Comment:

1. Objectives, Significance to Regional Programs, and Technical Background

This project is responsible for implementation of the Smolt Monitoring Project and the Comparative Survival Study. The Fish Passage Center (FPC) provides the tags and funds the tagging. Objectives are clearly stated and related to important management issues involving fish passage. The project is beneficial to regional management applications through its activities of coordinating and mobilizing data sets. Project efforts include working toward providing improvements to current scientific practices in fish passage management.

This project has been ongoing for many years. It is not clear if there is a technology planning group that looks to see if methods should be updated over time, both in the field and in data management.

2. Results and Adaptive Management

The project provides support to fisheries management related to juvenile and adult fish passage in mainstem systems. The project deliverables relate to critical uncertainties concerning the effects of hydrosystem operations on migrating fish.

The proposal addresses adaptive management by noting that its life-cycle monitoring program supports adaptive management experimentation. Also, in response to technical management questions from management agencies, an objective is for the project to have knowledge of issues and analytical methods relevant to contemporary fish passage issues.

3. Methods: Project Relationships, Work Types, and Deliverables

Methods used in the project are appropriate. The project employs experienced and stable tagging crews, especially at the remote sites. Fishery management entities in the region use the technical services and products of this project to facilitate fish passage management. The project maintains a long time-series of fish passage data in the Columbia River Basin.

It is not clear how this project interacts with other projects that use other fish tagging methods. Similarly, are PIT-tag data from avian predation investigations integrated into the database?

The proposal provides evidence of an excellent record of delivering products on time.

Qualification: This project should continue to undergo regular ISAB review. This project continues to perform its basic functions and produces annual reports and specific products to address a wide range of management questions. The annual report and many of these products are reviewed separately by the ISAB. The overall benefit of the project to the activities of coordinating and mobilizing the data sets for management applications is high. However, although this project undergoes ISAB review, a project as large and significant as this one, needs a more complete proposal for the ISRP to evaluate. Having a fully detailed proposal is important as a public record for the Fish and Wildlife Program. It would be beneficial to provide more details in the proposal including a project history with significant accomplishments, a detailed technical background section, and information on metrics and methods. The proposal contains many typographic errors. Fortunately, most FPC products do not have this deficiency.