20 



Mr. Hamburg. Mr. Chairman, may I ask just one more question? 



Mr. Manton. Sure. 



Mr. Hamburg. I want to ask what experience the panelists have 

 with hatchery marking programs and the benefits and problems 

 that those programs create for the fishery. I know that is a big 

 question. 



Mr. Smith. On the West Coast? 



Mr. Hamburg. Well, specifically problems on the Klamath River. 



Mr. JSmith. We have done a lot of marking. We know how to 

 mark fish. Depends on why you want to do this. I know there is 

 interest on marking all the hatchery fish that we release, so that 

 there can be more flexibility in terms of harvest. I think the real 

 issue gets down to what is the objective of this program and what 

 the cost is and what you forego doing that you could do elsewhere. 



I do know that there are some researchers and some scientists 

 and biologists that do advocate marking all the fish that we re- 

 lease. That will be an increased cost in the neighborhood of a mil- 

 lion dollars or so. 



I would have to ask why we are doing this before I would say 

 that is a good idea or not. Now, I think Mr. Shake disagrees with 

 me. 



Mr. Hamburg. I would like to hear a dissenting opinion on that. 



Mr. Shake. An interesting position to be in when your director is 

 sitting next to you, but certainly 



Mr. Smith. I gave you the opportunity. 



Mr. Shake [continuing], it is a healthy organization where you 

 can disagree over issues, and we in the region, along with a couple 

 of State fisheries directors, have been advocating marking all 

 hatchery fish. And the reason that we have been advocating that is 

 that it provides you a lot more management flexibility, in our opin- 

 ion. 



Now, as Dick said, not everybody agrees with us. But in terms of 

 harvest, it gives you options for recreational and commercial fish- 

 ermen in the ocean to release unmarked fish. In terms of actual 

 management of fish in the river, you could put up weirs and block 

 out marked fish from an area. You could deal with the issues that 

 Mr. Moyer has mentioned in terms of if we are going to define 

 areas that we are really concerned about maintaining wild stocks, 

 we can keep them out of there with artificial barriers and only 

 allow in the wild or unmarked fish to return to those areas. 



So I think it just simply gives you more options. The thing is 

 that with chinook salmon, for example, to allow you to have those 

 options, it is a five-year program because there are going to be five 

 age classes of fish either in the freshwater or out in the ocean envi- 

 ronment before they come back. So if you start down the road, you 

 have to understand that you are committed in the case of chinook 

 for a five-year program. 



In the case of coho, it would be a three-year program. If we are 

 going to deal in the endangered species arena and have any kind of 

 harvest at all, I think we are going to have to be able to tell hatch- 

 ery fish from natural fish. You might not be able to tell a naturally 

 spawned fish that is or is not listed in the ocean environment, but 

 nonetheless, you would know that at least a marked fish came 

 from the hatchery. 



