You'd think the PFC would understand the fish are not THEIRS, but OURS in origin, and by helping US it actually helps them in the ocean harvest....

kinda common sense, isn't it?

If they harvest 86% of a given run of fish in AK/BC waters, what will their percentage be when there are zero fish? They gotta look upstream.

Excellent!

Just put my money where it can help! Donate.

The harvesters will move on to destroy another species.

One way we can help is through financial support. His web site has a place where one can donate money to the cause. Just click on the “HOW TO HELP” tab. Tim and his team are just a small group of retired guys on a mission to get more fish back to inland waters. It has mostly been done using their limited personal resources. Tim has a track record as a David taking on Goliath and winning time after time in a different arena. He was also a major player in actually getting both the Grays Harbor and Willapa management plans into and through the system. I think this effort is something all recreational fishermen and those interested in recovery of natural origin stocks should be excited about.

I have often wondered when the ownership of fish in the ocean is lost. If a tribe or individual was to tag fish so as to make it identifiable, would he loose ownership? I understand that harvest makes it impossible to distinguish before hand, but could the tribe insist on repayment? Could they put in transmitters that would prevent harvest if the majority of fish "owned" by another entity? Not having complete control of an animal does not necessarily result in a loss of ownership, as can be seen by free ranging cattle and the neighborhood dogs and cats. Just a weird thought. Has anyone ever got a court ruling or definite answer on this? With such high interception rates, I wonder if thing could be done to stop it with this rational.

Great question as I was wondering the same thing myself today. Used to fish CA waters for salmon when visiting my brother and a fish checker at the dock would wand our salmon catch for data. Does WA state plan to go to a wire style system to account for catch? On a boat in the north Pacific could or should a deck hand be tasked for wanding fish and do released fish count against allowable numbers considering mortality rates?? Boy,it does get complicated now doesn't it! Love the effort and thought in this and being at the tail end of the run certainly is not the place to be! Keep up the good work and Good Luck!

The problem would be, accountability. Or rather, the cost of it. Who would pay for the program? Certainly not the guys who will loose fish. If the tribes paid for it, then they would insist that they be the ONLY ones to harvest those fish. And if the state paid for it...well, we know that ain't going to happen.

Had a couple of questions come my way this morning. As to my brothers history with government regulators and fighting the giants of the oil industry for the independent gas stations small businesses that can be found at http://autowa.org/index.html

As to do I really think he can succeed ? Yup. It will not happen overnight but once the citizens be it a land owner or Rec fisher get their arms around the issue and realize that habitat protection & restoration means NOTHING if you do not address intercept ocean marine harvest nothing changes. In fact the burden will continue to grow on land owners and citizens as we try to save salmon. Without harvest reform nothing changes other than ESA listings that will continue to grow.

The proportion of impact levels is based on historical data. The predicted data set used.

Allowable impacts offshore need to be reduced to 25%.

Expected escapement include prespawn mortality?

Staff once told me if ocean harvest of stocks exceeds 30% slowly but surely one stream after another will slowly but certainly crash. That was 20 years ago and the answer is yup.



Escapement is the number of fish that successfully spawn not the number swimming up the river. The thing to remember escapement is terminally managed AFTER ocean harvest seldom before.



No argument on this or Doc's thoughts as both are right. You will not believe how many of Alaska's commercials are WA citizens who fish there particularly the Panhandle & Bristol. Many if not most of the processors are based out of Puget Sound also.

[quote][/quote]

Why did the Council allow offshore impacts beyond escapement???

I thought that was what you were getting at but was not sure. I suppose I could drag it up but the down & dirty definition is it would restrict the ocean both off WA & North to AK. Think of it this way Last year Willapa would not make escapement before terminal harvest. If one was to say all streams must make escapement regardless of size and circumstance nobody fishes.

Years ago they called a stream or stock not making escapement as the "driver" and reduced harvest to protect it. Not so much now a days. Sure we say this and that in setting harvest ( to restore salmon ) but to judge it go straight to results which is that now a days that is 100% USDA BS. Christ folks they lump dissimilar watersheds such as GH & Willapa in the same genetic units to protect them from qualifying for ESA.

The simple fact is to solve it a limiter on prior intercepts that apply to all salmon stocks regardless of origin must be applied. CA, OR, WA, and AK kick the crap out of stocks from other states. This followed by stocks crashing followed by calls for more money for habitat restoration to SAVE OUR SALMON. That is the "big lie" as habitat is only one leg of the stool and the cottage industry of habitat restoration off grants is the only thing that will benefit not the fish because they will most certainly be harvested before entering WA ST waters.

Some Rage against the Machine comes to mind. How long, not long...

The "driver " stock concept went out with Hoh v. Baldridge.

Simply put, AK will not cut back unless forced and enforced by the Feds. How much congressional pull does AK have. Ted Stevens used to control a lot.

The one group that really hasn't weighed in yet is the Greenpeace/Sea Shepard/ whale hugger/ grizzly fans/wolf fans. The resident Killer Whales need fish to survive. They're listed under ESA. Grizzly needs salmon to flourish. They're listed. Wolves do use salmon instead of ungulates. A month eating salmon saves how many ungulates for other (bipedal?) predators?

About 30 years ago the Fedarl Courts held, in Hawaii, that allowing sheep and goats to eat the seedling trees upon which an endangered bird fed was a take under ESA. That suggests that a court could decide that all the marine mixed stock salmon fisheries take Killer Whales and Grizzly. The neat thing is those fish can still be accessed in the rivers so no actual harvest needs to be lost, just some fisheries.

Along these lines, NMFS has written biological opinions concluding that a dam that "takes" ESA-listed Chinook salmon adversely affects ESA-listed killer whales, but does not jeopardize them. NMFS has also written biological opinions concluding that mixed stock salmon fisheries in WA state that harvest Chinook salmon adversely affect those killer whales, but also does not jeopardize them, all the while ignoring the take of Chinook by mixed stock salmon fisheries in BC and AK. If the US Government has determined that killer whales are endangered, then that same US government should use its influence to reduce the take of Chinook by those far flung salmon fisheries so that the killer whales forage base would return in greater abundance.

It should, but won't until forced and maybe not even then.

After reading all "this" >>>MSY, NOAA, NFMS, WFC, Boldt, ESA on in these circular firing squads and with all this on and on... All I can say tonight is: Glad my days are numbered as no one will be able to get any of this figured out before I leave the Blue Orb! Glad I enjoyed the Glory Days in many places!

Priority ONE is to secure the backing of the leadership at WDFW and the Fish/Wildlife Commission.

Moreover, the Commission should be tasked with creating its own blueprint to bring these fish back home with incremental goals for reduced northern intercept exploitation and its expectations for proportionately greater terminal run-sizes over a specified time period. Without knowing where we want to be, how can we ever craft a strategy to get there?

As it stands now, there is no formal mechanism or process to convey the wishes of Washington State's fish managers to the US delegation at PSC. Our PSC folks simply "wing it" on our behalf, and that we should be content with the agreements they negotiate for us without really representing any actual "wish list" from WDFW/WFWC..... it simply doesn't exist.

Next step would be to broaden and strengthen the "Bring Them Home" coalition to include the DFW's and Commissions of Oregon and Idaho.

This is do-able folks. It's just no one's had the cojones to take this big ol' bull by the horns.... UNTIL NOW.

Here's the supporting text for that graph....



Caught Far From Home:
Pacific Salmon Treaty Managed Fishery Chinook Catch Composition 1999 - 2010
January 18, 2012

The harvest of Pacific salmon throughout the Northwest has dramatically changed over time. We have changed where, when, and how we harvest, as well as how many we catch and even why we catch them. All of these changes combined have changed the salmon itself as harvest has altered the physical size of the fish and changed the age at which they mature. Harvest has reduced their diversity and abundance and may have even affected their ability to survive over time. It is urgent that we completely reevaluate how harvest is affecting salmon recovery and how harvest must be changed.

Historically, indigenous people of the northeastern Pacific fished for salmon when the fish returned to their natal rivers. Since they fished in or near the river, the impact of the fishery was confined to the river. If a river was over-harvested the local community would suffer the consequences when the next generation of salmon returned.

European settlers arrived and brought new technologies that helped fishermen expand how and where they could fish. Sail power, then gas and diesel engines and factory canneries forever changed the ability to exploit this rich new resource. Fishers were no longer confined to fishing the rivers near their communities. In the rich, new, ocean fishing grounds, fishers caught salmon that originated from many distant rivers. This shift to an ocean fishery represents the start of the mixed-stock fishery and the dilemma it poses for us and the international managers1 that are now in charge of the fishery.

At the beginning of this new fishery almost all salmon populations were healthy, which reduced the effect of fishing on any individual stock. Today, however, stocks from up and down the coast vary dramatically as to their health. While some are healthy and suitable for harvest, other stocks may be struggling to survive, recognized as a stock of special concern, or even protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Currently, the majority of harvested salmon are caught in this mixed-stock fishery, far from their rivers of origin. The pie charts in Figure 1 illustrate where Chinook are caught in relation to where they originate. It doesn’t take long before the dilemma becomes obvious. In this environment where healthy and weak stocks are co-mingled, the fisheries should be designed and implemented to protect the weakest stocks while harvesting the most abundant. But as hard as managers may try, they can’t do it. Even with highly sophisticated modeling and forecast predictions, these tools are just too dull to meet the needs of today’s recovery efforts, if harvest rates are to be maintained.

For example, imagine the Elwha River. Soon the dams will be gone, opening up roughly seventy miles of excellent habitat within the Olympic National Park, habitat just waiting to be re-colonized. But of the Elwha Chinook that are caught in the ocean fishery, 80% of them are harvested in the West Coast Vancouver Island fishery, where fishers may be targeting the more abundant Fraser River and Columbia River Chinook. This ocean fishery management strategy, as it exists today, cannot protect returning Elwha Chinook in this co-mingled fishery without significantly reducing the harvest of the healthiest stocks. The end result is that Canada’s fishery is harming Washington’s recovery.

Another example can be illustrated by the Chinook of the west coast of Vancouver Island. There, pristine old-growth rivers where wild Chinook can thrive still exist, yet some of these rivers have as little as 1% of the Chinook they did fifty years ago. These rivers cannot afford any harvest and may never recover without managers giving priority to their recovery. That can only be done on an individual basis, but unfortunately, hundreds of miles to the north, Alaska is busy harvesting Chinook to the degree that of all of the West Coast Vancouver Island Chinook landed in the ocean fishery, 68% are caught in Alaska. Some are very likely remnants of the highly depressed stocks.

Today’s fishery management is far more precise than it was even twenty years ago, but it still lacks the ability to manage at a scale that is necessary to recover individual salmon and steelhead stocks. Fisheries management needs to change, and ending the ocean Chinook fishery should be considered. This fishery impacts Chinook the most because of their complex life history. Living the longest, Chinook are exposed to the effects of this fishery for a long period of time. Closing the ocean Chinook fishery, while allowing fishing to take place at the mouths of respective rivers, would allow for more precise management with the greatest amount of benefit to the resource and the least amount of disruption to the overall fishery. Moving harvest to the local level, coupled with the implementation of selective fishing techniques which allow the safe release of wild fish, will maximize the harvest of hatchery fish while allowing wild fish the opportunity to return to their rivers of origin.