections.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife They can be fished in either the upstream or downstream or left bank or right bank position.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife So depending on what the flows do, what the fish do, the traps can be moved around the weir, but basically the project goes from bank to bank and it’s about 200 feet.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife It is the largest weir on the West Coast outside of Alaska.
Dan Spenser, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Adult salmon have an incredible strong drive to go up river to spawn. And as they migrate up river, they naturally encounter all kinds of barriers, be it a beaver dam, or in this case, a salmon weir.
Dan Spenser, U.S. Fish and Wildlife And what that fish will do is it will approach the weir and then move back and forth until it can find a gap within the weir, key in on current and that will lead that fish to the trap box where we can sample for biological data.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife It takes the natural desire of the fish to move upstream to spawn and channels it over in a way that we can collect data.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife Conversely, when the fish come up to the dams or perhaps come down after spawning the way steelhead can do, we have downstream traps as well that allows us not only to collect data from fish that perhaps got missed, but also it allows us to have a population estimate that serves as our baseline for this monitoring study.
Technician (Kim Roberston) We have collected data off of 400 salmon so far.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife Once the fish are captured in the trap, we hold them there just long enough to capture some biological data before we release them on their way. We look at what species a particular fish may be. We look at its length.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife We determine if it’s male or female. We also take scale samples to determine the age of the fish, how long they have been in fresh water, how long they have been in salt water, what’s the age it’s spawning.
Kent Mayer, WA Dept. Fish and Wildlife We also take genetic samples; we take a small clip using a paper punch. It goes into a vial and we hold that to determine how these fish are related to other runs in the Olympic Peninsula.
Jeff Duda, US Geological Survey The Elwha Weir Project is the result of a collaborative effort among the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the USGS, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Park Service, NOAA and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. How about that.
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