The quarterly meeting of the Butte County Fish and Game Commission took place this week in the County Supervisor's Chambers in Oroville. Among the agenda items was a report by Armando Quinones, the supervisor of the Department of Fish and Game's fish hatchery program.

Quinones noted that among the responses to the salmon crisis, the DFG has resumed its' previous practice of trucking some 1.2 million salmon smolts down to San Pablo Bay, and placing them in acclimation pens for a few hours prior to release.

Doing this greatly enhances the survival of the young salmon, even though it is a small fraction of the 20 million total salmon produced at California state hatcheries, and the additional 12 million fish produced at the Coleman Federal Hatchery.

Quinones explained that the state currently releases "mitigation" salmon at an average size of 60 fish per pound, and "enhancement" salmon at the much larger size of 30 fish per pound. The extra cost of raising the enhancement salmon is funded for by permit fees paid by commercial salmon trollers. Quinones also noted that in past years, a fraction of the young salmon were raised up to "yearling" status, and released at an average size of 12 inches.

The question was raised from the Commission regarding the possibility of dramatically increasing the number of acclimation pens, as well as increasing the amount of time the salmon are held in the pens. If the salmon were then held for period of weeks or months and allowed to grow larger, would that not increase survival exponentially?

A phone call on the topic by this writer to the DFG's information officer Harry Morse this week confirmed that expanding this program had not really been explored by the DFG, primarily due to the increased cost involved.

With the huge financial losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars piling up throughout California and Oregon due to the salmon population collapse, large numbers of grow-out pens that held salmon until they reached a size that insured high survival rates could be a solution that required only one thing; money.

It would appear in my opinion, and that of numerous other observers that this would be a solution that would merit funding from numerous sources, and the financial burden should not be placed squarely on the DFG's shoulders, even if the organizational responsibility is theirs.