Matt McDaniel

Hatchery Manager at Chief Joseph Dam Hatchery Program

Bridgeport, WA

September 3, 2024

We began our meeting with Matt McDaniel outside of the visitors center at Chief Joseph Dam. Matt was dressed casually and in sunglasses like the rest of us, but his American flag fish polo shirt stood out and made it immediately apparent that this man has a deep passion for his job. McDaniel, currently the Hatchery Manager at Chief Joseph Dam Hatchery Program, explained that he fell in love with fish hatcheries after getting a job at another hatchery after he graduated college. 

Chief Joseph Dam produces the second most amount of power in the United States after Grand Coulee. Inconveniently, the dam lacks a fish ladder making it impossible for salmon to migrate to their spawning grounds up river. The Chief Joseph Dam Hatchery Program, owned by the Colville Tribes, sits in front of the looming concrete dam as a mitigation effort to provide salmon for both tribal and recreational fishers.

Matt McDaniel led our group down to the raceways where they keep adult fish prior to harvesting their eggs and sperm. The most memorable part of our visit was viewing the room in which the hatchery program incubates millions of salmon eggs in cold water (around 45 degrees fahrenheit) after the fertilization process. The hatchery program aims to release 2.9 million hatchery smolt into the Columbia River this year and generally expects a >1% return rate of previously released adult hatchery fish from the ocean. 

Matt was incredibly straightforward with us about the issues of disease and resource competition posed by hatchery fish as well as their positive impacts on the environment and people. He does not see a future where wild fish populations return to their pre-dam and pre-overfishing levels, but he is hopeful that the integration of hatchery fish will continue to stabilize struggling river ecosystems. 

by: Linnea Krig