PGE fish team monitors reintroduction

Not everyone who works for the electric company strings wires or works the power grid. Michael Burke and Micah Bennett work for Portland General Electric, but they spend their work day as fish wranglers.

As members of PGE's Native Fish Team, they are headquartered at Round Butte Dam on the Deschutes River near Madras. This time of year, Burke and Bennett spend a typical day checking fish traps in the Deschutes River Basin. Their area of responsibility includes traps at Lake Creek below Suttle Lake, Whychus Creek in the National Grassland, and the Metolius River near Allingham Guard Station.

"I really love my job," said Burke, a fish technician with PGE. "I am outdoors every day viewing some of the best scenery anyone can ask for. I chose this line of work because I love everything about fish."

PGE and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs have a serious commitment to restoration of salmon and steelhead runs in the Deschutes Basin. Toward that end, fisheries specialists like Burke and Bennett spend a lot of time in the field monitoring the progress of the effort.

"As a native fish technician for Portland General Electric, I assist in a variety of ongoing projects," said Burke. "My main focus is on the reintroduction studies on Whychus Creek, Metolius River, and the Crooked River."

PGE's Native Fish Team consists of three permanent members and one to three temporary members. The team is supervised by Megan Hill and has projects throughout Central Oregon that continue all year. Depending on the season, PGE biologists might be working on habitat restoration, water quality analysis, riverbed gravel augmentation, conducting spawning surveys for steelhead, Chinook, kokanee, bull trout and redband trout, as well as other projects.

One of the more unusual jobs involves night snorkeling to conduct fish surveys in the Metolius arm of Lake Billy Chinook. One of their most visible jobs is checking the fish traps. "From February to early June I am out checking our rotary-screw traps for migrating juvenile fish," said Burke.

The fish they are most interested in now are steelhead planted two years ago in Whychus Creek, and Chinook planted last year in the Metolius. At this stage of their lives, those fish are about six inches in length and are developing an urge to head for the ocean. Traps, like the one they check at the Metolius, pick up a relatively small number of the total ocean-bound fish, but the data collected are important in learning about the survivability of the young fish in the upper reaches of the system.

The busy season for trapping smolts is just winding up now. On the last Friday of May, the pickings were a bit light: one Chinook smolt from the Metolius trap and one steelhead smolt from Whychus Creek. The Lake Creek trap snared 27 kokanee/sockeye, however. In cooperation with PGE, the Tribes of Warm Springs are the lead agency on the Suttle Lake trap and kokanee studies.

Smolts have a very silvery appearance and are easily distinguished from trout in the system. During the smoltification process, steelhead also lose the distinct vertical bars on their sides. Steelhead are genetically similar to rainbow trout, but steelhead are programmed to seek a path to the sea.

Each captured smolt is carefully implanted with a tiny "PIT" tag (Passive Integrated Transponder) inserted into its abdomen. The unique tags will be used to identify each fish if they show up in the system again. PIT tags are passive chips that can be read by electronic monitors. The captured fish are also weighed and measured. Data are also recorded on other species caught in the traps. Stream current is generally sufficient to keep the smolts in the holding pen, but larger fish can swim out.

Burke said that only about ten percent of the Chinook fry planted in the Metolius reach the smolt stage, and one to five percent of Whychus steelhead will make it to smolt. In turn, only about 10 percent of the smolts will survive to become returning adults; so, fewer than one fry in a hundred will return from the sea.

So far this season, the fish trappers have collected 700 Chinook smolts from the Metolius and about 70 from Whychus Creek. Still, even though only one each was collected from the Metolius and Whychus Creek on that particular day, they were given a complimentary pickup truck ride to downstream of the dams and released. About 800 sockeye have been collected and transported from Lake Creek.

A fish collection device under construction at Round Butte Dam suffered a major failure, which delayed completion of a more efficient means of fish capture. When that system is finished, however, the fish will be allowed to continue downstream on their own.

Steelhead that evade collection and transport, but cannot pass the dam, will most likely acclimate and become lake rainbows. Chinook, on the other hand, will probably not survive in the long term. Steelhead and sockeye salmon are two anadromous species that are able to acclimate and live out their lives in fresh water.

For those interested in his line of work, Burke said that the minimum requirement for his job is a science degree. In his case, he has both a degree in Molecular Biology from the University of California San Diego and a Master's in Biological Sciences from UC Irvine. He says another requirement is "a passion for fish."