IMHO "Ocean conditions", means we really don't know whats going on.

Ocean conditions dictate overall abundance, habitat dictates abundance during poor ocean conditions.
Yet we don't have any recovery even during good ocean conditions, just look at the steelhead populations, good ocean conditions and bad ocean conditions yet stocks fail to recover, in spite of decades of no retention.
Steelhead have failed to recover even with the no take policy, harvest reform hasn't help recover any stocks, anywhere from northern Calif. to the Canadian border, with or without Tribal influence.
Calling for more of the same just seems like making the same mistakes over and over, but expecting different results.

Freespool,

It would help if there were a common definition of recovery, instead of just tossing the term around as though everyone meant the same thing, when they don't. I'll offer one that's meaningful: Recovery is achieved when a depressed population can consistently, through natural production, produce a recruit to spawner ratio greater than one. When that happens, a population can and will expand to fill most of its habitat capacity. For Columbia R. chinook and steelhead above Bonneville that means reducing existing mortality rates, mostly from poor dam passage, so that SAR = R/S>1 when ocean conditions are poor (see comments to SW). However, reducing mortality from any source helps achieve the desired outcome of more recruits per spawner, whether it's fencing a creek in Podunk, Idaho, or reducing irrigation diversions, or adding better diversion screens, reducing harvest mortality, or most significantly: improving juvenile survival and passage around dams.


Stinking Waters,

Good and poor ocean conditions are interpreted (by those of us who think we know something) in two ways generally. Those are smolt to adult survival and growth rates. Smolt to adult survival is estimated with marked and CWT (coded wire tagged) fish. Average return rates vary by species and release location. For example, coho survival from Columbia River tribs averages half that of coho from WA coastal and Puget Sound tribs. Below average survival rates = poor ocean conditions, and above average survival = good ocean conditions.

Growth rates, when monitored, are measured by catching coho or chinook, usually, on feeding grounds. If they are larger than average for that date (relative to abundance), then ocean conditions are good. If they are smaller than average for that date, then ocean conditions are poor. I don't know that this type of monitoring is done more than anecdotally because sample sizes are small, local variation is great, and conditions vary over time within a year, so it's hard to make solid estimates from it.

Contrary to your and Stlhdr1's thoughts, above average WA coastal troll and ocean sport catches are positively correlated with above average freshwater chinook and coho harvests and escapements (spring chinook excluded since they don't show up in ocean fisheries in significant numbers). Chinook fishing off the WA coast has been pretty good this summer; coho fishing has been poor; both seem to correlate with expected returns to the CR.

Sg

I appreciate the explanation Sg.

I must admit my comments to Keith were rather tounge in cheek. I find it hard to believe ocean troll and sport fisheries on salmonids would greatly affect recovery. My concern of course is with in-river treaty/non-treaty commercial gillnet fisheries.

Your comments concerning using smolt to adult survival rates as one of the measuring sticks for ocean conditions confirms some of my suspicions. While growth rates may seem to provide a good calculus of overall ocean conditions on the surface, the sample size and variation factors prove to provide too little data to make an overall determination.

Could there be other factors involved affecting smolt to adult survival rates? Perhaps the fact that these smolt spent their lives in concrete pens until entering the river? River conditions at the time of release? Predators in the estuary? In-river competition for food?

Seems some of the above factors could vary widely from basin to basin making it difficult to find a baseline or common factor in all basins so as to attribute ocean conditions to smolt to adult survival rates.

I guess my general point is,....how in the he!! would we know for certain whether ocean conditions are good or bad? I am not contending that ocean conditions remain static over time. Perhaps we should just look to other factors that we 1) have more control over and 2) can properly measure so as to attribute common factors directly affecting recovery.

NOAA doesn't believe you.

Quote out of DEIS

"For example, Alaska is not in the project area,
11 but because the alternatives would have varying effects on Alaska fisheries (since hatchery-origin
12 fish produced in the Columbia River basin are caught in Alaska), Alaska is included in the
13 analysis area for socioeconomics".

NOAA models have 11 chinook stocks from the CR mixed in with PS Chinook. I can tell you without any doubt that if the feds believe that the CR chinook belong in that group. There is some serious take going on.

Any problems go talk to NOAA.

Steelhead don't stop at the canadian border and look at earlier posts in this thread that show various examples of steelhead take.

Can you cite any PNW steelhead stocks that have recovered to the point of delisting?

what about the road to recovery ?, do you think the hsrg recommendations for the grays river chinook will lead to recovery ?

http://www.hatcheryreform.us/hrp_downloa...ok_01-31-09.pdf

Out of the Hatchery DEIS.

Limiting factor: Physical, chemical, or biological features that impede species and their independent 20 populations from reaching a viable status.

They also used the Snake river sockeye as an example of low numbers in their run as a limiting factor.

You can weed through that or call NOAA. They'll set you straight.

Freespool

What is the split on poor and good years in the last 20 years of ocean conditions?

The ocean conditions off the PNW and Alaska are control primarily by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO, this phenomenon dictates our ocean conditions.

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~mantua/REPORTS/PDO/PDO.pdf

Evidence gleaned from the instrumental record of climate data identifies a robust, recurring
pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the mid-latitude North
Pacific basin. Over the past century, the amplitude of this climate pattern has varied irregularly
at interannual-to-interdecadal time scales. There is evidence of reversals in the prevailing
polarity of the oscillation occurring around 1925, 1947, and 1977; the last two
reversals correspond with dramatic shifts in salmon production regimes in the North
Pacific Ocean. This climate pattern also affects coastal sea and continental surface air
temperatures, as well as streamflow in major west coast river systems, from Alaska to California.

Monthly World population figures:
07/01/10 6,853,019,414
08/01/10 6,859,480,895
09/01/10 6,865,942,377
10/01/10 6,872,195,424
11/01/10 6,878,656,906
12/01/10 6,884,909,953
01/01/11 6,891,371,434
02/01/11 6,897,832,916
03/01/11 6,903,669,093
04/01/11 6,910,130,575
05/01/11 6,916,383,622
06/01/11 6,922,845,104
07/01/11 6,929,098,151


not that these have a bearing on the problem.....

That's a difference in the first 30-day period of 6,461,481 people. That's a lot of mouths to feed.

edit for clarity

Freespool, I think Slab Happy and I want you to answer the question
of how many poor and good years there was in the last 20 years concerning ocean conditions.

I need to compare your good year to poor year theory. Because I'm getting to a point that I don't believe it exists.

The real problem seems to be your reluctance to look the information up yourself, relying instead on me to do it for you.

NOAA thinks you are a joke.

"Middle Columbia River steelheed:
Ocean conditions have been generally poor over most of the last 20 years".

So what time frame are you comparing good to poor years?

Not sure what your trying to say LL.
Are you saying that populations are not dependent on good or bad ocean conditions?

Here's some research that sheds more light on this issue.

http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/ocean/05_trends.htm


More on how the PDO impacts our salmon populations.
For those who are saying ocean conditions and salmon abundace don't interact, the PDO is the engine that drives ocean conditions, good or bad.

http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/PDO.htm

While this thread may be gargantuan, what is being discussed has been a topic of discussion amongst salmon harvesters for the past 5000 years. The present discussion has the possibility of drawing on information gathered by people whose interest is not always harvest, it's called science and in many cases it may be the same as traditional knowledge. It can be misleading though to quote second hand sources for science, the original work should be read.

We do know a great deal about what is going on in the ocean and salmon. It doesn't receive much attention from USA managers though because they are keyed to freshwater. Japan and Russia used to monitor high seas salmon conditions but recently have stopped. For NOAA the ocean ends 200 mile off our shores, they do not do salmon research in international waters. Presently there is no monitoring of salmon in international waters. There has been in the past, for over 50 years UW participated in some level of "High Seas" salmon research. If you are interested in ocean salmon science visit the following UW libraries web site and search the collection for High Seas Salmon. I think you will find about 500 down loadable publications. The top publication under recent submissions addresses many of the comments in this thread, you can read it before it is news.

High Seas Salmon

Many of the questions about steelhead and the "High Seas" were discussed in a recent UW SAFS masters thesis. It can be downloaded from the following site. It is 107 pages, much of the discussion of statistics and methods might not be of interest but it does address many of the questions in the last part of this thread. Megan Atcheson, the student who wrote the thesis received some support from WSC.

Interannual Variation in ...systems

Boater,

I don't know, but I doubt the Grays River chinook will recover under the HSRG recommendations. Their model assumes a 50% harvest rate, and the most productive alternative assumes a 10% habitat improvement, without specifying what that would be. Juvenile rearing habitat could sure be better, but I don't think that is limiting. Spawning habitat is trashed, and I think average annual flooding and sedimentation of redds will keep chinook egg to smolt survival at well under 12%. I don't know if a naturally reproducing chinook run with a 50% harvest rate can sustain itself, let alone increase, with that low of egg to smolt rate.

Sg

Freespool,

I hear that when I was gone today that you edited your original post two times. Adding 1 link this morning and adding the second link this afternoon. What is that an old gill netter trick to try to bolster your position when you think nobody is looking?

To answer your question. I try to have a basic understanding of the ocean from previous posts from WA1A and the links he provides. I always look forward to new links to add to the other ones I have collected. A thread awhile back set me back at least 2 years behind in my reading though. Thanks

One of your concerns throughout this thread has been stocks that continue to not recover. The feds with the DEIS appears to be heading in that direction of assessing all rivers and working on the problem from weirs to selective fishing. Working on the rivers that will need the most attention first if I’m reading it right.

If and when they do start to recover, then I hope that my concern of MSY in my neck of the woods doesn’t bog down the process and put a lid on recovery.

The point isn't whether or not I edited my post, but rather did you read them?
Just doing what you seem incapable of, and that is looking things up and finding answers.