Hatcheries
Salmon hatcheries gather adult male and female salmon and breed them in controlled conditions. The fertilized eggs are incubated, hatched, and then the young salmon are released when they are ready to migrate to the ocean. Since the first Washington hatchery opened in 1883, managers hoped that the fish created there would make up for the fish lost because of overfishing and damaged habitat. But hatcheries have not been able to live up to this hope. Hatcheries remain essential though to meet Tribal fishing obligations and to provide salmon for commercial and recreational fishing, orcas, and other wildlife. Hatcheries continue to be an important tool to supplement wild populations where they are struggling and to produce salmon to reintroduce in areas where they have gone extinct.
Hatchery management has improved, but hatcheries still pose risks to wild salmon populations in many areas. Hatchery-reared fish can compete with wild salmon for food and other resources and weaken the fitness of wild salmon if they interbreed. Additionally, hatcheries constitute high-maintenance infrastructure, and funding for their operation and maintenance is often insufficient.
PRESSURE: Aging Infrastructure
Federal and state governments built most of Washington’s fish hatcheries more than fifty years ago; many are one hundred years old or older. These hatcheries are aging and often use outdated designs. Funding for maintenance and repair of the hatcheries rarely meets need, with more than $1 billion of hatchery maintenance needed in the Columbia River basin alone. Decades of not enough money and delayed maintenance have resulted in deteriorating hatcheries. This has implications for salmon, water quality, and salmon harvest management.
PRIORITIES AND PROGRESS
In 2023, the federal government pledged $500 million to repair and improve hatcheries in the Columbia River basin in support of the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative. The total includes $60 million for high-priority “Mitchell Act” hatcheries, $240 million for Tribal hatcheries, and $200 million spread through ten years for Lower Snake River Compensation Plan-funded hatcheries. This historic investment will not solve the statewide maintenance backlog, but it makes meaningful progress in the Columbia River basin.
PRESSURE: Biological Interactions
Hatchery-reared fish can compete with wild salmon for food and prime habitat and weaken the fitness of wild stocks if they interbreed. To support salmon recovery, hatchery programs are monitored, evaluated, and managed to limit risks to wild fish populations.
PRIORITIES AND PROGRESS
Wide recognition of biological interaction impacts has improved management of hatcheries statewide.
Hatcheries in Washington that operate in areas with Endangered Species Act-listed salmon and steelhead operate under strict management protocols, known as Hatchery Genetic Management Plans, intended to allow hatcheries to produce young salmon while minimizing impacts to wild salmon. Maintenance, capital improvements, and monitoring remain persistent needs across the hatchery system.
The Washington hatchery network raises more than two-hundred million salmon at more than one hundred state, federal, and Tribal facilities each year. Hatchery fish enable harvest to continue even though the number of wild fish are low. Most steelhead, coho, and Chinook produced in hatcheries are individually marked as juveniles by removing the small adipose fin (located on their backs, just forward of their tails). This allows people fishing for salmon to easily identify hatchery fish.
Hatcheries are essential to meet Tribal treaty rights. Ratified by Congress in the mid-1800s, federal treaties with Tribes in the territory that is now Washington guaranteed that, in exchange for ceding (abandoning) their native lands to white settlers, Tribes were guaranteed rights to fish in their usual and accustomed places. Later court decisions have established that the treaties were intended to guarantee not just fishing access, but a proportion of salmon harvest “in common” with the other people of the state. As fish populations declined because of habitat destruction, dams, overfishing, and other modern causes, hatchery fish have been used to ensure Tribes continue to catch, not simply fish for, salmon.
Hatcheries also provide salmon for commercial and recreational fishing, orcas, and other wildlife. Looking to the future, state, Tribal, and federal partners will continue to monitor, evaluate, and continuously improve hatchery management to limit impacts to wild salmon populations. Hatchery managers will continue efforts to reduce genetic effects on wild populations, while people who set fishing seasons make sure that anglers are catching salmon from hatchery and healthy wild populations.
Banner photograph of fish in the Vancouver Fish Hatchery, by Susan Zemek, Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office
Photograph of hatchery courtesy of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife