Food banks dish holiday salmon State hatcheries turn huge returns into windfall for families

Dan Hansen - Staff writer

White and dark meat are the traditional choices for Thanksgiving dinner.

Struggling families in Washington might consider a third shade: pink.

For the third year running, a glut at state hatcheries is giving those families the opportunity to serve salmon at no cost.

About 80,000 pounds of frozen fillets have been distributed to food banks across the state so far this year, said Jim Coats, executive director of the food bank in Pacific County, who coordinates the effort.

Twenty-thousand pounds have come to Second Harvest of the Inland Northwest, with another 20,000 pounds on the way. Those fish will be distributed throughout far Eastern Washington; because they come from state hatcheries, none can be sent to Idaho.

The salmon migration is far from over. While chinook and pink salmon are about played out, some coho are still making their way to hatcheries, and the chum season is just getting started.

Food banks in Washington distributed 140,000 pounds of fillets last year, and "this year it will be quite a bit more than that," Coats said.

The program is so successful that Coats helped California food banks start distributing hatchery salmon two years ago. Oregon sought his help starting a program this year; hatcheries there planned to donate 40,000 pounds of fillets to the Oregon Food Bank on Wednesday.

The salmon are a welcome treat for Eastern Washington families, Second Harvest director Al Brislain said.

"It's nutritious, it's high protein, it's wonderful," said Brislain, whose organization serves 13,000 people in Spokane alone. "People in the Northwest know how to (prepare) salmon."

Brislain said the food bank also gets salmon from Alaska -- a record 160,000 pounds this summer -- but must pay 30 cents a pound for processing.

"So, when you get a donation like this, it's a real windfall," he said.

The Washington fish were filleted, packaged, frozen and shipped at no cost. A Bellingham processor does the work, then recoups its cost by turning the skeletons and other leftover parts into fish meal, an ingredient in pet food.

Wild salmon have declined so much that many runs are protected under the Endangered Species Act. It's a federal offense to kill endangered wild salmon under most circumstances. By some counts, the region is spending $1 billion a year to save the fish.

But salmon that start life in hatcheries are setting records for the number of fish returning from the ocean to Northwest streams. Biologists believe cooler ocean conditions are largely responsible.

Many of the fish distributed so far are pink salmon, a coastal species that are also called humpies for the prominent shoulders the males develop right before spawning.

State hatchery biologist Andy Appleby said the Hoodsport hatchery in Western Washington saw its returns of pinks increase from 7,000 in 1999 to 50,000 this year. The hatchery needs only 5,000 fish to provide eggs and sperm for the next generation.

Commercial fishermen caught few of this year's surplus pinks from the hatchery because the wholesale price dropped to 10 cents a pound, Appleby said. At that rate, commercial fishermen say they can't compete with Atlantic salmon that are reared in net pens.

Chum salmon are priced comparatively with pinks. Coho, sockeye and chinook, which are considered better table fare, are more valuable; still, the retail price of whole coho dropped as low as $1.99 a pound this summer in some Spokane grocery stores.

Besides becoming prey for sport and commercial fishermen, surplus hatchery fish also are used to fertilize salmon spawning streams. Scientists say those nutrients are vital to the next generation of salmon.

Biologists say Northwest residents should enjoy the glut of salmon while they can.

This year's drought left rivers in bad shape for juvenile salmon heading to the ocean. Many experts predict the population will crash in 2003, when the first of this year's class will start returning inland to spawn. If so, it could take several generations -- and many years -- for fish runs to recover.

In addition, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced last week that it plans to study the impact of hatcheries on wild salmon. No one knows how hatchery practices will change as a result; it's possible they will no longer churn out large numbers of fish.

•Dan Hansen can be reached at (509) 459-3938 or by e-mail at danh@spokesman.com.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2001