Is there a specific section of that Chapter you want folks to pay attention to?

The worst part of the PST-managed chinook fishing is the AABM (aggregate abundance based) component. This is what allows Alaska and Northern BC to indiscriminately hammer the mixed stock nursery. It needs to be scrapped for a biologically-based ISBM (individual stock based) objective all across the board. If they can't figure out a way to sustainably fish in a manner that allows recovery of depressed individual stocks.... THEN THEY DON'T FISH!

The purpose of the agreements is to keep fishing going. Managers have known since almost forever that there is ALWAYS a stock out there needing protection. That is the problem with mixed-stock fishing. You deliberately overfish some stocks. We call them "minor". The problem now is the anything south of AK is considered "minor".

I assume the lawsuit claims that the PST jeopardizes the likelihood of recovery of SRKW and ESA Chinook. The Fed defense will essentially be that following the provisions in the PST and allowing the fisheries as described in the PST, the recovery of SRKW and ESA Chinook will not be significantly impeded. The Fed defense will cover all the US fisheries (state and tribal) as a group. I can't imagine they will go through and pick "good and bad" US fisheries. Good and bad, of course, is subjective. Is the SEAK fishery that is outside the range of SRKW worse than the fisheries that are in the same waters that SRKWs are foraging? The court might see things different than what you want. Applying different management approaches (eg AABM, ISBM, ER ceiling, escapement goal, weak stock etc) could be undertaken in a redo of the PST, but the current form is good through 2028. The Fed will be defending the PST in its current form in its entirety that it does not jeopardize the chance of recovery for SRKW and ESA Chinook.

NOAA will have to show that what they are doing is working. They have had close to 30 years to turn around the declines. While you can argue that SRKWs don't go to SE AK, their food does. Not sure that they are attacking PST directly. AK fisheries should be response to all appropriate US law; it will be up to the diplomats to settle international issues. Or the Hague.

OK. Now what? What may, can, or will happen from this? Hard to believe that AK's and Canada's commercial fleet is all the sudden gonna stop fishing. Is this just a symbolic decision? Or, something that has teeth to shut it down. Appeals? How many more years until something changes?

Latest judgment recommends shutting down SEAK chinook troll fishery until a new recovery plan can be cobbled together to get a better accounting of sustainable chinook mortalities that satisfies ESA.

https://wildfishconservancy.org/court-re...-killer-whales/

If you truly care about wild salmon, orcas, and the like, this is nothing but good news. I don't think the same can be said for those who like ocean fishing for Chinook, but this is the kind of changes it will take to recover wild salmon. I think tying Chinook to orcas made the difference here. It was good strategy on the part of the WFC to do so. The downside (from a fishing perspective) is that future Chinook fisheries will now depend on meaningful orca recovery, and who knows what that looks like?

Well, I think this is good news for salmon, if it's not entirely great for salmon anglers. This is the hard part about conservation: it requires sacrifice.

As we have seen, the SRKWs eat all species of salmon. But, they concentrate on adults and concentrate on the larger fish. I mean , how many pinks equals (nutritionally) a June Hog?

IF we are serious about meaningful recovery of the SRKWs it is relatively easy regulation-wise. No marine fishing for juvenile or immature salmon. Anywhere. All salmon fishing occurs terminal areas (bays, inlets, rivers) so long as SRKWs are not present. For example, we currently have coho and chum fisheries in Areas 10,11, and 12. If there are no whales around, the fishery can open. If the whales show up, the fishery is closed.

This, of course, opens the rivers to much wider-open fisheries (and likely Buoy-Zooey).

In this way, not a single salmon is lost to harvest; it is just moved. Managers don't need to raise their precious low goals, because they can still catch the fish. We just give the whales first shot.

But while those in favor of SRKWs rejoice over this court action it doesn't affect the trawl fisheries that are hammering Chinook and other bycatch in AK.

So, why are we tying the “ recovery” of the SRKW to our Chinook recovery ?

If one looks at the whale population from the magic date of 1995, then follow it on through today, it does look like the whale population for the southern resident pod is crashed. Now, when we look at the population from 1975 to 1995 it looks like the numbers went from roughly 75 whales to 90 to 95 whales.

What could have driven those numbers up ? Way more chinook salmon available? More seals, what ?

And if the lower numbers as shown in the 70s were the normal , why pin recovery of the whales to the 1995 levels when they were mysteriously much higher for a very short time frame ?

Could the mid 1970 numbers of approximately 70 whales be the normal average over time vs. the magic 1995 numbers the state uses today ?

Just Wondering

If we look back to the 1970's at salmon abundance, I believe that a major factor was that hatchery salmon were spawning naturally in many of our rivers. I spent a lot of time on the Green as a young fishcop, and there were Chinook spawning in the river downstream of the hatchery in big numbers. Coho were not as easily seen because of higher water. When I moved to the Kelso area, I was astounded by even greater abundance in the Toutle and Kalama - both with good hatchery programs. If you look at Dave Croonquist's analysis of how the hatchery fish have been moved around from river to river by the millions over the last seventy years, it's easy to conclude that our true wild fish are very rare. If we have a "good" genetic stock in our hatcheries, I think we can have a much quicker true "recovery", by letting hatchery fish spawn naturally. As it now stands we are protecting actual hatchery fish that have spawned in the wild and have a fin. Salmon are very adaptable and are continuing to evolve. I've seen Coho introduced to a barren stream on the lower Columbia, who thrived and now have viable "Wild" run.

You hit that nail on the head, Tug. We have, or had, a data set of the adult salmon run size for all species entering the Straits. All species, all timings, hatchery and wild. Every year. We can easily see the numbers of salmon (by species and combined) and compare them to SRKWs.

As to how many Chinook we had, in the early 80s we had 100K+ Chinook entering Bellingham Bay, alone.

I believe that this year we peed rings around ourselves because maybe a million coho were coming back to all of Puget Sound. In the 80s more than a million returned to South Sound ONLY. Yeah, we had boatloads of fish back then.

Maybe the srkw(or some) of them moved to better waters? Has there been an increase in other areas? How do we know the orca’s actually died? If the fish come back in record numbers someday maybe the orca’s will start showing up more. Sounds like they just swim in here to pick up food and take off or are they here year round?

SRKW managers know the individual whales by sight. Each is unique; named and numbered, and counted. You rarely see the bodies, just like most any other wildlife. They just disappear.

Between 1952 and 1973, the WDF produced and planted 846,195,140 salmon, mostly coho and Chinook and put those fish into virtually every creek and river within driving distance of a hatchery.

From 1980 to 1987, WDF moved 277 million Chinook eggs out of basin of origin. Out of 40 hatcheries, 36 received out of basin stocks. Out of 27 river basins, only the Snake River did not receive transfers. The Green River hatchery alone transferred 40 million eggs to Chambers Cr, Coulter Cr, Deschutes R, McAlllister Cr, Minter Cr, Nisqually R, Nooksack R, Puyallup R, Samish R, Skagit R, Skokomish R, and the Skykomish R. These numbers don't include tribal, Federal, or co-operative facilities.

A hatchery is the most efficient tributary in the river basin it exists in. Hatchery fish don't all return to the hatchery. As Tug says, salmon are adaptable. One has to wonder about the influence of 125 years of hatchery production/releases. We have natural origin production that are now classified as "wild" fish because they have an adipose fin when they come out of the gravel. How do you tell whether the parents were WxW, WxH, or HxH?

In very broad terms, one can look at a graph of cuts hatchery production since 1989. There's been an almost 50% cut to protect "wild" fish. The graph roughly parallels the loss of natural spawning populations and, interestingly, the decline in the SRKW population.

When you stop providing food things starve. Simple.

A few observations:

The ruling is a recommendation from a magistrate judge. The district judge will make the final decision, but I don’t expect anything different. The recommendation seems to be well-supported, and consistent with legal precedent. But nobody can appeal this ruling until the district judge makes it final.

This was a partial win for WFC. The judge is recommending closure of the SE AK Chinook fishery but she did not enjoin the additional hatchery production for SRKW’s. WFC is probably not happy about the split decision.

This decision does not affect the Canadian troll fishery off the BC Coast. But the Canadians have cut back on their troll fishery considerably b/c of the impact on SRKW’s. It’s helpful that ocean harvest reductions in both countries seem to be occurring.

It’s likely the Chinook returns to the Columbia, and likely Puget Sound, will go up. Perhaps considerably. It would be great to quantify the increase in returns because of the reduced harvest pressure, but that might be difficult to tease out.

Unless the increase in Chinook salmon can be accurately predicted, fishing in the Lower Columbia is going to become considerably more uncertain. We saw this last fall, and we might see it again in the spring. In short, if there are more Chinook than is forecasted, we will hit the allocation limit faster. And the fishery will be shut down until the pre-season forecast can be updated (as the fish start coming over BON). And that might not happen until the run is almost thru the Lower Columbia. It’s great for the folks fishing upstream of BON, especially the Tribes, but not for the folks fishing the Lower Columbia.

I still believe the best way to increase the production of fall Chinook, and help SRKW’s, is to let the hatchery fish spawn rather than using barriers to keep them off the spawning grounds. It’s unbelievable that NMFS is spending millions to do something the fish will do for free.

As an example, the weir on the Kalama River removed 14,411 hatchery adult Chinook (tules) this past fall from the river. If those adults were allowed to spawn, they would produce as many out-migrating sub-yearlings as most hatcheries. And it wouldn’t cost anyone a dime. The fish will do that for free. But noooooo. NMFS wants to crank up hatchery production rather than produce more wild smolts. Hard to believe.

The weirs that keep hatchery fish off the spawning grounds continues to be a fish management failure of the highest order. But the real problem is that neither NMFS or WDFW will admit this, given the $$’s that have gone into these facilities. And so it continues.....

cohoangler -
Don't thing this decision will result in an significant increase in PS Chinook returns. The limited data I could find (Stillaguamish and Snohomish) only about 5% of the total harvest occurs in Alaska. BC takes a much larger share so reductions there would be more impactful. The Columbia upriver brights would be the big winner. I don't thing it would make a detectable difference for the springers. Shocking few are caught in any marine fisheries.

In many of the Puget Sound streams increasing the number hatchery fish would unlikely to significantly increase the wild production. Many of the the basin are on the average producing less than 1 recruit/spawner and that ration declines as the total number of spawners increase. For example, the most recent data on the Stillaguamish was the average R/S for escapements below 1,000 was 0.77 and for those over 1,500 it fell to 0.50 - a push.

I continue to argue that the biggest action the managers could do with PS Chinook for the orcas would be selective breeding of hatchery stocks for older/larger returning adults. Currently the average PS hatchery Chinook caught in PS summer recreational fishery is 28.5 inches (less than 10#) and 3.6 years old. At some of the hatcheries the adults collected at the rack is even younger (lots of 2-year jacks which are too small (less than 22 inches) to be legal in a marine fishery. I'm guessing increasing the average age of those returning hatchery fish to say age 4 would increase the overall biomass of chinook by a 1/3 without increasing the numbers. It would take significantly fewer to satisfy the orcas diet needs.

Curt

Since, at least in AK, the size at age for adult salmon is decreasing, that indicates lack of food for the salmon. They are going slower. As Smalma noted, we need bigger and older fish but to get that there needs to be the food resources. It is more complex than just closing a few troll fisheries, but that's a start.

CM -
The size of Chinook salmon across their range has been shrinking for at least a century. A major driver has been selectivity of fishing methods.

A couple examples -
The historical information shows us during the early 1900s the typical gear used in the Skagit in river spring Chinook gill net fishery (a non-treaty fishery) had a stretch 9.5 inches. Such gear would be very efficient in capturing the larger fish (say over 30#s) but fish smaller than 15 #s could potentially pass through the mesh. The very definition of selective against the larger fish.

In a 1970s Sam Wright (WDF) paper he made the case that the minimum size limit in the troll fishery was selecting against the faster growing fish. He based his argument on the fact that the faster growing fish exceeded the minimum size during their second year at sea while the slower growing fish would not enter the fishery (exceed the min. size) until their third year. The result would greater exploitation on the faster growing segment of the population. Over time this was expected to lead to smaller size at a given age.

While the forage abundance is important, we can not overlook the impacts from our fishing and in this case the impacts from fishing on the feeding grounds. Those impacts are more easily (if the managers had the will) than changing ocean conditions.

Curt