Device grabs more than 200,000 fish for their downstream journey

BAKER LAKE — A high-tech barge designed to swallow up as many young sockeye salmon as possible for delivery downstream is yielding some impressive numbers in its first year of operation, according to Puget Sound Energy.

The new floating surface collector, which sits on Baker Lake about 100 feet from Upper Baker Dam, so far has captured about 235,000 juvenile sockeye, called smolt, during this year’s downstream migration. The out-migration this year is on pace to be the highest on record since 1990, when the sockeye population began to rebound from the brink of extinction.

“We’re thrilled by the results so far,” said PSE biologist Cary Feldmann in a written statement. Feldmann helped design the fish collector.

“If the current trend in collection holds, we should surpass the existing record of 289,000 fish,” set in 2006, Feldmann added.

The $50 million collector, affectionately referred to by PSE employees as the “gulper,” has been painstakingly engineered to catch a significantly higher proportion of smolt than the first-generation gulper, which had been in operation since 1959.

The original gulper captured about 60 percent of the smolt in Baker Lake, PSE estimates. The utility is hoping for better than 90 percent capture with the latest model.

Early results from a test of the new gulper’s efficiency, using marked fish, found that at least 72 percent had been captured so far, Feldmann said. That number will improve as additional marked fish are caught.

The bulk of the downstream run of juvenile sockeye happens from May 3 to June 3, Feldmann said, although some stragglers will find their way into the collector through June and even later into the summer.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which regulates the salmon fishing seasons in partnership with tribes, expressed cautious optimism of the fish gulper’s early results.

“Preliminary results are very encouraging, but it’s too early in the season to have any conclusive comments on how (the collector) is fishing,” said Rich Johnson of the Fish and Wildlife Department’s La Conner office.

The Swinomish Tribe, one of several local tribes that value salmon both culturally and economically, also is encouraged by the early numbers.

The Swinomish Tribe was one of several parties that crafted the settlement agreement PSE submitted with its application for a new federal license for the Baker River Hydroelectric Project. That license is still pending but should be issued later this year, according to PSE officials.

“The tribes have been looking forward to new fish passage facilities at Baker Lake for more than a decade and spent a lot of effort over the past seven years working on the design with PSE. It is gratifying to see the collector in place and catching fish,” Swinomish attorney Marty Loesch said in an e-mail.

“The system will require further adaptation in the off season, but for now it appears to be collecting fish in large numbers without injury,” Loesch added.

After the fish are collected, they are loaded onto tanker trucks on top of the dam for the half-hour ride to a spot below the Lower Baker Dam, where they are released.

From there, the smolt make their way to the ocean. Feldmann estimates that 4 percent to 8 percent of the sockeye that go out to sea return to spawn.

The sockeye have fared relatively well since their numbers bottomed out in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1978, Feldmann said, fisheries experts were predicting the disappearance of the species within three generations. Two generations later, in 1985, only 99 adult sockeye returned to Baker to spawn.

In 1987, the first floating collector captured only 77 sockeye. Others made it downstream through the dam’s turbines. Roughly half of the fish that enter the turbines survive, Feldmann said.

Sockeye numbers increased dramatically in the late 1980s after PSE installed a shore-to-shore, surface-to-bottom net that kept the young salmon away from the dam’s turbines and steered them to the first gulper, according to the PSE statement. Six of the 10 largest runs since the Lower Baker Dam was built in 1926 have occurred after the improved net was put in place, according to PSE.

The most adult sockeye to reach the Baker in the 82-year history of power production on the river happened in 2003, when 20,225 sockeye returned.

State officials are predicting a return of more than 25,000 this year, but Feldmann said he’s less optimistic. His projection is for 10,000 to 16,000 sockeye to return to the Baker this year.

The sockeye are the first salmon to return to the Baker. They start to arrive in the middle of June, and the run peaks in the second week of July.

PSE will begin operating a new sockeye hatchery as early as next year, and it will have the potential to triple the number of freshly hatched salmon, or fry, in the lake. Scientists are confident Baker Lake can handle the increased population.

“The data suggest there are more groceries out there in the lake than there are fish to use them,” Feldmann said.

PSE officials believe the gulper has the potential to attract upwards of 1 million smolt. Given the 4-to-8-percent return rate, it’s the utility’s ultimate goal to have 50,000 or 60,000 sockeye returning to spawn. Many of those extra fish would be available to tribal and state-regulated anglers, Feldmann said.

Taking an even broader — and bleaker — perspective, John de Yonge, the Skagit River representative for the Steelhead Committee of the Federation of Fly Fishers, reminded people in a recent column in the Skagit Valley Herald that 979,000 sockeye were caught in 1909 — a number that dwarfs the several thousand that have been returning in recent years.

“Even if this was some miracle and they all came back, it would be a good result of course, but compared to historical results, it would be a small return,” de Yonge said.