Local or MSRT Comments: Though OSPIT believes this is important work, the Estuary budget will not accommodate this project.

Local or MSRT Comments: See Washington guidance

The responses to ISRP's questions were not explicit and required reading of the revised narrative. Taking both documents into account, the proponents have addressed some questions satisfactorily. Concerns about animal care protocols, rationale for using stable isotope analysis as method to investigate life history, aging techniques, and identification difficulties were addressed satisfactorily.

However, there are still major problems with the overall design and concept of the project as a scientific program to evaluate coastal cutthroat response to restoration in the estuary and lower river. On this basis, the ISRP concludes the project is not fundable. The project is unlikely to succeed for the following reasons:

The species is not abundant, occupies a variety of habitats, and the life history (e.g., migration patterns) is relatively unknown, and complex, compared to other salmonids.

The ISRP asked about the sample size proposed for the PIT tagging and straying work to investigate migration rates and was not convinced the sample size of 1000 fish in each tributary was adequate.

The ISRP asked about the selection criteria used to identify study sites. The response mentions four widely spaced restoration sites (Lower Chinook River/Baker Bay, Blind Slough, Crims Island, and Scappoose Bay). These sites were chosen pragmatically as they are some of the larger restoration projects in the lower river and estuary.

The ISRP remains concerned about the conceptual basis of actually bounding the population at these restoration sites. The ISRP asked for further details on the proposed tagging work to do this and the responses did not allay concerns about problems with the mark-recapture methodology, the assumptions behind it, and how results would be used.

The sponsor’s statement, "We do not presume to identify what a population is at this time (e.g., one stream v. multiple streams). Population abundance estimates will be point estimates for a given point in time for all juvenile and adult coastal cutthroat trout in the stream at that time" is particularly troubling and indicates the population estimate objective has not been well thought out. Even if population estimates were obtained it is not clear how they would relate to the restoration projects.

In addition, even in the revised narrative, details on the model MARK were not given. The ISRP should not have to dig into the literature for the information.

The ISRP recognizes that investigations of alternative approaches to differentiate between alternate life history strategies in juvenile and adult coastal cutthroat trout in the lower Columbia River and estuary are needed. Some of this work may be possibly supportable by agencies concerned with basic life history and descriptive ecology of this important species.

The proposed work should provide much needed information on the Columbia River estuary and tributary cutthroat trout populations but there are a number of methodological issues that need to be addressed:

1. More details on the proposed tagging work are required to understand the proposal:

a. Given the apparent low or declining abundance of cutthroat trout, will the proposed sample size (1000 fish) for pit tagging in each tributary be achievable? Will tag retention/mortality related to pit tagging be assessed?

b. What are the assumptions of the mark-recapture methodology (“Mark”) and will they be satisfied by the proposed approach? The proposal would be improved by an explanation of the sample size chosen for the mark-recapture work. Can the proponents defend the number of degrees of freedom? How will mark-recapture abundance be estimated given the possibility of multiple life histories, straying and possibly spawning in different stream in different years? What is the actual “population” whose abundance will be estimated? Is it all fish within a given stream at a given time? If so, how will movement into and out of the stream be accounted for in the estimate?

c. What animal care protocols will be used to ensure the health of tagged fish? Electrofishing and trapping may harm focal (e.g., coho) or non-focal species in the streams – what precautions will be taken to avoid this?

2. What were the selection criteria used to select the four sites (lower estuary, middle estuary, upper estuary, mainstem) chosen? How do they relate to restoration sites?

3. How will it be known that fish initially captured and tagged in a stream actually spawned in that stream? How will capture efficiencies and survival rates, rates of straying, etc. be calculated (e.g., give equations or cite and briefly summarize published methods)?

4. The life history component of the study needs further development and justification. The quest for an index of cutthroat life history strategy using stable isotope analysis (SIA) is poorly described and the proposal would be improved if the proponents expanded on this aspect. Specifically, the proposal would be improved if the proponents could expand on why they chose stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to determine anadromy. Other workers have used strontium or other elements associated with seawater, and this could be a more effective method. There is only reference to the use of stable isotope analysis to separate anadromous and non-anadromous populations of trout and char but there are several papers and approaches on this problem in the literature.

Have the proponents considered the use of tissue samples for genetic analysis to see if the populations and possibly even life history types are distinguishable? Genetic work would couple nicely with the work on straying.

5. The sponsors need to justify the reliability of using scales for aging cutthroat. What are the detailed scale and tissue sampling methods/aging methods to be used?

6. The proposal would be improved if more details on the proposed "robust sampling design" and alternative sampling approaches (multiple pass depletion, single pass mark/recapture, multiple pass mark/recapture and mark/resight) for population estimates were provided. How will these approaches be evaluated for effectiveness and efficiency?

7. The proposal would be improved if more detailed information were provided on information transfer, publication of results, plans for data and meta-data storage were described.