The Puyallup Tribe of Indians is tracking steelhead fitted with radio tags to learn more about a somewhat resurgent stock.
“We want to keep a close eye on where these fish migrate and spawn,” said Russ Ladley, resource protection manager for the Puyallup Tribe. The small population of steelhead in the Puyallup watershed, listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, are difficult to track because they don’t migrate in large numbers like salmon. Steelhead also don’t die after spawning like salmon, but can make multiple annual migrations between the ocean and river.
So far this year, around 300 steelhead from a genetic broodtsock program have returned, almost twice as many as the amount of wild fish. For four years the Muckleshoot and Puyallup tribes, along with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, have spawned around 20 wild steelhead taken annually from an adult trap on the White River. Their offspring are raised in tribal hatcheries and eventually released into the White River.
Half of the tagged steelhead will be the offspring of the steelhead broodstock project, the other half will be wild steelhead.
“Seeing a high return of broodstock fish is encouraging because the program goal is to put more adults on the spawning grounds,” said Blake Smith, enhancement biologist for the Puyallup Tribe of Indians. “Even though we’re seeing encouraging returns from our broodstock fish, the overall population is still perilously small.”
For the next few months, tribal staff will attach small radio tags to about 40 adult steelhead caught at the Buckley Diversion Dam fish trap on the White River, a tributary to the Puyallup. Tribal staff will use radio telemetry to track the fish.
“We can follow them for about a year after they are tagged,” Russ Ladley said. “We’re assuming after we encounter them at the trap, that they’re heading upstream to spawn. With the data we collect during our surveys, we can find what parts of the river they use to rest during their migration and where important spawning areas are.”
The Puyallup Tribe has used the same radio tagging technique to track spring chinook and bull trout. “With our other tracking efforts, we’ve really zeroed in on the habitat those other fish use thoughout the watershed,” Russ Ladley said. “We even found creeks that weren’t on any maps that ended up being important habitats for bull trout.”
The Tribe also conducts regular steelhead spawning surveys on almost 20 creeks and rivers throughout the watershed. Global positioning technology is used to map steelhead redds (nests) on five of those creeks. “The radio data from the upper river is adding even more detail to our knowledge of these fish,” Russ Ladley said.
Puyallup watershed steelhead stocks have been crashing for the past decade. “No one is sure why steelhead populations in the Puyallup and the rest of South Sound have dropped so much in recent years,” Russ Ladley said. “But, increasing our knowledge of their freshwater lifecycle will get us closer to being able to recover them.”
