The problem with the Green is that without Chum or Pink all you had left was Coho and Chinook. One had to be viable. Since there was already a huge NI net fishery for the SS Coho, that probably left the Chinook as the only thing even remotely viable. Took care of that soon enough. Interesting that the Green has, since then, developed some really good chum and pink runs (that were non-existent). Are they now classified as "viable"?


I also remember some of the early arguments on the viability of other SS Chinook. They were wanted to be declared viable, but didn't want to mange the fishery to make it so. Call the viable but still fish the **it out of them.

But, NOAA (at least used to) supports this when they set recovery harvest rates at X and actual fisheries at Y, where Y was greater the X. Don't see how you can fish harder than the rate needed for recovery (at least in theory) and expect recovery.