SlabQuest

That comment displays much of the two-dimensional thinking that currently plagues many of our resource managers. That many fish arriving all at once would pose water quality as well as oxygen problems, however a wild run of fish that was exposed to this issue would more than likely adapt by lengthening the timing of arrival in the stream. Natural selection would favor the offspring of the fish that did not arrive all at once. Number of fish, size of the river, AND the timing when they all return are the dimentions that should be considered. Further, as oxygen levels began to drop many of the stronger fish could migrate further up or down stream to survive and thus pass on their superior genes. Natural selection favors the strong.

Salmo g

Please describe the actual properties of the Gulf of Alaska that make it more productive now compared to the area where our fish grew in the 1870’s. What is different now?

Clerk,

So you're sayin that the lake and the incredible rainfall @ Kodiak are not factors?

BTW, in case your mom didn't tell you, it is impolite to begin a conversation with an insult.

Mans impact on our rivers cannot be identified in one post.Rich you have hit the nail on the head as Far as I am concerned.Take man out of the equation?Is not going to happen.What do we do in the meantime??

We do what they did on the Keogh on Vancouver Island.
stop clear cutting the rivers
restore the habiitat
create off channel habitat
fertilize the streams
let the WILD fish do their thing

It is restoreing their fish in spite of bad ocean conditions!!!!!!!

Ocean conditions is an absolute cop out in my opinion

I think we need herring, candlefish, and sardine hatcheries to supply more food base for the salmonids!!!!!!!! :p

Here a betime story for you, all about this little problem:

Once upon a time there was a brilliant scientist named W.E Ricker, who deduced that the survival of the eggs from each fish declined when too many spawned, and so he developed a mystic curve who's apex showed the exact density of fish spawning that produced the highest survival of the eggs from each fish. This density he converted into numbers for each river that were optimum, and decreed that every fish that escaped above this number was a waste and should be harvested. This magical point was enthroned as the God MSY (maximum sustainable yield), drummed into the heads of all educated bioligists, and used to this day to manage fish returns. When the WDFW/Tribal High Priests of fish biology decree that a river is at maximum escapement, they mean that it is at MSY, thus all is well.

Problem is, W.E. in all his brilliance never bothered to try to figure out why, if it was bad for the fish to escape above MSY, they continued to do so when left to their own hedonistic devices. Even the most simple pagan ecologist knows that species do not evolve undesirable traits and survive for very long. So if overescapement is undesirable, why do salmon do it?

The obvious answer is this: What to our eyes appears to be gross overescapement is a desirable trait and ensures survival, thusly: The first to spawn clean the silt out of the gravel so that the majority of subsequent spawners have high quality incubation conditions. In times of ocean disaster and low return the first fish use only the best sites remaining from the previous year's excessive activities. In times of extreme floods the abundance of late spawners still have a chance to keep the run going. Predators (natural ones anyway) are satiated and leave most of the fish alone. Those salmon who's eggs are dug up nourish next year's young and all their diverse relatives (cutts, resident rainbow, steelhead smolts, dollies, etc). And because of the poor nutrient conditions in high rainfall river systems that salmon prefer, all those tons of dead fish fertilize the entire ecosystem and grow all of the invertebrates that their young need to survive and reach the ocean in high numbers and prime condition. Plus a number of other good things pagan ecologists haven't thought of yet and that High Priests of biology would never even consider, as it defiles the God MSY.

The river on MSY therefore has dirty gravel so egg survival plummets, as there are no good sites left without intersticeis in the gravel plugged by years of silt. If the river floods all are wiped out. Natural predators are reviled because they are destroying the run, which the unnatural predators sanctioned by the High Priests have already reduced to MSY, and are harrassed and hunted by the unnatural predators who are the only beings capable of holding the run down to MSY. All the resident fish die out even before ESA can notice them, and most of the lovely cutts and dollies live in remnants only on ESA because there is nothing else to eat. And everyone's remaining offspring starve in the unproductive river and enter the ocean undersized, in poor condition, and in low numbers, as there are no nutrients in the ecosystem.

Sorry, they did not all live happily ever after. In the end very few if any lived at all.

spawnout

great post...

I'm all for managing our streams for maximum escapement of all salmonid stocks based upon currently available habitat....this includes hatchery releases. I'd like to see hatchery science evolve to where it it fits within this paradigm of not overwhelming a system with it's output...but supports a systems recovery for all stocks. It's called adaptive management.

Gooose thats what we'd all like to see. However it has never heppened and there is no magic piece of evidence to suggest it ever could. Maybe it can and that should be our goal, but until then we need hatchery practices that have less impact on wild fish. That effort has never ever been made. people always talk about new hatchery priactices and new hatchery science like it is something that is making things better for wild fish. Well that simply is not happening in WA state hatcheries. I am all for balance in the hatchery system but we are still so lopsided pro hatchery that any movement further that way does not promote any kind of balance. Wild fish managment does not exsist in the state of Washington. It never has and likely never will.

Good Im glad I got things going on this.

Habitat, I do not buy it not for a minute. If the fish are there they will find a way.

Many of the Alaska and BC rivers that have huge fish runs have terrible natural habitat. Super high water flows at times massive amouts of sitation from glaciers and erosion from the freeze and thaw every year. And last but not least most of the maninland rivers are frozen 5 months out of the year and this is
when the young fry and smolt are in the river. Cant be much to eat and not very favorable
conditions.

And about to many dead fish decaying taking away all the oxogen. Well heres the answer to that question.

My cousin guides on this river and is there every year. On a humpy year he says that dead humpies are three feet deep twenty feet wide on the river banks of both sides on all twenty miles of river. At the mouth of the river the dead humpies are stacked every where for a few miles in both directions. Every rock in the river is stacked with half a dozen humpies infront of it. every branch or snag in the river is covered with humpies. Every year the lake is full of dead sockey as well as the banks covered with near a million dead sockey.

All of these dead fish dont smell good but they are the key to the 3 million fish production.

We down here have much more favorable conditions for the fish.

Habitat is a good copout for over harvest. If the fish were there they would find a way.

Ya the bad habitat isnt used by the fish to spawn in. Well maybe because most of our rivers have so few fish compared to what they should have the fish that are there get the very best habitat due to lack of compitition.

In the river on Kodiak I describes every squar inch of the river is used for spawning good and bad habitat. Fish spawn ontop of each other 3 and 4 times. And yes 600,000 sockey or so spawn in the lake but all the rest of the fish spawn in the river.

Very educational post, Spawnout. That info reinforces my suspicions on the faulty application of the MSY concept.

And the bedtime story format made it understandable even to us who can only think in two dimensions.

My only point is that every river is different. There are dozens, if not hundreds of factors impacting spawning success. Maybe a low water temp slows the rot rate, maybe bears consume a significant number of fish, etc, etc. To compare a river on Kodiak Is. with one in WA is apples and oranges.

Should rivers be left alone to do the wild thing?
Maybe so. I think it should at least be tried on some rivers. But I would expect some successes and some disasters. Disasters are part of natural evolution, but humans, with their short attention span are too impatient to tolerate anything they view as a setback.

Ah, but Rich, about that habitat....

Fish cannot get above impassible dams and culverts. Unlike your rivers in Alaska, every one in Washington has dams, culverts, or both on either their mainstems or tributaries that prevent fish from using the habitat above them. The Elwha, for example, do you think that only hatchery/harvest is what prevents historic populations from repopulating that river to it's former abundance. Of course not, I know, but that is what habitat loss means.

Alaska also does not have mega-ports that have filled 98% of the historic saltmarsh and intertidal area around them. Rivers systems like the Puyallup, Green, and Snohomish can never recover their former fish populations, as there is no estuary left for outmigrating juvenile salmon to adapt from fresh to salt water. What little habitat is there is horribly contaminated and polluted, and fish rearing there eat food full of some of the most toxic carcinogens known to man. Some survive but most perish as a result.

Finally, Alaska does not have half of it's shoreline covered by bulkheads and urban development, and the rest polluted by untreated stormwater and failing septic systems, like the state of Washington and particularly Putrid Sound does, with the attendant loss of baitfish spawning beds and primary productivity from eelgrass beds. Our few baby salmon that get to be large enough to start chasing baitfish can't find very many because they have little spawning habitat also.

It's a 3 legged stool, harvest/hatcheries/habitat, cut one let off and you fall down, cut them all short and you can't reach the table. It is all of these problems that could be solved real simply....if Washington was not the most densly populated state west of the Mississippi, and was instead populated as densly as Alaska.... I know, lets extripate 98% of the humans in Washington - how about all those that either don't fish or that snag go first?

Although I am a beliver in the 3H principle I have to say that fish will find a way. I don't know how many of you are from the California area but about 8 or 9 years ago an article in the San Jose Mercury News caught my attention. Basically after a 30 year period of not a single Chinook being seen in the Guadalupe river a run of about 50 to 100 fish started by itself. Now this river runs right through downtown, through culverts, drainages and other seemingly unnavigable waters. It would have to first cross water in the San Francisco Bay that is more poluted than anything we have in the Sound and so thoroughly changed in quality that many of the species that are found in the Bay are listed as unhealthful to eat. These salmon were watched by the biologists and only after some homeless people started catching the fish and eating them did it make the news. This was 4 years after the first return run was noted! By then the run was getting so big that it began to garner public support to change the river back to its more natural shape and condition. streets were torn up, culverts dug up, drainages blocked and polution cleaned up. The run improved and finally will be made to be legal to fish. All of this after a 30 year hiatus. Genetic testing showed that these fish were not hatchery origin! Surprising since there is such a small run of native fish there.

Imagine, a city the size of Seattle with a river that has been the cesspool for years covered so that cars and business could do what they want, ripping up and changing back as close to origional that same river that runs through its heart. Cool. No one planned it. No one prepped the river first. No one planted hatchery raised fish first. No one stopped hatcheries from cranking out as many fish for the ocean fishery as possible....what did they do? They had a moritorium on salmon fishing in the bay area. Open ocean, o.k. Bay - no no. They gave nature a chance to do what she does best. Overcome, and heal. This applied to sport, commercial and indian.

Instead of ripping each other a new one over what group should do what - all of us should cut back on how much we take. If we cut in half the number of fish taken each year then there would be that many more fish available to spawn and increase the size of the runs. Think about it - after 10 years we could really have something to talk about not complain about.

Yes, dams and issues will remain to be dealt with but lets let nature figure out how many fish a river or system will hold....before we came alond who determined the escapement level? I say let us all cut our take, let nature determine the # of fish a system will handle and then enjoy the increased opportunity for all.

Busy;

Sounds good….. but!!!!
You are forgetting the "golden rule"!

The ones who have the "gold" make the rules!
In this case it's WDFW and the commercial fishery that has all the gold and they are the ones who are making the rules that we must follow.

Cowlitzfisherman
Is the taste of the bait worth the sting of the hook????

I have not forgottern cowlitsfisherman...just hoping that some of this I'm right/you're wrong crap stops. To a certain extent everything that has been said is correct....the one thing that has not happened is a determined effort to reduce the 'take'. As long as there is a goal that 'reduced numbers of salmon means that price of salmon will stay high' and a high price paid for salmon eggs the slaughter will continue. Don't get me wrong...I like to catch and keep my few each year as well but I never have filled a salmon catch card on my own. This is my belief and I do not force others to do what I want or believe. I also don't look down on others if they do fill more than one catch card. Recovery has to start somewhere though. If the people with the 'gold' will not listen to reason then we need to do something with the 'gold'. After all, they get if from us.

Way to go, Busy. I agree. We need to cut back - sportsman included. BUT, it's not the sport fisherman that are taking the majority of these fish. It's tribal and commercial...and they will continue to harvest if the GOLD is there.

So, who holds the gold?

We do. The people who go to the fish market and buy fish. We hold the gold.

If you want to put a major crimp in the commercial and tribal harvest, buy farm raised fish...and support salmon farming regulation, so it doesn't get out-of-hand. If there's no money in commercial fishing, no one will do it.

The big money for eggs is in Japan not here in the U.S. Why do we allow our resource to be exported to other countries? It is our resource. It belongs to all of the people in the U.S. Tribal and non-tribal. It is also our food supply. If there is a shortage then why not ban exports first thing? I'm willing to bet that a ban on exports will do wonders for the fish population. The price will be driven down and there is almost no egg market that I know of here in the U.S.

Now I like that idea Stlhead! It actually worked for our national and state forests and banning export of a public fish resource should be just as legal as banning export of a public forest resource. The price of bait eggs, for those of you unfortunate enough not to catch all the hatchery hens you need :p should also go down. Might someone here who is connected with one of our local state reps talk one of them into proposing such a bill? "To prevent wastage of our invaluable fish resources it shall be illegal for all dealers of salmon products to export salmon eggs without also exporting, in whole or in part, the entire salmon. For processed fish, one whole fish for each skein of eggs, or two filets for each skein of eggs, etc....." That would stop those egg strippers of any race cold. I like it

I can't believe that you guys didn't understand my last posting

Quote:

"Sounds good….. but!!!!
You are forgetting the "golden rule"!
The ones who have the "gold" make the rules!

In this case, the eggs are the "gold"

Cowlitzfisherman
Is the taste of the bait worth the sting of the hook????

Dang Stlhead, I think that you're onto something. Much like the export/posession of rhino horns and tiger scrotums has been made illegal in an effort to stop African poaching. Isn't some caviar illegal? And I think some shark finning is now illegal. All similar practices - wasting an endangered animal for some little trinket.

But, yes, prying the "gold" from the fingers of them that has it is the trick, eh? But you have to start somewhere.