Sockeye Mitigation

Sockeye Hatchery

Sockeye eggs during incubation. At this stage the fish are embryos coiled within their protective egg shells. The arrow points to a dark spot that becomes the fish’s eye.

Seattle Public Utilities funds the operations of the Cedar River Sockeye Hatchery located near Landsburg Dam on the Cedar River. The hatchery is operated by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Sockeye produced at this facility contribute to the sockeye returns to the Cedar River and have made more frequent fisheries possible in Lake Washington.

The existing hatchery began operating in 1991 and is able to produce up to 17 million fry per year. These fry supplement the production from sockeye spawning naturally in the Cedar River below the dam. This hatchery produces fry to replace those that could have been produced above the dam, if sockeye were allowed to spawn there. In the interests of protecting drinking water quality, sockeye are not allowed to pass and spawn above Landsburg Dam.

A state of the art, replacement hatchery is planned that will increase production capacity to 34 million sockeye fry and provide improved facilities. Much work has been done by scientists and engineers to carefully design the new facilities. In addition, scientists have developed a monitoring program and an adaptive management plan that will improve our understanding of how this hatchery interacts with naturally spawning populations and will guide management decisions. View the Cedar River Sockeye Hatchery Adaptive Management Plan (pdf). Construction of the new facilities is expected to be complete in 2011.

The Adaptive Management features of the program will provide a number of products to guide hatchery operations. While the formal Adaptive Management Plan will be launched to coincide with the timing of the construction of the replacement hatchery, a number of studies addressing the key hypotheses identified in the plan have been conducted in recent years. For example, one of these recent studies, “Comparison Of Reproductive Traits In Hatchery And NOR Cedar River Sockeye Used As Broodstock At The Landsburg Hatchery In: 2006 & 2007” (view study, pdf), Schroder, S.L., et al. 2009, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, provides a comparison of the characteristics of natural origin and hatchery origin sockeye returning to the Cedar River. Other reports are available upon request to the contacts listed below.

Landsburg Mitigation Contacts

Rand Little, Senior Fisheries Biologist
Seattle Public Utilities
Phone: (206) 684-5925
Email: rand.little@seattle.gov

Paul Faulds, Senior Environmental Analyst
Seattle Public Utilities
Phone: (206) 615-0021
Email: paul.faulds@seattle.gov