Originally Posted By: cohoangler
I agree with Salmo g.

It is really hard to believe they could honestly find that commercial fishing is blameless. This is particularly startling given the high levels of by-catch among the trawl fleet.

To blame NRKW’s seems to ignore the fact that they have been living in the GoA for thousands of years. But only now they are eating large Chinook?! What changed?

Did the NRKW suddenly develop a taste for large Chinook? Did they recently take up residence where they happen to find lots of Chinook that originate in the Columbia River? Or did the Columbia River Chinook change their migratory patterns such that they now swim past where the NRKW are eating?

If they are going to blame NRKW, the scientists need to explain how NRKW weren’t feeding on large Chinook in the past, but suddenly are now.

The conclusion borders on preposterous.


Preposterous? If one is to believe the numbers a 3X increase in NRKW over the last 40 years is significant in terms of predation targeting larger prey and resulting impact on SRKW. Looking more closely at the article they report that the number of NRKW now in the Salish Sea is put at 200 and continues to grow. Clearly something is going right for them.

Is selective predation by NRKW the only factor? Certainly not nor did I read anything in the article which made such a conclusion.
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