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FY, from the Tacoma News Tribune-

Recovery box snafus blight tangle-net fishery

Bob Mottram; News Tribune outdoors writer

It shouldn’t be this hard to manage a fishery.

R.P. Van Gytenbeek, a Fish and Wildlife Commission member from Seattle, was the first to call attention to the situation. He did so at a commission meeting in March when he pointed to the experimental tangle-net fishery then under way in the Columbia River.

This is the second year that Washington and Oregon have tested tangle nets there in the hope they will allow more commercial fishing. They’re under study as a possible replacement for gillnets in at least some commercial fisheries, because gillnets usually kill fish by depriving them of oxygen.

Tangle nets are designed to entangle only a fish’s jaw, allowing it to breathe.

The idea is to use the new nets in places where selective fishing is required in order to protect threatened stocks. In this case, the aim was to take fin-clipped hatchery spring chinook in the Columbia while allowing safe passage of steelhead and wild spring chinook.

Commercial fishermen must pull their tangle nets within a certain time after setting, and remove the fish from it. If the net contains nontargeted fish that appear to be in distress, the fishermen must place them in an on-board recovery tank to resuscitate them before letting them go. Oxygenated water is pumped through the tank from outside the boat.

During the first week of the commercial spring chinook fishery on the Columbia, Van Gytenbeek said, commercial fishermen caught about 10 steelhead for every chinook. That was part of the problem. The rest of the problem, he said, was that a lot of the commercials out there fished with no recovery tanks on board or with inoperative ones.

Van Gytenbeek said that information came from reports distributed by chief Bruce Bjork, the department’s top law enforcement officer.

“What they did, they issued warning tickets the first week,” Van Gytenbeek said, “then the chief said they would enforce it hard-nosed from that point. I’m assuming they did.”

But they didn’t. The number of citations issued has been zero.

By March 22, enforcement people gave 25 verbal warnings to fishermen whose recovery boxes were not operating, said Capt. Murray Schlenker, enforcement supervisor for the department in Vancouver. But, after discussions with department lawyers and the local prosecutor’s office, the agency decided it couldn’t issue citations because of the way the regulation was written.

“It said (the boxes) had to be ‘operable,’” Schlenker said, “but not ‘operating.’ Many of them had operable boxes, but didn’t have them turned on.”

Later in the season, fishery managers changed the rule to require that the boxes be operating.

That still didn’t eliminate the problem.

“According to (the rule), if the fish was lethargic it had to go in the boxÊ,” Schlenker said. “But define ‘lethargic.’ It was (the fisherman’s) definition.”

Washington enforcement officers found no one on the water without a box, Schlenker said, and as the season progressed officers did see fish in them.

“We boarded enough boats and talked with enough (people), we were getting these guys to turn them on and keep them running,” he said.

Cindy LeFleur, who helps manage the fishery for the department, says the netters caught and released more than twice as many fish as they caught and kept. They kept 14,797 hatchery spring chinook during a 15-day fishery that started on Feb. 25 and ended on March 27. They caught and released 14,975 spring chinook that had not been fin-clipped, and caught and released 21,600 steelhead.

The department estimates the “immediate mortality” at less than two percent for steelhead and less than one percent for spring chinook, but Van Gytenbeek said that number is “under severe question by a lot of people.”

Van Gytenbeek wasn’t happy about the lack of use of recovery boxes. He also wasn’t happy about the ratio of steelhead to salmon caught, especially in the first week of the fishery.

“The thing it tells me is we should have looked at it the first couple of days and said the chinook are not here, and have shut it right down,” he said. Managers then could have sampled the run until chinook arrived in larger numbers.

“I’m sure that’s something we’ll have in place next year,” he said.

My concern over this is:

With it being certain that the commercial fishing indudtry will use this recent scenario as leverage to demand that the netting seasons be moved further into the late March thru April peak movement of the lower Col. springer run, that the pro-commercial supporters within the departments could bow to that request - causing much more interuption of the peak of the sportfishing season for us.

There needs to be another anti-netting initiative on the Oregon and/or Washington ballots! Run a better campaign than the failed I-696 a few years ago. A lot was learned from that failure. NSIA, stand up and help us bring another intitiative. RFA and WSC, be there to help out. All of you be there to sign initiative petitions, AND send some monetary support to the initiative groups and campaign headquarters this time!!! Send some letters to the FWD commissions and to state legislators. Take some video of suffering fish stuck in commercial nets. Just be careful that PETA doesn't get ahold of some underwater filming of fighting sport hooked fish. Lots to think about, discuss, and act upon soon.

RT While I understand where you are coming from and agree there needs to not be any nets in the Columbia. I have to say the hell with the sport fishery for spring chinook. The wild winter steelhead being killed is a billion times more important than maintaining enough hatchery chinook for a sport fishery.
The lower Columbia winter steelhead is the most endangered stock of steelhead in Washington State. The only place they exsist in anything resembeling healthy numbers is the Sandy. In all the Washington tribs these fish number in the very low hundreds. The Washougal for instance gets in an exceptional year 300 fish. Most years is less than 200. So to hell with the spring chinook fishery. if they have to move the commercial season later to avoid wild late winter steelhead I am all for that regardless of the impacts on the hatchery chinook fishery, which will likely not be taking place next year anyway.
I agree there shouldn't be commercial nets in the Columbia but until the day that that is reality I say save the wild steelhead... We can go around and around on this but the main thing is that this fishery not take place next year.

Rob,

I should have mentioned that saving wild steelhead is a more important reason for removing the commercial netting fishery in the Columbia River! I strongly agree with you there; the sport fishery on the springers comes second to that. However, I don't agree with your "to hell with the springer sport fishery" statement. We can and do fish selectively by releasing unclipped springers and wild steelhead (to a better than 95% survival rate - as in the smaller rivers like the Washougal).

RT

RT what i meant was that if there is going to be a commercial fishery and doing it later at the peak of the sport fishing season had less of an impact on wild steelhead then by all means i'd want it moved later by all means. In reality however i think if it were moved later we'd see them getting into wild summer steelhead. We just flat out need to stop commercial netting in the Columbia As I said we could argue all the in's and out's of how to maintain a commercial fishery but we will always come back to the fact that the nets need to go. I think we'd both agree with that.

If you do the math on the steelhead netted and released using the 2% mortality figure used[I believe this % is too low] over 460 steelhead died in this springer fishery!!!!!!!!

WARNING! The following is a RANT. You may find this rant emotionally disturbing, so even tho this is the internet, you really are in control, and don't have to read emotionally disturbed, or disturbing, rants.

Tangle nets, fangle shmets. The lower Columbia River needs a commercial net fishery as much as a fish needs a bicycle! Why is it that human technology progresses at such a rapid pace, but humans progress hardly at all? As a human population we may not be stupid, but as a population we continue to behave in a myriad stupid ways.

Not everyone goes fishing recreationally, and there is a legitimate demand for commercially caught fish in our marketplaces. But they don't have to be supplied by lower Columbia River gillnets. You would think there might be allied forces that could take positive action. The direct service industries (DSI) that buy cheap hydropower would like to take a swipe at the commercial fishing; the NWPPC (using BPA money) would like to take a swipe at commercial fishing; and the sport fishing industry would like to take a swipe at commercial fishing. Yet, to no avail.

At various times, in t.i.c. mode, half-serious jest, and in total sincerity suggested that there is an economically, engineeringly, and biologically viable alternative to this antiquated commercial net fishery.

It's no mystery where these hatchery salmon are headed. And the vast majority will get where they're going via the very best engineered fish ladders in the world at Bonneville Dam. For a reasonable fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent to restore Columbia River salmon, that have yet to restore one single damn fish, the Corps could outfit these exquisite fish ladders with a system of samplers, sorters, and traps that would allow steelhead and unmarked wild salmon to continue their upstream migration, and a predetermined percentage of the marked hatchery fish could be sorted and sent off to the market.

More recently, I suggested further, that to better meet the interests and commercial fishing needs of Columbia River Indian Tribes, the Corps could build a reasonable fascimile of the inundated Celilo Falls (still cheaper than all the conservation measures funded by NWPPC that haven't worked)to which the marked hatchery fish could be shunted through chutes and ladders where treaty fishermen would actually be able to harvest more chinook than they are allowed in the mixed stock fishery of wild and hatchery salmon. And wherever I mention these ideas (except here, thanks, friends) everybody laughs like they're totally alien ideas, not worth the time it takes to think about.

While such measures aren't cheap, they are cheaper than actions that have been funded that don't work. If I can contemplate solutions that are technically and enconomically feasible, imagine what the smart scientists and engineers (and social engineers) could actually do, if directed to solve these problems instead of putzing around until extinction solves the fisheries issues.

There are difficult problems; some may have no human solutions. But stuff like this doesn't even make to the "almost hard" catagory. If an asteroid hits planet earth, maybe it's our just reward for our collective stupidity.

End of rant. If you took the time to read this, maybe you need to get a life. I probably do. Been working too much lately.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Once again, I bow down to you, Salmo g.,some of the best solutions to complex problems are found in simple answers.

Another good post Salmo. I have suggested those same things in other posts. In fact, so have you - the last time you served them with a little red table wine if I recall correctly? It came out more clearly this time; and it is sound. The biggest challenge would he getting the Col. Treaty Tribes to go along with the modern platform ideas. It does take a little more physical work to save a lot more wild salmon via selective dipnetting. Do they really care enough about the native fish to do even a slight bit more work such as that? Do they want to see a non-Indian sport fishery? I honestly think the answers are NO and NO, for those two matters. ... It's more feasible that the commercial guys could be bought out by selective hatchery fish entrapment proceeds from Bonneville; or allowed to work that type of harvest there instead of in the lower river with nets. I hope something like that happens soon. It really does seem so simple and obvious of a solution. But like you said, the human race has come sooooooooo much farther along technologically than sociologically in modern times. And that's an understatement!

RT

If you can't even agree to manditory release of all wild steelhead in the sport fishery... how in the hell do you propose to get the nets removed ??? Rant away but its not going to happen as long as the kill mentality is alive and well in Washington state... Not trying to be a dick here... just want you all to know that it sounds pretty shallow when you ***** about nets.

Two comments.

First, the tribes do not see any difference between wild and hatchery fish. They just don't care which fish they kill. Until they do, we are stuck with non-tribal selective fishing and tribal kill everything fishing.

Second, there is no kill allowed on Columbia river Steelhead for sportsanglers; Only tribes and apparently the non-tribal tangle nets. Thats why we *****.

RT has the answer in his first post. The initiative card is the one to play. It isn't the only answer and may not be perfect, but it is the most direct. It is my contention that voicing that one fish is more important than another is your opinion but breeds weekness to our cause. Standing united and holding our individual differences of opinion to ourselves until this battle is won seems more logical to me. So, RT how do we proceed? Do you know the people to contact? How do we get this process started? Or is this board a place to vent and then go our seperate ways? I have other things to do as much as anyone else, but if you and all the rest of us don't do this thing or something better that one of you can come up with, it shows what kind of people we really are. We can sure find a time to come together to have a good fishing party, like F4.
How about a list of willing participants from the various dicussion boards? Break the work up into
pieces and post what progress made daily. If this isn't the way to do it, somebody take the lead and show us how to do it. Please,lets make this happen.

RT, ah yes, it was under the influence, wasn't it? My weak defense it that the work I've been doing lately is too stressful to do sober. I think that's how Jimmy Buffet would say it.

True, the tribes don't care if there is a sport fishery, and their official position is that wild and hatchery fish are one and the same. That's because currently, alleged sameness results in higher catch allocations for the tribes. But if the concept I suggest were developed, and the tribes had a choice of harvesting say 12% of X chinook, or 50% of X chinook (actually about 100% of the chinook that are sorted and shunted to Celilo II), I think they might loosen up under the human attributes of greed and avarice. If they have a viable alternative that offers greater harvests and increased fishing revenue, I'd be very impressed to see them turn it down. Yeah, dipnetting is more work than setnetting, but $$$ is such a great motivator, and I don't really believe that quantity of work has been driving tribal preferences. If quantity of work was the driver, they would opt to have the marked hatchery chinook sort themselves and jump into a fish tote! No dipnet, no setnet, just haul the fish to market!

As for the lower river gillnetters, I still think CFM, dressed in his Mako the Shark disguise, and packing a wad of DSI and NWPPC big bills, could surreptitiously buy up most of the gillnet permits. And for the less willing sellers, his back-up group of "break-a-da-legs" team would end up getting those permits at a significant discount.

And the how? Patience. Rome wasn't built in a day. Step by step. WSC first has to push the statewide wild steelhead release. We take this one small step at a time. Keep your eye on the prize, avoid petty infighting, and don't sweat the small stuff. None dare call it conspiracy! Of course there's a plan. But if I tell ya', I'd hafta' kill ya'. (t.i.c.)

The upshot is: don't focus on why it won't work. Focus on why it will. Alternatively, focus on how to improve it so it will work better.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.