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Review of Protocols for Counting Salmonids, Resident Fish, and Lampreys in
the Pacific Northwest
August 4, 2003 | document ISRP 2003-11
Background
At the request of the Council, the ISRP reviewed the Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife's proposal, Protocols
for Counting Salmonids, Resident Fish, and Lampreys in the Pacific
Northwest. This project would assemble and evaluate existing protocols
for counting resident and anadromous fish (including lamprey) and
recommend the most robust subset for consistent use across the Pacific
Northwest. This proposal seeks funding of $72,870 out of the Fiscal Year
2003 place holder for data management. In addition, the proposal seeks
$80,000 in Fiscal Year 2004 to complete the project.
In March 2002, the ISRP reviewed a preliminary Statement of Work (SOW)
for this project, but found that the SOW did not provide adequate
technical information and detail to allow the ISRP to evaluate the
soundness of the proposed work. Consequently, the ISRP recommended
that the SOW be expanded into a full technical proposal using the standard
Council-BPA form to allow scientific and technical review. The
proposal reviewed here was developed in response to this March 2002 ISRP
recommendation.
Recommendation
The ISRP recommends funding of this project for production of the
proposed database of survey methods with the information to be documented
in the format of the Sponsor's Table 1. This aspect of the
proposal is much needed and represents a necessary step toward
documentation and collection of more accurate, precise and comparable
monitoring data for the Columbia Basin. However, the proposal needs
to be more specific about the procedures to be used.
Our primary reservation with the full range of activities is that the
sponsor may be proposing more work than can be accomplished within the
budget and time period indicated. Much of what is presented here
will be difficult to accomplish, because there is little evidence that the
documentation and data that these authors are looking for exists.
For example, it will be difficult or impossible to assess the accuracy or
precision of many of the protocols, because appropriate data do not
exist. Section b, paragraph 1 refers to many types of fish counting
protocols, but how will accuracy and precision of the counts be assessed
and what determines compatibility, etc. Are there any systems where
a variety of these protocols have been compared? However, if the
sponsor can document the various procedures used in the Basin and how
regularly these methods are applied, and begin to assess accuracy and
precision of the methods, then the project would be very useful. If
the information in Table 1 (Essential Elements of Protocols) can be
recorded for each survey method, this would be a significant
accomplishment for the proposed budget and time period.
The value of the expert panels and subjective ranking of protocols is
questionable. Once an array of protocols is collated, how would a
group determine the preferred protocols? This topic really gets to the
CBFWA proposal (#35033)
for a regional M&E project in that there will be several levels of
data quality needed to answer various questions. To meet this need,
there should be a set of counting procedures that are acceptable (based on
some agreed set of standards) for counting programs with different types
of objectives. The proposed database of survey methods and data to
be documented in the format of the Sponsor's Table 1 would be valuable
for CBFWA's project #35033.
One of the primary problems in improving monitoring methods is beyond
the control of the sponsors of recent proposals, i.e., the ?good old
data sets that exist? and the reluctance of biologists and fisheries
management agencies to change their monitoring methods. However, the
region should go forward with pilot projects such as this one, #35019
(Chris Jordan, NOAA Fisheries, ?Develop and Implement a Pilot Status and
Trend Monitoring Program for Salmonids and their Habitat in the Wenatchee
and Grande Ronde River Basins?), and #35033 (Collaborative, Systemwide
Monitoring and Evaluation Program). The ISRP has confidence that
projects such as these will demonstrate the long-term value of using
probabilistic sampling procedures for site selection, common protocols for
data collection when appropriate, and defensible statistical inferences to
relatively large subbasins within the Columbia River Basin.
Peer Review Technical Issues (to be considered by the sponsor if
this project is funded)
The "Essential Elements of Protocols" (Johnson et al.
2001:10) are lacking two essential elements:
- The Background and Objectives must identify the target universe for
which fish counts are needed, e.g., the John Day River Basin for which
an accurate, precise estimate of the number of adult hatchery
steelhead strays is needed, or the Middle Fork of the John Day River
for which the number of spring-summer chinook redds is needed.
- The Sampling Design must identify the sampling frame of possible
study sites that exist in the target universe, e.g., all Order 1 sites
of length 200 meters on the Middle Fork of the John Day River.
Objectives need to be more clearly indicated. Objectives are
included in the running text but should be specifically listed. For
example, a trend analysis over time may only need a consistent annual
visual survey of a section of stream; but a stock assessment or research
program needs quantitative data for species/age/sex and hatchery versus
wild. Shouldn't the objective be to determine ?robust? methods
that meet a minimum data standard so that comparisons between streams
and/or years have a level of accountability (or confidence) associated
with them?
To ?build on the data we already have? (section II, page 4) there
are some steps needed in addition to documentation of the past methods and
survey conditions. Specifically, it is necessary to:
- document past survey methods, effort, and basis of estimated values
and document the percentage of research, monitoring and evaluation
projects for ?fish counting? that have full (without modification
or updating), partial, or unavailable written protocols;
- establish appropriate data standards and protocols for use in an
environment and for the specific program task;
- compare new protocols with past practices and develop a consistent
time series of data;
- provide more detail on how protocols will be linked to the types of
management projects and the selection thresholds to take a protocol to
the next level; and
- develop more detail as to how these workshops will be conducted;
i.e., if protocols have been evaluated prior to the workshops, what
will the panels do, and what procedures will be followed to elicit
consensus scientific rankings.
The abstract mentions counts of adults passing the mainstem dams as one
of the proposed subjects for inclusion. However, issues
associated with obtaining accurate and precise counts at dams were not
fully developed in the proposal. The sponsor should carefully
consider previous ISRP and ISAB comments on difficulties likely to be
encountered with these counts, e.g., the fact that upstream dams often
have higher counts than at downstream dams (see ISAB
99-2).
The ISRP recommends that the sponsor concentrate on the States of
Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and the Columbia Basin. The comments
about some other areas are not all correct, e.g., the Province of BC does
not conduct any salmon or lamprey surveys and very few for steelhead or
resident fish (except for interior BC fishes).
Minor comments:
- We were surprised that Dr. James Anderson's Second Tier database
— Data Acquisition in Real Time (DART)? was not mentioned as one of
the databases that would benefit from the project.
- In the sentence, "This often requires substantial field-testing
efforts that are now being conducted for some variables and key
sampling protocols", do you mean "NOT being conducted"?
- Robust is a word that is used but not defined. Do you mean robust as
in robust regression or in the sense of being insensitive to annual
variability in survey conditions?
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