I came away from NOAA's Recreational Fishing Roundtable held recently in Seattle with a better perception of how they apply the ESA.

First, ESA listed Puget Sound rockfish. Initial listings were for Yelloweye, Canary and Bocaccio. Subsequent DNA testing established that P.S. Canary are indistinct from coastal Canary on a DNA level so they were delisted. So few Bocaccio were caught for DNA sampling that no conclusion could be reached as to DNA so they remain listed. Now for the Yelloweye; lots of fish caught and DNA samples taken and evaluated. Surprise, there are clusters of both P.S. genetics and coastal genetics within P.S. and in at least one area fish of both genetics co-mingle which takes us to the question of how far does one differentiate?

Now, for P.S. Chinook. After being presented data from old Dept. of Fisheries records which indicated tens if not hundreds of millions of hatchery Chinook have been transplanted out of basin over the years NOAA side-stepped the reality that there are currently no pure (by basin or river) stocks to protect/recover. What they did indicate was that their efforts under the ESA are to recover listed Puget Sound (the unique DPS) Chinook by establishing self-sustaining populations within some 25 river systems and allowing them to evolve genetically to become unique to each of those systems. That revelation took us to a discussion regarding mid Hood Canal Chinook and the failure to establish a viable "wild" (born in the gravel) stock using Skok hatchery fish and that failure's disproportionate impact on all of P.S. fisheries. It also raised the question of whether those small systems are really significant in attempts to recover P.S. Chinook within the DPS. There was an acknowledgement that that might be an issue worthy of further analysis.

So, back to the initial subject - how NOAA/NMFS works the ESA for two local listings. For P.S. rockfish it relies substantially on existing genetics whereas for Chinook it is to establish viable "wild" stocks that will evolve over time to each system's current/future conditions leading to a recovered "wild" population of P.S. Chinook.

But to be certain there are no genetically pure P.S. Chinook to protect and recover.