Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

More than 10 million eulachon migrated past the Chilkoot River bridge, a return about five times the size of the one there last year, according to a study by Takshanuk Watershed Council and the Chilkoot Indian Association.

Watershed council executive director Brad Ryan said the study’s numbers are preliminary but it was obvious the run was orders of magnitude larger than last year’s.

"For a couple days, the river was running black with fish. You couldn’t walk across the river without crushing them."

Individual fish also appeared to be large, with some reaching nearly 10 inches in length, Ryan said.

The study is the first of its kind here on eulachon, a smelt-like fish that returns in surges annually to spawn in the Chilkoot and Chilkat rivers. The study is in its second and final year.

Researchers this year found that – in contrast to what some believe – eulachon spawn upstream of the riverside cultural camp, though only a few go into Chilkoot Lake, Ryan said. "Hundreds of thousands went past the culture camp. It’s interesting they made it up there."

Also this year, sea lions and gulls didn’t follow the fish upriver, but that may have been because of relative high abundance in the inlet, he said.

Eulachon fry spend only a few weeks in the river before washing back into the ocean. Wide fluctuation in eulachon returns from year to year may be due to occurrences at sea, as the fish spend very little time in fresh water, Ryan said.

"They’re kind of a mystery fish. No research money has been spent looking into what ocean populations are doing. That’s where the issues are with them," Ryan said.

Other questions include whether Chilkoot and Chilkat eulachon are distinct stocks. Recent genetic testing indicates the same stock returns to both rivers, but some area Natives believe otherwise, citing a difference in coloration.

According to previous research, eulachon, like salmon, die after spawning, but Ryan said he’s skeptical of that. "You don’t walk out there and find millions of dead eulachon. It would be interesting to confirm or disprove the spawn-and-die theory."

Researchers trapped about 49,000 fish at the Chilkoot River bridge, clipped an adipose fin, then resampled fish at upstream Chilkoot weir and arrived at the numeric estimate by comparing the ratio of clipped to unclipped fish.

Ryan said researchers have been unable to estimate the size of the return to the Chilkat River because they couldn’t trap enough fish. Traps sank in mud there and the wide, braided river allowed fish to bypass them.

Comparing the size of the returns to each river would be difficult, he said. "There’s such a size difference between them, I wouldn’t have a clue."

Ryan said he may seek funding for a eulachon study next year with money from the tribe or through wildlife grants.

For about the past 10 years, Fish and Game commercial fisheries biologist Randy Bachman has taken a rough reading of the size of eulachon returns to local rivers. He rates the Chilkoot return as "really good" and the one up the Chilkat "above average."

Eulachon seemed to return in strong numbers throughout Southeast this year, including at Yakutat’s Situk River and the Taiya River in Dyea, near Skagway, Bachman said. Bachman was chaperoning Juneau high school students last weekend who were impressed by eulachon numbers at Chilkoot. "They were wading in there, catching them with their bare hands. They had never seen anything like it.