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ALICIA HAMANN:

Welcome to the Econews. I'm your host this week. Alicia Hamann, executive director for Friends of the Eel River, and I've got a couple of folks with me who are going to talk about Eel River fish populations. This is the time of year when we start seeing the fish come into the mouth of the river to begin their migration journey upstream to spawn in our upper tributaries. And we already know that there are some fish in the river and they've begun moving. And so I'm gonna welcome our guests. We've got Charlie Schneider from Caltrout. Hi, Charlie.

CHARLIE SCHNEIDER:

Hey, Alicia,.

HAMANN:

Wyatt Smith from the Round Valley Indian Tribes.

WYATT SMITH:

Good morning, everybody.

HAMANN:

Morning. And Dave Kajtaniak from Department of Fish and Wildlife.

DAVID KAJTANIAK:

Hello, happy to be here.

HAMANN:

So I'm going to just open it up by asking Dave: How are fish populations doing historically? This river saw upwards of a million fish every year. Are we anywhere close to those figures? Now?

KAJTANIAK:

Unfortunately we're not. Populations have been really decimated throughout the Eel System and we're far below 10% of those historical numbers.

HAMANN:

Yeah, I mean, where are we even at 10% of those historical numbers?

KAJTANIAK:

No, I would say it's more like under 5%.

HAMANN:

Well, so how, how do we know, what does the fish monitoring landscape look like in the Eel River?

KAJTANIAK:

Well, modern population estimates have been largely like expert based on expert opinion with a few indices throughout the watershed, primarily. Van Arsdale fish station, which is located in the upper part of the watershed is like really has the most extensive dataset. prior to these sonar that I'm gonna talk about here in a minute. So the Van Arsdale Fish station counts basically adult chinook salmon and steelhead that have made it all the way to the upper part of the watershed, but it really only represents requires proper stream flows in order for fish to make it up there. So besides the Van Arsdale station, there's also been sponsor surveys that have been done over the years and those do work fairly well in the South Fork River as far as producing population estimates of coho salmon

HAMANN:

listeners who aren't familiar. What what exactly is the spawn survey?

KAJTANIAK:

Survey is when a team of two generally walks up a stream and they're looking for live adult salmon and them creating their redds, which is where their basically their nest, where they're laying their eggs. So they're counting both live adult salmon, their redds, as well as carcasses.

HAMANN:

And you mentioned, are there, are there other ways that we count fish as well?

KAJTANIAK:

And so there's also a citizen scientist that have been doing both snorkel dives as well as paddleboard surveys in the lower river. And they've even incorporated some drone flights to help count actual fish in the lower river. But most recently, what we feel like the most effective way of counting fish and getting population estimates that we've implemented since the fall of 2018 was using DIDSON sonar technology and we have several sites on the eel river, one is in the main stem river above the South Fork Eel River. I help run that one and then there's trout has done one in the South Fork Eel River and then Round Valley Indian tribes is doing one in the Middle Fork River. And then I am taking on a second one, a pilot project in the Van Duzen river of another DIDSON sonar unit.

HAMANN:

Cool, so, so did did send some kind of fancy machine for counting fish.

SMITH:

So DIDSON is a form of sonar technology and it's an acronym, so D. I. D. S. O. N. And what that stands for is a dual frequency identification sonar. And so essentially what that is is it's a camera and you put it in the, in the river into a place where you can safely get to it as flows increase or flows decrease and what it does is essentially reflects the image of the water back into the camera and it kind of pings and bounces. Image is into into its recordings that you can then review later on and count fish and hopefully quantify a real sound estimate to track what your, what your adult cell amount of escape is or any fishery for that matter.

HAMANN:

And how easy is it to identify variations in different species or age classes of the fish that you see on the Hudson,

SMITH:

there's there's different tools within the software itself, including measurement tool and you can adjust different kind of temperatures with within the software to be able to make your image more clear. And so it would be really challenging if we had to count all all fish movement and passage. But specifically, and in these projects it's only for adults. So once you kind of get a feeling of what an adult looks like via the measuring tool, you really just sit there and you review those files and it's actually pretty easy in terms of in terms of identifying what species, what it's actually impossible. And so we really rely on those, those snorkel surveys and stand up paddle board surveys to kind of see when migrations start, when they cease and what, what we're actually seeing in the water as it's passed by.

HAMANN:

Oh, neat. So a variety of different survey methods help to kind of paint the full picture then.

SMITH:

Absolutely. And it takes a village obviously is the phrase and it's really exciting that we've got 44 cameras going now. And just to add around about indian tribes just procured some funding and we were able to or will be able to purchase a brand new sonar technology which is known as an heiress unit And that's a little bit different than Addison. An heiress unit stands for an heiress unit, stands for an adaptive resolution imaging sonar. And so that is also a dual frequency camera. It's, it's a lot newer. The technology is just over 10 years old versus the dickson is, is about 15 to 20 years old. And so that has a lot of different software tools in it as well that I think makes makes your images a lot clearer and you can really just know exactly what's going through at any given time.

HAMANN:

That's great. Well, congratulations on being awarded the funding to get that new technology and I'm excited to see what you all see in the river.

SMITH:

Thank you so much. And a huge public shout out to charley Schneider who is on this on this podcast and really, really helped us tremendously with with that grant submission. So thank you charlie.

HAMANN:

Great job, charlie. So, charlie, I kind of brushed past the conversation of historical numbers in the hell. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what we used to see in the river and what this monitoring effort is, is teaching us about fish populations today? Yeah, sure.

SCHNEIDER:

So, I mean, the eel is really a special river in California and one of the few that

HAMANN:

I think a

SCHNEIDER:

lot of us are really optimistic that we can, you know, turn populations around it sort of has the intangibles left. You know, it's a relatively undeveloped watershed. It's big and it's got, you know, the kind of habitat that that sam would want to be in. So, you know, historically estimates put the eel, as you mentioned earlier in good years at a million fish across all the different salmon species a year, which is a lot. But you know, even in, in moderate years still be looking at half a million plus fish, which makes it one of the most productive salmon rivers in California historically. So that's kind of, you know, the foundation we work on is is this a little bit of sadness? Is what, what's been lost in the deal, you know, for for a variety of reasons. So yeah, these different projects was really just kind of kicked off as they've mentioned back in 2018 is an effort to see, you know what's actually there. And the Eel is such a big, rugged watershed that there's no real good way to get base and wide population estimates. So these tools have really allowed us to to get in there and just kind of get some some really basic information on how many fish we see returning every year.

HAMANN:

And so you mentioned that we've been using this kind of monitoring since 2018. Do do we have enough data to draw any kinds of conclusions about what the fish populations look like from year to year or how do we, how do we use this information to, to tell us like how many fish are in the entire watershed or can we do that?

SCHNEIDER:

Yeah, so I mean, again, counting fish is really tough. But yeah, I think this is year four of the main stem did sin, which is starting to turn into a decent data set. So we know for for chinook salmon, there are five distinct cohorts in the eel river. So what that means is every every five years is sort of a different group of fish that are gonna spawn with each other and interbreed. And so you get this population distinctness, not just geographically, so from river to river, but also temporarily. So from year to year. And so really what we want to be able to capture is five to get a decent read on the true population, all five of those different cohorts. So this year will be the fifth year of the main stem camera. So that will then tell us how each one of those year classes of fish are doing at least a snapshot in time for a single year. And then additionally they've mentioned there's additional cameras out in in the watershed. So for the Middle fork, this will just be the second year, will be the first year for the van Dusen and then cal trout's back in the winters of 2018, 19 and 1920 ran a camera in the South Fork and that'll be going in again this year. So well. Haven't Okay, data set for the South fork as well.

KAJTANIAK:

It's the first year for the Van Doos and it's the only year so far. So

SCHNEIDER:

yeah, so no, no randy using data just yet, but we'll know more come next next spring into the summer.

HAMANN:

And so once, once we get this fifth year of data from the main stem camera, will we be able to definitively say there are x number of fish coming back to the river every year? Or what, what other limitations do we have on using this data?

SCHNEIDER:

Yeah, I mean, I don't think we really need to wait until we get the fifth year to to say to to get some key takeaways. So the recovery target again, we're going to focus on that, that main stem camera here, which is essentially trying to capture the chinook population and steelhead population upstream of the south fork confluence on the main stem Hill River. And so the, the recovery target for that geographic area is about 10,500 chinook. And over the last four years we've seen that the average returns somewhere in the low 4000 range from a low of about 30,800 in the winter of 1819 to almost 5000 fish last winter of 2021 into 2022. So it gives us sort of an average look at returns, you know, somewhere in that that uh mid 4000 fish range.

HAMANN:

Mm. So you mentioned the term recovery targets, who develops those and why are they useful?

SCHNEIDER:

Yeah. So recovery targets or what National National Marine Fisheries Service sets as sort of the low bar to ensure that these fish aren't at risk of going extinct. And so fish get listed under the endangered species act when when populations get low. And you know, there's a bunch of work that that all spare the listeners going into on developing those recovery targets. But that 10,500 number I mentioned, you know, really should be thought of as sort of the the low bar for for how many fish we need to ensure that the population isn't at risk of extinction.

HAMANN:

Alright, so we need to make sure there's at least 10,000 chinook coming into the Eel River every year. But more is better. Of course.

SMITH:

Yeah. How many

HAMANN:

do we have right now?

SCHNEIDER:

Yeah. So the last few years it's it's been somewhere in the the 4-5000 range. So we're about half of where we need to be just to prevent just to keep these fish to reduce the risk of extinction.

HAMANN:

And there's there's other species in the eel as well. What about how our our steelhead or a coho counted in this process And how are some of the other species doing? Yeah.

SCHNEIDER:

So we don't expect coho to be using that upper part of the main stem, you know, maybe frequently enough to be focusing on them right now. But but certainly the southfork camera has has looked at those as well. So staying on the main stem, the

HAMANN:

the Steelhead,

SCHNEIDER:

the number we would expect or we want to see for steelhead is about 30,000 fish. And we're really far below those numbers. The winter of 18-19 wasn't wasn't a great winter for for accounting steelhead with what they did sin. Just because if folks remember that winter of 18-19 we got some really big storms so big that we actually had to pull the equipment out of the river.

HAMANN:

I'm just going to clarify because I heard that number and my brain jumped a little bit. When you say 18, 19 you mean 2018-2019?

SCHNEIDER:

Sorry? Yeah, the winter of 2018-20. Unfortunately, winters span years. So I would say,

HAMANN:

yeah, the

SCHNEIDER:

winter. The numbers we got for that winter, I don't think are great. And and really all the steelhead numbers are a little tougher to, to say with, with as much certainty as chinook Dave. Would you, would you agree with that?

KAJTANIAK:

I would basically when these cameras are operating like chinook start coming in in september and so the bits and cameras operate, you know, like once the, once the rains helped the like bring flows up and so they're able to get further upstream than the lower portion of the river, like into the mainstream past the south fork. And that's generally in late october early november. The

SCHNEIDER:

certainty with steelhead, you know, chinook and steelhead members like how how much harder is it to count. Steelhead and chinook

KAJTANIAK:

are mainly in the river when the river is like flowing at a it's a lower rate and so they're easier to count, but still I'd start coming in in late december and their peak run time is in february, which coincides when basically the river is also running really high and it's more difficult to keep a camera in and count fish during those times. So the accuracy of the steel account is certainly less than the account just because of the various factors that are going on in the river at the time, mostly due to higher flows.

HAMANN:

The echo news where we're talking with scientists from Round valley, indian tribes, California, trout and C. D. F. W. About how we count fish in the eel river. So I just want to ask a question here, do cameras ever get washed away, get lost? Is there, you know, you guys handling all kinds of battery failure issues, You know, what's it like to maintain these cameras?

KAJTANIAK:

It's a lot. I think both white and I can speak to this. You know, I am looking at weather predictions, rain predictions like every twice a day. I'm looking at flow predictions twice a day, uh, constantly looking also at current rainfall. It's something that sometimes can keep us up at night because yes, this, this river, these rivers can rise quickly and to the point of yes, picking out these cameras so we have to be diligent myself and our staff as far as watching rain gauges, low gauges and continuously checking these cameras.

HAMANN:

I was

SMITH:

just gonna just gonna add to Dave's point that there's, there's some extreme safety considerations as well that we really take into account and it's, it's funny because as Dave said, you know, we're constantly checking these websites and I'm always on my phone just, it looks like I have some sort of sports gambling addiction because I'm just continually updating these websites to make sure that this water is, is where, where it says it is and and these levels are good as, as the middle fork is, you know, pretty rowdy. It's, it's steep, it's, it's rocky. Um, You know, where our cameras operating at, it can get pretty intense and highway 162 often gets inundated with a lot of sloughing and boulders and ice and it's snowing right now. And so the journey down there is often the most dangerous part of this job if we play our cards right? And we're, we're continuously checking these websites to make sure that

HAMANN:

we're getting to this equipment is

SMITH:

in the safest possible way and that's always going to be a priority. And so that often can get in the way of, of data, of capturing data and so last year around christmas, if you remember we, we had about 6.5 inches of rain up here in kovel oh, with, with a warming event that that sent a little snow melt down as well and the river raised, you know, an incredible incredible flash from just over 1000 cfs up to 17,000 cfs? And so that really put us in a spot that we needed to pull the equipment to make sure that I didn't get washed away and kind of getting down there. It's always like, all right, we want to keep it as long as we can. And so you're just kind of sitting in the rain waiting, waiting for the river to kind of raise and it's like okay, it's time to pull it now. And so we were able to get it out and and I know Dave's crew also, I I believe pulled their equipment for two or three days. And so, you know, it's it's a bummer that you have to lose that, that data, but priority is always going to be on human life. So

HAMANN:

yeah, well there's there's a lot of considerations that go into collecting that data that I'm sure a lot of us aren't thinking about all the time. Yeah. Well, so back to how many fish we see in the river right now, it sounds like best case scenario, we have maybe half of what we need as the bear Minimum to prevent extinction. And I really want to emphasize that, you know, having 10,000 chinook in the river like that, that would be a small fraction of the historical abundance. So it's it would be great to get to that threshold. But we need to get far beyond that to really have the species be resilient. So what what kinds of actions can we take? And how does this data inform decision making around what we do to grow more fish

SCHNEIDER:

before we do that? Can we go back to Steelhead? I don't think I

HAMANN:

totally.

SMITH:

So let's

HAMANN:

get back to the conversation of how many fish are in the river. We talked about chinook and we've got about half of what we need to prevent extinction, which is a threshold we want to get beyond. For sure. And what about steelhead charlie? How are they doing?

SCHNEIDER:

Yeah. So for for steelhead in the main stem, that number we we'd like to see sort of as the bare minimum is about 30,000 and over the last few years, the number the observed number, estimated number, I should say, you know, somewhere between 2500 and 4000 fish. So steelhead are a lot more difficult to count just just given the time of year and what the river is doing then the sort of stream flow jumping up and down and they need to adjust the equipment or or move it out of the way of floods. So we're a little less confident with those numbers. But again, it just shows that the steelhead population is significantly lower than than we'd like to see it.

HAMANN:

So given these low populations, how can we use this data to inform decision making about what kinds of actions we can take to, to allow the river to grow more fish because I know that Friends of the Eel River, we definitely have some priorities in mind. Why? What what about the at the Round Valley indian tribes?

SMITH:

Just to clarify, I am not an enrolled member of the Round Valley indian tragedy. I just represent them biologically. And so there's there's a component here that we haven't really hit on yet and we've talked about history and we've talked about scientific monitoring. But the Round Valley indian tribes, you know, there's there's a huge cultural component with this monitoring program as well. And so essentially what with, with our camera kind of being at the intersection of the middle fork and the main stem. It's also at the intersection of culture and science and so restoring the watershed to support these healthy runs of salmon and steelhead is critical for Round Valley indian tribes not only to inter with their historical and cultural roots and maintain shared interests between the confederation of seven tribes which is around valley where fish are cultural, spiritual and traditional customary use resources are used for those purposes. It's it's also really important to step up and inform other agencies that like nymphs and C. D. F. W. That can help us protect this resource

HAMANN:

well said

KAJTANIAK:

well and I can add to that in a sense. I think you asked like what, well it can be done and there is a lot being done out there right now. You know, there's a strong restoration community in the Eel River and there's a lot of restoration projects going on that are trying to help restore the habitat, which will hopefully eventually help restore populations of some on it, such as Decommissioning roads. There's a bunch of work going down in the lower Eel River asteroid to restore habitat and function of the estuary. There is certainly regulations are in place to help curtail water allotments and water that's being taken from the tributaries where we're doing lots of monitoring of of like juvenile habitat to help quantify that habitat for that part of the life cycle of fish.

HAMANN:

And so I guess one question that I'm assuming listeners might have is this idea of recovery targets and kind of work towards particular numbers of fish and like you mentioned Dave that there's a lot of great work going on in the watershed to try to accomplish those those targets. What happens if they're met? Do we delist the fish and say job well done, we're finished or did the recovery targets shift or you know, what happens if we reach these modest goals?

SCHNEIDER:

I think in addition to a lot of us celebrating some success. I mean, working for Conservation organization, I often feel like we're fighting over the scraps of sort of what's left of these really abundant salmon populations in California. We have to be realistic about what we can achieve in a human life span. But the goal is always in my mind harvest double surplus, right? Like salmon are awesome for all these different reasons, but I think for the average person, right, salmon are a pretty good food source. And, and certainly why it spoke some of the tribal perspectives there, right. It's historically was a really important way of life as well. So it's not just about getting the fish back. It's, it's fixing the ecosystem all the good things salmon do for for ecosystems. And it's also having this reliable food source.

HAMANN:

Yeah. A friend of mine who is a round valley indian tribal member actually told me a couple of years ago that what was lost when the salmon were lost wasn't, wasn't just the salmon, but it was, it was the means for a lot of transmission of cultural information. And there were a lot of oral histories that were shared when you're waiting on the banks of the river for the salmon to come up a lot of traditions around the campfire and, and the practice of harvesting the salmon was kind of the, the vehicle by which culture was was continued. And I just thought that's always really stuck with me. What a central role the salmon play in, you know, and knitting together the culture and cultural practices. So are their next steps planned for for this, this monitoring effort. You know, I know that not all the cameras will have been in place for five years and and does it stop after five years, like what are, what are the future plans?

KAJTANIAK:

I'm hoping that we'll be able to continue monitoring in this form using cameras And then even improved technology such as the is kind of like an older heiress heiress camera has improved technology to allow to see the fish better throughout the water column. And then along with the better technology is like the artificial intelligence learning. It's really starting to step up in this realm as far as being able to identify fish while using sonar and then eventually it might get to identifying by species, which would be a great help. And so if we have cameras in the Van Dusen and the main stem meal and the Southfork deal in the Middle Fork deal, we really will be getting a more complete picture of the populations on a yearly basis, which will be very helpful as far as directing management and restoration plans. I wanted to take A

SCHNEIDER:

moment to give a shout out kind of all of the people that have helped get these cameras up and running in the Eel River. I feel like this very much started, you know, as a bit of a whim for both Matt Bethany, my colleague cal trout and for Dave and others, you know, on the main stem back in 2018 to

HAMANN:

to get this

SCHNEIDER:

project off the ground and it's really been a lot of folks that have brought together, they're both their time and expertise and also kind of piecing together funding to, to keep this program going over the years. Certainly cal trout and our private donors have helped but also tried and limited with volunteers and and private donors as well. And then round valley Indian tribe with why it's time and effort and also seeking grant funding. So we've really dave, am I forgetting anyone else? I feel like there's even even more than that that have helped the landowners that have let us use their sites. I mean it's it's really been a team effort to get these things off the ground. Noah fisheries of course as well.

KAJTANIAK:

Yeah, pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission has also played a large role in helping staffing.

SMITH:

Not only that for R. B. I. T. S, purpose of running on the Middle Fork Mcbain Associates is, has done far and beyond what I ever thought was possible and helping us build our fisheries capacity and and our, our programs here and and this year we were actually funded by PG and E to to run this clip. So that's interesting as well.

HAMANN:

So it truly takes a village to count the fish.

SMITH:

Absolutely,

KAJTANIAK:

yeah. And I would just like to give a shout out to, I've had like tremendous staff for the last five years that I could not have done these projects without my scientific AIDS. Crew leads America, watership stewards members, the California Conservation corps have all played a large role in the daily operations of these cameras. That would be impossible without just a tremendous group of people that have worked on these projects the last five years.

HAMANN:

That's wonderful. So I know that on friends of the Eel River's website, we publish the fish counts at Van Arsdale fish station, which we mentioned at the beginning of the program is a pretty limited data sets that's only counting the fish that get way way up to the top of the head waters or at least as far as they can go right now until those dams are removed. Where else can people see this data or learn more?

SCHNEIDER:

Yeah. So prior to me working at Caltrout. I and I still serve on the board of the Redwood Empire chapter of trout Unlimited. So we're at grassroots Fisheries Conservation Group. So we host all the reports on our website, which is redwood empire dash T U dot org.

HAMANN:

SCHNEIDER:

And if you go up to the menu and look for Eel River fisheries monitoring. We have all the, the main stem reports and I'll drop the southfork reports on there as well. So just so they're all in one place for folks<./span>

HAMANN:

Wonderful, Charlie. Can you say that one more time? Just the website. Yeah,

SCHNEIDER:

The website is redwood Empire dash T. U as in trout unlimited dot org.

HAMANN:

Great. And we will put that in the show notes. so folks can click on a link right there on their podcast app or Lost Coast Outpost or wherever you happen to be listening. Well, I was just gonna ask if anyone has any closing words, anything that we failed to mention earlier that you want to include now.

SMITH:

Yeah. Just just to go back into kind of R. B. I. T. S. Next steps with, with this grant that we got from tribal fish and wildlife, we're gonna be able to purchase our own camera that we've been in the past borrowing from C. D. F. W. And so with the purchase of this new heiress unit, we potentially have the capacity once we hire on some more more tribal members and biologists to help us with our department to be able to run a camera on the North Fork. And so hopefully next year the 2023 2020 for monitoring season, we'll have five cameras going.

HAMANN:

That's great. Yeah, it would be awesome to get a picture of how many fish we have up in that rugged North Fork

SMITH:

historically. It doesn't support my population, but from what I've gathered and from the world histories of this community, it's, it's been a tremendous steelhead area. So I'm really hoping to get a camera in there and see what's going on.

HAMANN:

Yeah. Great. I'm just always so impressed by the places that we find that Steelhead have been. They truly are the athletes of the watershed. And so yeah, it'll be really exciting to see what you guys can discover. Looking at the North Fork. Well folks, thank you so much for listening and tuning in today. This has been another episode of the Econews and tune in next time wherever you get your podcast.