Milt,

I'm not sure what the patronizing BS is that you're referring to, but I'd like to see recovery related discussions that refer to science and data. I'm concerned that some of the recovery goals may be fueled more by emotion than ecosystem productivity.

Keta,

Are you referring to the huge increase in pink salmon abundance in PS? I don't know if it's causal, but pink salmon fry hit the estuary before chum and chinook fry do, and I think they forage on many of the same food sources. The increase in pinks does correlate with the recent decline in natural production of chum and chinook, so pinks could be part of the cause.

Cncfish,

I think we know that hatcheries work. Hatcheries work to create abundant supplies of hatchery fish. Hatcheries can only improve naturally reproducing populations if they are managed for that purpose, and the overwhelming majority are not. And even when they are managed to improve wild populations, they can only do so if natural habitat is currently under-utilized.

Sg

SG, I understand how complicated salmon interactions are and have observed a lower return of chum related to the pink cycle. I also know the chum salmon in those rivers were doing quit well even with large pink runs in the mix. I also know the chum were hammered hard when the Asian roe market demand raised the price of roe way up. I know you fish the Skagit and I'm sure you have noticed the drastic lower abundance of chum. It was only a few years ago the Skagit was full of chum, now so few it's closed to sport fishing? I'm having a hard time putting that much blame for that big of change in that short of time on humpies. I do remember when the Baker Dam operation dried up a bunch of chum reds and that didn't help so I'm not blaming it all on netters and that incident wouldn't have been so bad if the chums weren't already fished down to minimum escapement. All I can do is connect the dot,of which there are many, but I can't get past my observation of a more extensive targeting of chum for their roe. I just wonder about how the lack of nutrients from the chum salmon effect the overall carrying capacity of these rivers. I apologize for the lack of data. I tried to find catch records on WDFW but data is not up to date.

+1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

This should be the lead post for any hatchery debate... you know, before it turns into a train wreck of emotional BS

Keta,

Go to this link for the Puget Sound commercial regs, download the regs. Toward the front there are a series of harvest tables split out by area and species. They cover about the last decade of fisheries.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/commercial/salmon/

That the NI commercial or all commercial?

I just want to see the big headline debate to switch from something we know to something like "study links septic run off to periwinkle population"
or "drop in sticklebacks linked to excessive merganser predation"

because maybe, just maybe hatcheries or lack of them are not the problem.

The article says NOTHING about whether or not hatcheries are "the problem"

It simply states they are a USELESS tool for boosting natural production from the gravel....nothing more, nothing less.

I believe the paper has merit, and the effort to study it was worthwhile. Obviously, the conclusions of the paper were not the obvious "no brainer" some may think.

If the conclusion was so obvious, why have we spent 25 years pouring billions of dollars into an investment with ZERO return?

Outcomes-based management.... whether in business, health care, or fisheries management... should be embraced. The only issue for me is why it took 25 years to realize supplementation hatcheries like this are a total waste of time talent and trea$ure.

eyeFISH,
I disagree with your conclusion from the study. what I see in the study is that in this case and point adding more fish to the mix did nothing for the population, due to other constraints in the system.

many other cases state hatchery supplementation works fine. see the great lakes, or South America. naturally reproducing populations of pacific salmon, from hatchery supplemental plants.

hatchery's are tools. nothing more. not a silver bullet that will solve all the issues. we need to learn what the other issues are and find a way to fix them so that the fish populations can recover.

whether or not the paper has merit depends on how it is used. you choose to use it to claim we should abandon all hatcheries. I choose to use it to shed light on other issues. maybe get funding for other studies that are on things that maybe will solve the problem.

I think Sg hit it perfect with that statement. It's not the hatcheries, but how they are managed. I'm of the belief that the salmon management paradigm we use in WA makes it abundantly clear that there has not been any intention to use hatchery salmon as a recovery tool for some time. Rather, they are produced to supplement overall abundance and justify more liberal fisheries. Commercial welfare (and, to a lesser extent, sport fishing welfare), if you will.

I would argue that, under the current paradigm, hatchery supplementation actually harms wild populations by providing justification for non-selective fishing methods to exceed modeled impacts, because, you know, AHFMD.

Those examples are emphatically NOT supplementation programs.

They were introduction programs where a totally non-native population was introduced where none had been there to occupy the unutilized niche that allowed them to take hold in the first place.

The paper is VERY narrow in focus.

We're talking about currently existing, albeit depressed, wild populations. Hatchery supplementation has failed to grow those natural populations.

10 years ago, most folks were still blindly clinging to the "no brainer" belief that dumping more fish into those depressed systems could only help. J F C... how could it not?

Well now we have a definitive retrospective evaluation... an outcomes-based assessment of our investment in blind faith. And it ain't lookin' pretty.

In another 10 years we'll all look back and say, well hell that was a no brainer... who in their right mind could have ever thought that would work.