Originally Posted By: eyeFISH
Originally Posted By: FleaFlickr02
Time to start charging a price/lb. commensurate with the state of the species, so they don't have to harvest so many fish to pay the bills. Why do fish markets seem to be immune to the priciple of supply and demand?


When the cost to hatch, feed, release, assess, forecast, set seasons, monitor and enforce fisheries is taken into account.... each harvested spring chinook probably adds up to ~10 grand on average. Trying to be conservative here, but that figure is at least in the correct order of magnitude.

When the average fish weighs 6-7 pounds, $500 per pound doesn't even begin to cover it.


Pretty messed up reality right there.

I'm not suggesting they charge what it costs to produce hatchery fish... Only the citizens of WA are fool enough to pay that price. Just suggesting that a higher price/pound allows commercials to make their money without killing so many fish.

If it's true that ocean fishing is among the leading factors in shrinking size at maturity among salmon (and we actually care about that), we ought not be harvesting so many salmon in the ocean. Or, we can just point fingers at other, less significant factors and watch them continue to shrink and, eventually, disappear. My money's on that option.