A lot is going on and frankly after the workshop on the harvest model it does not instill confidence. As one non agency panel member said “ do not bet the farm on this as it could be plus or minus 200% “ so this thing is really up in the air as to just what is about to happen let alone anyone have any confidence that the numbers in the model will reflect reality. WDF&W hired and outside consultant, MORI-ko, LLC, to review the harvest model on only 4 subjects and MORI-ko came back with came back with 13 pages of items that were wrong or undocumented ( proofed ) assumptions residing in the model. Now many were addressed by the panel but are little more than Band-Aids on the much larger problem of the lack of accuracy I mentioned previously.


From page 12 of the MORI-ko report:

Consideration should also be given to modifying the Model structure to reflect the gauntlet nature of Grays Harbor Fisheries, where fisheries in outer harbor areas affect run sizes in more inside and river fishing areas. For instance, fisheries in estuarine areas (e.g., 2-2. 2B, 2C, 2D) have no effect on projected catches by freshwater sport fisheries. Instead of projecting impacts using harvest rates on fish remaining after removals by estuarine fisheries, freshwater sort catches are computed using s exploitation rates on the total terminal run size. This formulation contains implicit assumptions regarding independence among fisheries, migration run timing of hatchery and wild components, unspecified environmental conditions, and the ability to control effort to constrain allowable catches to projected levels. The current Model structure is not consistent with this characteristic or the gauntlet-type run reconstruction methods employed by WDFW and QIN in their recent report concerning the escapement goal for Grays Harbor fall chinook.