Hatchery closing could devastate local fishing – and beyond

Fishermen – tribal, commercial and sports – around the south Puget Sound area could be receiving more bad news if a proposal to close the 90-year-old Voights Creek Hatchery is approved in the state’s final budget later this month.

While recent statements from state wildlife officials and Puyallup Tribe officials working on plans to save the hatchery reflect cautious optimism that the hatchery might yet survive, there is plenty of concern to go around – in all quarters of the fishing industry – if it doesn’t.

The hatchery, which yields nearly 800,000 yearling Coho and 1.6 million Chinook each year, was evacuated and operations ceased in January during the damaging floods.

The hatchery is vital not only to the Puyallup River, but to fisheries in the South Sound, mid-Sound, Strait of Juan de Fuca and as far up as Vancouver Island.

 “Anytime we hear about something like the possibility of a hatchery closing, it is a big concern,” says Tony Floor, director of fishing affairs at Northwest Marine Trade Association, the largest trade organization for boating in the state, which has 850 members.

“And the Voights Creek Hatchery is one of the most productive, especially for Coho.” In fact, about 23 percent of the Coho return.

Losing one of the more productive Coho hatcheries in the state, Floor says, “would be a big deal.”

 The closing of the hatchery would be devastating to the Puyallup River, which has in the past 10 years been restored as a vital habitat, after having been without salmon spawning since 1904.

Rearing ponds were established by the Puyallup Tribe in 1997 and planted with Chinook and Coho smolts, most coming from Voights Creek Hatchery, one of four hatcheries on the river, two of which are owned and operated by the tribe.  

A few years later, a $1-million ladder was put in place to restore spawning to the upper reaches of the river.

The impact of closing Voights Creek Hatchery is that there would be no Coho or Chinook fishing on the Puyallup River, no winter steelhead season and an extremely damaging cutback on marine fisheries.

As severe as the consequences on the Puyallup Tribe fishing would be, the damage to commercial and sports fishing would be widespread, as well.

“If they in fact close that hatchery, it would very much impact sports fishing,” says Cliff Muns, director of resource management for the state board of the Puget Sound Anglers.

Commencement Bay, for example, popular for sport fishing, would be significantly impacted.

“That bay’s fishing today benefits from production and release from a few years ago, but it all starts at the hatchery,” says Floor.

Funding for Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is part of the Natural Resources budget, which is 1 percent of the entire state budget.

Puyallup Tribe and WDFW, both working on plans to save the hatchery from the budget knife, are currently optimistic.

WDFW recently appears to be strongly in favor of pushing a plan for funding to create temporary weirs, having the eggs transported to another hatchery for incubation. In the long term, the Voights Creek Hatchery would be restored, so that operations could resume there.

“There have been differences, certainly, between the interests of the tribes, commercial and sports fishermen. But on this one, we are all together,” says Floor.

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