303 
National Marine 
Fisheries Service 
NOAA 
Fishery Bulletin 
rt~ established In 1881 •<?. 
Spencer F. Baird 
First U S Commissioner 
of Fisheries and founder 
of Fishery Bulletin 
Salmonid passive integrated transponder tags 
and coded wire tags found in the forestomach 
of a harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) in 
southwestern Washington 
Abstract —A dead adult harbor por¬ 
poise (Phocoena phocoena ) was found 
on the Long Beach Peninsula in Wash¬ 
ington on 22 August 2012. The harbor 
porpoise was skeletonized, with the 
forestomach being the only organ that 
remained. The forestomach contained 5 
passive integrated transponder (PIT) 
tags and 91 coded wire tags (CWTs). The 
PIT tags were from juvenile Chinook 
salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) 
from 3 hatcheries in the Columbia River 
Basin. Of the 91 CWTs, 88 tags were 
identified as having come from juvenile 
Chinook salmon from Columbia River 
Basin hatcheries and 3 tags came from 
unidentified fish from hatcheries in 
Oregon. The 88 CWTs represent a num¬ 
ber of hatcheries along the Columbia 
and Snake Rivers in Idaho, Washington, 
and Oregon. The tagged juveniles were 
released in the spring and summer 
of 2012. This report is the first one of 
Chinook salmon PIT tags and CWTs 
being recovered from a harbor porpoise 
in the Pacific Northwest, and it is one 
of few records of harbor porpoises eating 
salmon. The presence of these tags and 
the number of tags in the forestomach 
of a harbor porpoise indicate that juve¬ 
nile Chinook salmon might be a more 
important component of the diet of har¬ 
bor porpoises in the Pacific Northwest 
than previously thought. 
Manuscript submitted 10 February 2019. 
Manuscript accepted 19 September 2019. 
Fish. Bull. 117:303-307 (2019). 
Online publication date: 4 October 2019. 
doi: 10.7755/FB.117.4.3 
The views and opinions expressed or 
implied in this article are those of the 
author (or authors) and do not necessarily 
reflect the position of the National 
Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA. 
Dalin N. D'Alessandro (contact author) 
Deborah A. Duffield 
Email address for contact author: dalin@pdx.edu 
Department of Biology 
Portland State University 
P.O. Box 751 
Portland, Oregon 97207 
Passive integrated transponder (PIT) 
tags and coded wire tags (CWTs) 
inserted into Chinook salmon ( Oncor¬ 
hynchus tshawytscha) of the Columbia 
River Basin in the Pacific Northwest 
were recovered from the forestomach 
of a harbor porpoise (Phocoena phoc¬ 
oena) in 2012. Although the Colum¬ 
bia River Basin primarily comprises 
parts of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, 
southeastern British Columbia, Can¬ 
ada, and western Montana and small 
parts of Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming 
(Fig. 1), the primary areas repre¬ 
sented by these tags include Idaho, 
Oregon, and Washington. The Colum¬ 
bia River Basin is further divided 
into smaller basins by the Regional 
Mark Processing Center as part of 
the Regional Mark Information Sys¬ 
tem (RMIS), a collective database of 
records of releases of anadromous sal- 
monids tagged with CWTs, recoveries 
of CWTs, and the locations of these 
events (available from website). Only 
the basins associated with tags recov¬ 
ered from the harbor porpoise are 
identified in Figure 1. 
During routine beach surveillance 
on 22 August 2012, staff of the North¬ 
ern Oregon/Southern Washington 
Marine Mammal Stranding Program, 
Portland State University, found a 
140-cm adult harbor porpoise ( Phoco¬ 
ena phocoena) of unknown sex on the 
Long Beach Peninsula in southwestern 
Washington (46.44191, -124.06052) 
(Fig. 1). The animal was heavily scav¬ 
enged and skeletonized, with only the 
forestomach remaining of the internal 
organs. The skull and forestomach 
were collected. The entire right occip¬ 
ital area of the skull was fractured in 
a circular pattern, due to either scav¬ 
enging or trauma. Examination of the 
forestomach contents revealed 5 PIT 
tags and 91 CWTs (Table 1). All tags 
were submitted for identification to 
the Oregon Department of Fish and 
Wildlife (ODFW) Columbia River 
Management Program in Clackamas, 
Oregon. 
The PIT tags were identified as hav¬ 
ing come from juvenile fall-run Chinook 
salmon from hatcheries in the Colum¬ 
bia River Basin that were tagged in 
April 2012 and released in May 2012. 
The CWTs were from juvenile Chinook 
salmon that originated from Colum¬ 
bia River Basin hatcheries and that 
were from various runs but primarily 
from fall runs, and all tagged Chinook 
salmon were released in the spring and 
summer of 2012 (Table 2, Fig. 1). 
