Report on the Coded-Wire Tag Program for Chinook and Coho Salmon Produced by WDFW Columbia River Basin Hatcheries

The coded wire tag (CWT) and recovery program at Columbia River hatcheries is a critical component of the U.S. and Canada west coast salmonid CWT program. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), the Yakama Nation, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) all operate salmon and steelhead rearing programs in the Columbia River basin. One portion of this report focuses on the WDFW CWT Chinook and Coho salmon releases from Columbia River basin hatcheries in 2014 and 2015. The remainder of the report summarizes the recoveries of CWTs for Chinook brood years 2003 to 2009 and Coho brood years 2009-2012; these are the brood years expected to have completed their return migration by the end of 2015.

Accurate assessments of survival for each hatchery reared salmon stock, contributions of individual stocks to fisheries, and assessment of impacts to ESA listed species both in-season and post-season requires tagging a proportion of each hatchery brood by species and run. CWTs are inserted into a proportion of production groups released from Columbia Basin hatcheries. This provides a holistic assessment of survival and catch distribution over time and addresses measures in the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's (NWPCC) Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program (2014).

The WDFW CWT Columbia River basin program has three main objectives: 1) implant CWTs in each run of Chinook and Coho at every Columbia Basin WDFW hatchery to enable evaluation of survival and catch distribution over time, 2) recover CWTs from the snouts of fish tagged under Objective 1, and report recoveries to Regional Mark Information System (RMIS) so that estimates can be made for survival and type of recovery for each species and run, and 3) analyze findings under Objective 2 in an annual report for all broods of spring, summer, and fall Chinook and early and late Coho salmon released from WDFW Columbia Basin hatcheries.

For Objective 1, in 2014 and 2015 CWTs were implanted into a proportion of the fish for each species and run released during those years from almost every WDFW hatchery in the Columbia Basin. For Objective 2, all snouts containing CWTs, recovered by WDFW for spring, summer and fall Chinook salmon from brood years 2003 to 2009 and for early and late Coho salmon from brood years 2009 to 2012, were dissected to retrieve CWTs, tags were decoded and data sent to RMIS. This report fulfills Objective 3 by summarizing CWT tag insertion and recovery information, including detailed information on survival rates and types of recoveries.