New hatchery will help burbot recovery

Major plans are under way to help burbot recovery in the Kootenai River.The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho will begin building a state-of-the-art fish hatchery next year at the Twin Rivers Canyon Resort, which it owns.

The hatchery will focus on rearing burbot but also will rear sturgeon. The location is ideal because of the three different water sources: Moyie River, Kootenai River and well water, said Sue Ireland, Kootenai Tribe Fish and Wildlife Department director.

“The Twin Rivers Hatchery will only take up a portion, the campground will continue,” said Ireland at the Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative meeting on Nov. 19. “The Tribe recognized the value (resort) to the community.”The campground will be closed in 2013 for construction of the hatchery.

Bonneville Power Administration is the major funding source for the construction of the $15 million hatchery. “We’ll have a state-of-the-art, world-class hatchery operation,” said Sandy Ashworth, KVRI social, cultural and historical representative.

Constructing the Twin Rivers hatchery will allow for expansion of the burbot rearing process. CCurrently, burbot are reared at the University of Idaho in Moscow and populations are limited to the tanks they have installed.

The U of I has been conducting burbot research for eight years. Any remaining burbot from the research are released in the Kootenai River. “University of Idaho developed technology for large-scale production,” says Shawn Young, fish biologist with the Kootenai Tribe. “To scale up we need a new hatchery.”

The release numbers attest to U of I’s advancement in research. In 2011, 70,285 burbot were released followed by 281,735 burbot released in 2012.

Young said hatchery burbot have been recorded from the Moyie River to the delta in the north arm of Kootenay Lake in British Columbia. Fish biologists have several ways in which they track the released burbot, including telemetry and PIT tags.

PIT tags are microchips inserted into the abdominal cavity of the fish and are similar to the microchips placed in pets to identify them. Biologists place a PIT tag array across the bottom of the river to read the chips as the fish swim over. Quite the unexpected happened this summer, said Young, when they recorded burbot that were stocked in the Kootenai River swimming over an array in Deep Creek just below McArthur Lake.

“Glad to see it,” said Young of the juveniles exploring the tributaries. The survival rate for the released burbot is good after the initial acclimation. For burbot in the 1-to-3-year-old class, initial survival rates are 54 percent but after the 30-day acclimation period the rate increases to 78 percent.

With these survival rates and the release of different age classes, biologists have a good estimate on the number of burbot in the river. For 2012, the estimates are 16,000 burbot less than a year old, 5,936 one-year-olds, 408 two-year-olds, 282 three-year-olds, 63 four-year-olds, 9 five-year-olds and one six-year-old.

Idaho Fish and Game conducts winter sampling on the Kootenai River and during the winter of 2011/2012 the number of burbot captured was the “best since 2001” according to Young with 30 burbot caught. The Kootenai Tribe would like to see an open harvest in the future once the population is sustainable according to Young.

The hatchery will enable the Tribe to raise burbot in the densities needed to achieve a sustainable population. Previous work on nutrient addition to increase biomass in the river shows a positive indication that the river can support the target population according to Young.