Nimbus Fish Hatchery to drastically reduce salmon releases

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Purdy's first name.

Nimbus Fish Hatchery releases around 4 to 4.5 million young salmon and 430,000 yearling steelhead into California waterways annually. But due to rising costs and limited federal funding, the hatchery is planning to release half of both numbers, which is unprecedented. 

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation funds the hatchery, which was originally created to mitigate the impacts of Nimbus Dam on steelhead and salmon runs. Fish raised in hatcheries like this one are key to keeping their populations alive in California. 

Colin Purdy, a fisheries environmental program manager with California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, says the Nimbus hatchery’s costs have risen steadily over the last five years. Usually, he says the state would negotiate for more funding for the hatchery. But this year, he says federal officials aren’t offering enough funding to keep up. 

“I would say this is atypical,” Purdy said of the funding situation. “I feel that there needs to be some recognition by Reclamation that there needs to be an adjustment in funding level over time in meeting their mitigation production level.”

Purdy says hatchery-born fish are especially important in helping their populations recover after years of drought. Reducing production could hurt that recovery, as well as the ability to forecast their numbers into the future. 

John McManus, a board member for the Golden State Salmon Association, said California’s salmon industry wouldn’t exist without hatcheries propping fish populations up. 

“Most salmon in California come from rivers and hatcheries in the Central Valley,” McManus said. “If you see a salmon in the Central Valley, the chances are very high that it was born and reared in a hatchery.”

If the federal government continues to offer insufficient funding for Nimbus, McManus said he’d like to see California officials push for the funding in other ways. 

“The federal government has a legal obligation to compensate for the salmon they've wiped out through construction of dams,” he said. “It actually puts the state in a really strong position to go to court and enforce that legal obligation.”

Andy Guiliano, owner of charter boat landing company Fish Emeryville, said he finds this news especially disheartening given the fact that state fisheries have already struggled to open these last few years due to dwindling numbers. 

“The commercial salmon fishing in the ocean was closed completely for the third year in a row, which has never happened,” he said. “The recreational ocean fishery was open, but for only six days, so any setback right now coming out of an unprecedented closure is significant.” 

If hatcheries like Nimbus aren’t funded adequately, Guiliano said he expects the impacts of reduced hatchery fish to be felt in years to come.