After 50 years, the state will no longer use wooden fish wheels to count salmon on the Chilkat River north of Haines.
That leaves the Taku River, south of Juneau, as the only Southeast river where the Alaska Department of Fish and Game will operate fish wheels to scoop up salmon for research.
The wheels had operated June through October in the Chilkat River about nine miles from downtown Haines since the 1970s.
“It is sad — I’ve been comparing it to owning a wooden boat — it’s such a romantic wonderful thing,” said the state’s Haines fish research biologist Shelby Flemming. “But owning one and maintaining it is another story.”
Regional supervisor Lowell Fair said that while not having the fish wheel data will be a break in the data set, the department’s ability to accurately estimate runs won’t be affected.
“We just weren’t getting a lot of useful information out of it,” said Fair, “With limited budgets we’re always looking to do cost-benefit analysis.”
Lowell said he consulted with Haines and regional staff before making the decision to decommission the wheels. The department used fish wheels intermittently in the Chilkat since 1974, and annually since 1994.
Flemming said fish wheels were hard to maintain in the debris- and fish-filled river. She said repairs of the wheels — anything from mending nets that scooped up fish with the current to replacing axles — happened almost daily, which cost staff time and money.
Besides, the fish wheels offered only limited research value, since they hugged the river bank and only collected a small fraction of the fishing passing up the river, unlike weirs, which cross the entire river.
Fish and Game biologists used the wheel to help estimate how many of the fish lower down on the river make it to natal streams using a mark-and-recapture technique in which smolt have coded wires inserted in their noses.
“Rather than running wheels for five weeks, we can go up to spawning grounds (at the Chilkat Lake weir) to do assessments for just one week,” said Fair.
Flemming called the fish wheels’ research role “redundant” since most of the data could be collected at Chilkat Lake weir higher up the river. Fair acknowledged that the estimate for chinook salmon returns would lose some of its precision, but said the amount was negligible.
“It won’t affect our estimate of how many chinook are in the river, just our uncertainty about that estimate,” he said.
The wheels were dismantled last fall and the pieces are sitting on the Fish and Game lot in Haines. Fair said he was looking to see if the wheels could be of any use on the Taku River. If not, he will ask other regional offices if they want the equipment.
Reader Comments(0)