Locals are exploring the possibility of bringing back a king salmon incubation facility on Big Boulder Creek in an effort to bolster a history of falling Chinook returns.

The long defunct incubation operation began in 1991, after the state reconstructed the bridge spanning the creek, in an attempt to mitigate spawning habitat loss after the creek straightened and its flow changed. Staff would take brood stock from the creek and artificially spawn salmon fry. The fry would swim out of the incubators into the creek. The facility was state funded from 1991 to 1995, when the program ended.

“They had a certain amount of mitigation designated for that and they believed it to be enough from the loss of habitat from the road construction,” Alaska Department of Fish and Game sport fish biologist Rich Chapell said.

Chapell briefed the Upper Lynn Canal Fish and Game Advisory Committee (AC) on the program after members last month expressed interest in starting it back up.

In an interview with the CVN, Chapell said it’s likely that the incubation facility did help increase king salmon returns, but that returns to the creek have dwindled along with stocks across the Chilkat Valley and the state.

“If you look at stream counts in late 1990s through 2000s, we got good counts, over 100 large kings per year in the river,” Chapell said. “I believe it definitely did create additional king salmon that came back, but Big Boulder Creek has a very steep grade and it’s sort of at the upper limit of usable spawning habitat for king salmon. That extra production did not sustain itself.”

Chapell told the AC that Fish and Game’s sport fish division wouldn’t fund such a project and that any efforts would have to be directed through a nonprofit association. Chilkoot Indian Association council member Bill Thomas said he’s going to talk to the CIA about leading the charge.

Thomas said he thinks there are enough locals with the background and knowledge to run and rehabilitate the facility.

“Unless there’s opposition, I plan to go forward and try to get something done so we can keep going here,” Thomas told the AC last week. “We’re trying to get one fish species off the endangered list anyway.”

Although the AC unanimously voted to approve the incubation effort, some members expressed concern that there are too few fish returning to harvest for their eggs.

“I’m not so sure, with our (low) king salmon numbers returning, that I’m all that excited about killing natural fish and expect somebody to tend to them and not end up killing all the smolt,” AC member Stuart DeWitt said. “It’s going to take a lot of knowledge and a lot of time.”

According to a 2013 Fish and Game study on hatchery projects as a means of mitigating impacts on declining king runs, egg plantings in incubation boxes “have some utility” but “survivals are considerably lower than other approaches and evaluation is difficult and often incomplete. Very large numbers of eggs would be needed to provide a measurable contribution to local fisheries.”

The 2013 report also stated that if poor ocean survival is affecting salmon stocks, “it is possible that even relatively large releases of Chinook salmon fry or smolt would fail to generate significant numbers of returning adult salmon.

Last summer, for the third year in a row, Chilkat River king salmon met escapement. Between 2012 and 2018, the stock failed to meet escapement targets every year but one. Chilkat kings are currently designated as a “stock of concern” by Fish and Game and the department has placed restrictions on commercial and sport fishing as a result.