FB, maybe because they haven't been targeted as hard? Prior to Keta roe becoming a delicacy in Asia chum numbers were huge no more. When someone creates a market the numbers will drop like a stone. I heard Steelhead numbers will always be lower than Salmon (don't recall the reason) for a given system.


Habitat is huge don't get me wrong. That said everything contributes, escapement, habitat, water temps, food, predation, ocean conditions, and fisheries.

Is this a place we could start from to build some common ground?

FishBear,

I agree habitat is a major player however with your analogy on fresh water residency with the short timers doing well while those species with extended juvenile fresh water residency suffering how do you explain the Snohomish system coho as compared to winter steelhead? They both spend over a year as juveniles in the river before smolting however the coho are relatively heathly while the winter steelhead are struggling. It seems the Snohomish coho really rebounded when commercial harvest was reduced/eliminated off Vancouver Island. Ocean conditions seem to still be the major limiting factor for Snohomish steelhead.

Beezer

Beezer, that is assuming the steelhead are smolting and making it to the ocean.

In the case of PS you assume that they make it through the Sound. Out of 20 steely smolt out migrants with transmitters only 1 made the straights. They got out of the river so you choose what happened.

While predatory birds,e.g., Cormorants, may not be the major problem anent smolt distruction, they certianly play a signifiant role in keeping smolt from reaching the saltchuck. The Eastern and in the Southern States have received permission to thin out their cormorant populations in order to protect their stocked smallmouth bass and catfish farms.
I think Washington State should do the same in order to protect our smoths and planted trout.

You know aunty as we argue over habitat, harvest, everything........I wonder why the thought that if you harvest every creature from the bottom to the top over the food chain how salmonids are to prosper? Killer whales, well they need salmon as do others such as otter and oh well big list.

You can not MSY every speicies havestable in the food chain plus impact the lower end of the food chain with all human activity and think that all hell is not going to be close at hand at the upper end of the food chain.

As for water quality. It is much more PC to dribble some bunch of garbage out on how we will save PS when the truth is that people are killing it. From chemicals to run, off both urban and rural, it is being used for a toilet...........you just can't see it.

Can you imagine what local politos would say to mandatory growth management in urban PS and landscape managent in rural? Storm run off containment? No more phosphates? Easy to be enviro when someone else feels the pain of footing the bill. We are into PC BS time now......I doubt it would be a winning bet that it will change soon.

Could be!.......................or we have enough common sense to look past PC crap AND fish PC Crap. They have piled this truck load of sh-- so high and so many people have bought in and are running around spouting it ........ fix habitat, kill hatcheries, it is all the gill netters fault, damn tribes........it is mine, yours, our freinds, everyones fault because the politos know what is unsaid, ain't no way we want to pay for what needs to be done...........oh yes change our life style? When pigs fly! Easier to blame someone else.........feels real good that way. No guilt!

I would be curious on the impact one change might have.

Eliminate the use of roe.

I will admit, I don't fish rivers often with gear and don't use bait. Gear in the sound, flies in the rivers most of the time. That said can't count the number of times I have heard, I need to get a couple of hens for the bait, I only keep the hens for the eggs.... It seams its all about having a huge stock of eggs.

If eggs are more productive at catching fish and we stop their use. We give more fish the chance to spawn (less being caught). More eggs are being deposited and eating more due to the increased biomass.... The habitat already has some monies directed to restoration so those dollars would be better spent.

Can't seem to keep up with folks on here... so I get behind.

We can all have our perspectives but we cannot deny that freshwater habitat is the key... sorry. You can throw all the LE officers out there you want and if the habitat is not producing fish you will not achieve recovery.

Don't confuse what happens in the salt with what happens in the fresh. I am pointing out that if the spawners that do come back are not successful... if the fry do not get produced... if the fingerlings don't have a place to live and prosper... if smolts are not produced to migrate... then the saltwater survival question is moot.

As for the Snohomish, I listened to Dave Somers a while back... Dave is currently a Snohomish County Commissioner but he spent his professional career as a habitat bio in the Snohomish. He was telling an audience that the Allen Creek drainage in the Snohomish was the most productive coho habitat in the Snohomish system 30 years ago. What is it today?

Marysville

Hey Aunty, how do we define good habitat? I am getting killed with that one off and on. A very pretty stream can be very sterile created by the lack of nutrients. It seems habitat is almost like people see a picture in thier mind of the winding water and apply it as a standard. Habitat to me is everything top to bottom and most importantly the things I can not see. Seems to be a view held by few.

Got the messy part. Friend once discribed a good natural stream as a stinky smelly mess that looked like hell 6 months of the year. Your nose will hate it fish love it.

TwoDogs,

I'm curious to hear your answer on the WDFW commissioners and Wecker question from above... I'm not a bio, and much of this stuff is lost on me, but the WDFW commissioners stuff is tangible... Any thoughts?

Brian

First... what "very good habitat" in upper Hood Canal are you talking about, specifically? Not even sure I know what the upper Hood Canal is... Skokomish or Dosewallips or Dewato or what?

Second... I can do what ever I chose to... but I am not saying that habitat is the one and only problem, I am saying it is the KEY problem among many.

Third... you raise a good point. However, if human inconvenience were a serious part of the equation we might not be having this debate right now. I contend that serious human inconvenience has not happened with regard to salmon recovery in the Pacific NW.

and Finally... your analogy makes no sense. Here is one that does... a rock climber is continually loosing his/her footing and falls often. These are short falls that, for each event, do not cause severe injury on their own but cumulatively and over time start to have some serious consequences and threatens the long term health, and if left untreated, the life of the climber. A team of medical professionals works on the climber at each juncture. Some are fixing sprains, some cuts, some contusions. There is some collaboration by these professionals but it is not always well coordinated. Some broken bones are starting to happen and the tough question seems to be...

shall we try and stop the falling or shall we work on them broken bones as fast as we can before the next fall?

A Guteater and $2,000,000 couldn't fashion a 4-season teepee,let alone anything more significant and requisite of thought.

Personally I did not favor the bill to change the WFWC, and I made my opinion known. I also don't think it was in the tribes' best interest to support it, anyway, no matter what the merits were. But there are many considerations that I don't know about that go into developing a policy position, and I do greatly respect the thoughtfulness with which the tribes develop theirs. There are life experiences and history involved that I will never be able to fully understand. I am glad that I have the freedom to state my position without repercussions.

Regarding the other question about confirming the commissioner, I don't know too much about that, sorry.

I just returned from a two week trip through around the margins of the Columbia Basin, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. My first look at PP's and I see three closely related threads, "Gulf of Alaska's salmon become scarce as ocean cur", "That is a damn good question! Habitat or fish?", and this thread.

One thing the three threads share is a limited view of what habitat is. Habitat is defined as a place where an organism or a biological population normally lives or occurs. In the case of salmon 50% to 90% of their life is spent in the ocean. It is important and contrary to the views expressed in the newspaper article referenced in the "Gulf of Alaska's salmon become scarce as ocean cur" thread it is not a black box or a mystery. There is a body of knowledge about the marine habitat but there are many questions that need to be answered. The ocean habitat is not uniform, it is patchy and always changing. There are many ecosystem questions that need to be answered. We all know about the salmon bycatch problems but how many of us have thought about the effect of the large squid bycatchs, a favorite food of chinook. If only a small fraction of the money spent on the freshwater habitat was available for ocean salmon research the knowledge gained could provide a more efficient basis for the freshwater work. Unfortunately at this time the federal government provides no funding and does no ocean salmon research.

Most of the trip we camped at BLM sites, several of them were on reservoirs. One thing is obvious. Sport fishing on the reservoirs is a big part of the local economies. That coupled with irrigation and cheap power makes it obvious that most of the population east of the Cascades are willing to spend a lot of tax money on recovery projects that may not work but they are not ready to do anything that will change their life style. I think the same can be said for most of the population on this side of the Cascades. We can discuss salmon recovery endlessly and spend hundreds of millions of dollars but until the whole system is understood and addressed results will be minimal. Ecosystems are dynamic, the idea of restoration is wrong because whatever it was or is it will be different in the future. Recovery might work but it has to be addressed from the viewpoint that the human animal is an integral part of the ecosystem.

Really well put but I would disagree that all or most in the thread have a limited view of what habitat is but rather do not define it as well as you do in clinical terms.

You hit the same point aunty, CM, several others have hit on. You can't harvest the food chain top to bottom and not affect many speices in one manner or another let alone those at the top. To restore habitat as 1st priority rather than protect what is still working is, as I said before, is past stupid. We don't have enough money to fix the needed habitat and if we did it would, in all likelyhood, not produce measureable results until long after we are all dead if then. Somehow the idea that we can fix habitat has become PC so this is what we do, no guilt that way! Also less painful than recognizing the fundamental truth....as to poeple & fish................the manner in which we live as a people and salmonids are not compatable. The fish can not change and we refuse. Score people 10 fish 0...........fish loose.