36 



Mr. Hershberger. I think one of the things that needs to be 

 done particularly — the Columbia River is an extremely complex sit- 

 uation. There is not going to be a single answer. You don't realize 

 that until you look at the myriad of agencies and the myriad of 

 things that have been done on there and so forth and so on. And I 

 think what we need to do is perhaps from the hatchery perspective 

 incorporate a bit more versatility in the program than has been 

 done previously. Hatcheries have been defined in a framework and 

 utilized in a framework that is rather narrow. And by expanding 

 this to address the specific needs and to fit into the system where 

 they should be fitting in rather — right now it is amazing to me, but 

 the situation is when smolts are released in the Columbia River 

 from the top to the bottom where we have hatcheries, it is done 

 within an eight week period of time. 



Formally, we had salmon going in and out of that river 12 

 months a year. Now, that to me says a lot of standardization and a 

 lot of problems. We have to conduct operations in one specific 

 manner and particular point in time, and generally it is aimed at 

 human efficiency. We need to get rid of that framework, and I 

 think that would go a long way of addressing a lot of the problems 

 that we have with the hatcheries particularly not meeting the 

 management goals. 



Mrs. Unsoeld. Did you want to respond? 



Ms. Kapuscinski. Yes. I would just like to add that another ele- 

 ment of fitting hatcheries into the needs of the natural system is to 

 take a subbasin which is really another way of talking about a wa- 

 tershed approach to making decisions on a subbasin basis in the 

 Columbia River Basin, and I think that is one of the strong ele- 

 ments of the salmon strategy that the Power Planning Council has 

 put out. 



Mrs. Unsoeld. Mr. Hamburg, did you want to ask additional 

 questions? 



Mr. Hamburg. No, not at this time. 



Mrs. Unsoeld. I will ask one then. Dr. Kapuscinski noted that 

 there are many hatcheries with incomplete guidelines for minimiz- 

 ing genetic risk to the salmon populations, and, Mr. Sayre, I would 

 like to ask what guidelines your organization uses? 



Mr. Sayre. Well, we have had available to us some of the best 

 minds and fisheries in the Northwest who have developed guide- 

 lines for us, but they are certainly not a common set of guidelines. 

 One of the things I would love to see is the fishery scientists need 

 to give us some direction in this area, in areas where we should 

 manage specifically a watershed for wild fish, or in other areas 

 where you probably should manage for hatchery production be- 

 cause you have certain areas of Puget Sound — I believe, it is safe to 

 say that you have had fish dumped in these rivers from sources all 

 over the Northwest for the last 60 to 70 years, and what kind of 

 fish they are is anybody's guess. 



But I would love to see some direction in that area because as 

 you well know we have in Washington State these regional fishery 

 enhancement groups that were set up under state law and are fi- 

 nanced by a surcharge in sport and commercial licenses, and they 

 are- working to try to rebuild within their particular — and this is 

 based on watersheds — within their watersheds on how to enhance 



