Hatchery Visit Report:

In attendance form the DEC were:
Phil Hulbert, Director of the Fish Culture
Henry Buell, District Supervisor of Fish Culture
Andy Greulich, Hatcheries Manager Salmon River Hatchery
Steve Dolan, Assistant Manager Salmon River Hatchery
Bill Culligan, Unit Manager LO/LE Units
Steve Lapan, Cape Vincent Fisheries Research Station

Stakeholders in Attendance:
Bob Songin, LOSSC/Oak Orchard Pen Rearing
Doug Frugel, ELOTSA
Curt Meddaugh, LOTSA
Mike Waterhouse, Orleans county Tourism
Connie Rodgers, LOSA
Christine Gray, Oswego County Tourism

The objective of this event was to understand hatchery systems processes/concerns/needs as they affect the total state fishery and Lake Ontario. Also to bring to the table some concerns as to hatchery system support of Steelhead survival and Pen Rearing for LO.

I would first like to thank everyone that attended this event. I know that it is a tough time of the year for the stakeholders to get away but I believe we were well represented and from all portions of the LO system.

The Culture/Hatchery System has 3 major concerns I will state them here and then expand on each one. Facilities Repair, Work Force Stability, Poor Water Quality and Quantity at the Salmon River Hatchery.

Facilitates Repair:
As has been stated in a few newspaper articles a number of hatcheries facilities are in major disrepair. Every thing from crumbling concrete in the Raceways and ponds to old wooden pipelines being used as primary water source for a hatchery that needs to be replaced. (This is the 21st Century I don't think wooden pipes have been used in construction for a while now). The estimated total of these repairs is 21 million.

Work force Stability:
This is a major problem we have had impact us a number of times in the past it can cause a multitude of issues in the hatcheries, every thing from inability to perform everyday maintenance to delivery of fish at stocking sites on schedule and the most distressing, the loss of fish. There is a two fold problem here:
1. The inability to retain skilled help in hatcheries positions.
2. The inability to replace people into these positions when they retire or leave for better jobs or accept promotions within the DEC. Let me explain the first issue; it is very difficult for the fish culture division of the DEC to retain qualified entry level individuals in the hatcheries system since this is currently defined as a very low wage grade job with a pay range of approximately 26K per year. Yet the qualifications needed to get this job are ever increasing in minimum education level. (You can hardly expect an individual with even a 2-year college degree wanting to remain in a position that pays so little.) Many individuals are using these positions as a way to gain employment in the department and then move on when other higher paying opportunities become available. To try to remedy this problem the division has applied to upgrade the wage grades of these positions. This request has passed through all approvals within the DEC and currently sits in the Office of the Budget where it has been stalled. The impact in the hatcheries budget if this is approved is approximately 45K per year. (A small price to pay to help guarantee efficiency of this department who's financial support comes from the Conservation Fund not the General Fund.) The second issue comes down to the inability for this division to timely replace people that do take advantage of other opportunities. This issue has been a subject of many conversations in the past and I do believe that everyone knows what goes on here. It is an issue that must be resolved once and for all. To rehash it once again, the Fish Culture division must maintain a staff of 80 individuals to efficiently run all of the hatcheries and deliver fish stocks to their respective sites in a timely fashion. Currently, as addressed in the statements above, this work force is constantly being depleted as people move on to new positions. When this does happen it is a very time consuming task to get them replaced, which many times is stalled or delayed in the approval process, this again has a major impact on the productivity of the hatcheries division. When they do get approval to hire staff, the training process can also have an impact on productivity. At one time this division possessed an exemption from the hiring roadblocks currently put in place by this administration (the governor and his staff) but it has been removed, thus always causing delays as they try to keep a fully staffed work force in place. The actions we must take here are. To educate our elected officials of the importance of the upgrade in the Fish Culture Train-Ship programs to recruit and retain individuals with the skills needed to support this division, we must pressure them to support pushing this approval through the Office of the Budget. This will hopefully help to stabilize this work force. We must also request from our elected officials to support making the replacement of people who vacate positions in the Culture System a timelier task. If granting a hiring exemption once again, to this group, is the only way, then it must be done. The hope here would be that the improvement in earnings and growth potential in the division for new staff by upgrading these jobs would slow the exodus of qualified personnel. Thus reducing the need of the department to continually higher and train (which is very costly) new individuals minimizing the impact that hiring exemption would have on the state employment process.

Salmon River Hatchery Water:
This problem has been one of great concern for a number of years and has a major impact on the productivity of this facility. In a nutshell, due to the amount of water that must be drawn from the Lower Reservoir to supply the hatchery and its great swings in temperature from winter to summer, many difficulties in raising fish at this hatchery must be overcome. Among them is slow growth from cold water in the winter months to excessive stress from high water temperatures in the summer months. Not only do these swings in temperature have an impact on growth, they also cause frequent disease outbreaks that must be treated at additional cost to run the facility. This Facility was designed to utilize 2000gpm of ground well water to temper the reservoir supply to help maintain more desirable water temperatures in the hatchery. Currently there is only approximately 800gpm available, which is far below the requirements to efficiently raise Salmon/Trout, which would prefer to have as close to a constant 50-52 degrees as possible. Currently the winter temperatures get into the low 30+IBk-s and the summer Temperature gets into the 70s. Not exactly preferred condition for raising a cold-water species of fish. The hatchery currently recycles some of its well water from the inside tanks to the outside ponds buy use of a recovery system that utilizes a pump that was donated by the NRAA. But due to capacity of the pump, 300gpm of that water is being lost. The action we must take here again is to re-educate our elected officials of the importance of this fishery and the key role this hatchery plays in its success and the amount of commerce it supports from the Tourism perspective in this state. A study must be performed to see what new opportunities exist to help resolve this water issue at the Salmon River Hatchery. If we were to receive a 5K grant from each of our elected officials both assembly and senate whose districts benefit from the LO fishery it would be 75K. I am sure it would be enough to hire a consultant to study this problem and prepare a report with some reasonable recommendations to resolve this water issue. Another opportunity would be to add another pump to the system to allow recovery of the 300gpm of water that are currently being lost so that it can be used a second time to temper the outside ponds. I would believe that this is something we could help financially support ourselves.

Steelhead Recruitment:
We all know that there is a perceived problem of Steelhead recruitment to the LO system. It was suggested from the stakeholders that Passive Grading of this species could help promote a hardier more uniform product for delivery to LO and it tributaries (Grading this species is an issue strongly supported by Tom Jolliff, a retired DEC biologist in a report he recently wrote). The objective here would be to separate the larger more aggressive fish from the smaller less aggressive ones to give the smaller fish a better opportunity to gain access to more food than they would normally get, thus promoting additional growth in these smaller fish. There is a risk here that this could cause more fish to imprint on the hatchery and the eastern most tributaries of the lake, if they grow larger in the hatchery. But this is currently the portion of the lake that seems to have the most trouble recruiting fish that return to the tributaries and the hatchery to take eggs for the next years stocking. So more Steelhead in the system and more returning to the Salmon River and its surrounding tributaries would be beneficial to the stakeholders and the hatchery.

Hatchery Pen Rearing support:
The current water problems at the Salmon River hatchery cause very inconsistent delivery of stocks to the yearly Pen Rearing Projects. The highest impact is in the timely delivery of correct size salmon to the warm water systems involved in this program (Olcott, Oak Orchard, Sandy Creek, Genesee River and Sodus Bay). Examples of this was demonstrated the past 2 years when the excessively cold and extended winters, caused salmon growth rates to be retarded delaying fish delivery and causing the delivery of a smaller than expected product (180-200/lb as compared to a more disireable130-140/lb) to these sites. Due to the conditions at these project sites, spring water warming is also a critical variable in this equation. Everyone knows the pen programs both increased salmon survival and more important improve imprinting of these fish to the intended stocking streams. To accomplish this successfully, the salmon need to be held in the pens until they reach the 80 per pound range. The preferred time frame to successfully implement this task is in mid April, receiving fish at the targeted 140/lb and holding them for 3 weeks. If we receive fish smaller that the target size we will have to hold them longer causing the need for more food and running the risk of dangerously warmer water temps near the end of the project. If we receive fish late we also run into higher than preferred water temperature problems that can cause disease out breaks in the fish in the pens. Suggested solution is to raise more fish in the Caledonia Facility to supply enough salmon to be held in pens at these sites where timing is so critical. The goal would be to increase the salmon raised at Caledonia by approximately 50%, then distributing them to the pen rearing sites at the preferred size of 140/lb thus lowering the concentration of fish being held for direct stocking in the hatchery. This would also relieve the pressure on the Salmon River drivers during stocking time, lowering the number of trips the drivers from Salmon River would have to make to deliver fish to the these sites.

Summary:
We as stakeholder's short term must solicit our elected officials to help resolve the staffing problems in the Culture Division and the water problems in the SR hatchery. Long term we must keep pressure on our representatives to budget funds to help upgrade and modernize all of the Hatcheries in the system.

We request that the DEC seriously consider the implementation of the grading process for improve steelhead hatchery growth and the redistribution of salmon into the Caledonia Hatchery for stocking at these warm water pen sites.

Bob Songin
LOSSC President
7/21/2005