Sorry, that sounds like a politician speaking in shrouded semantics. As Bill Clinton once said, "That depends on what the definition of 'is' is." Regardless the fish are being produced to prop up harvest. Absent this magical boost from hatchery fish, the harvesters would actually have to manage for escapement and simply curtail harvest. But wait, you said earlier that these aren't "real" hatchery fish... never mind.

That flat line is a reflection of what WILD self-sustaining gravel-based production is capable of achieving.... which rests entirely within the capacity of the available habitat to support it. The habitat is the limiter on natural production.

The hatchery origin spawners are simply displacing the natural-origin fish that could otherwise make use of the available habitat.

Let me illustrate with this example. The natural fish factory has room for 1000 workers to produce fish. The factory manager can can hire 1000 top-of-the-line employees to staff the factory to get the job done with MAXIMUM productivity.... OR.... he could instead sub out a couple hundred of them with "cheaper" ho-hum employees that produce say 70%... 60%... 50% of their top-of-the-line peers.

The mere presence of these inferior employees NECESSARILY means that the factory's total production goes down by some (currently unknown but) measurable amount. In other words, some unknown amount of pHOS is necessarily squelching the full production potential from the gravel.

Couple this with the fact that the hatchery program simply enables the harvesters to keep harvesting wild fish and you quickly see the folly in this model.

What's even more ridiculous is that the guys paying for this hatchery program reap some number statistically indistinguishable from ZERO benefit from the Satsop chinook hatchery. With ONE singular exception in 2016, the rec fisher has harvested ZERO Satsop hatchery kings in the past DECADE. The commercial sector harvests perhaps a couple dozen of them.

WDFW foots the ENTIRE bill to make the Satsop hatchery kings with the benefits accruing almost entirely to harvesters indiscriminately killing WILD Satsop-origin fish. AK and BC account for ~75% of the total harvest, and the QIN takes another ~25% of the harvest, leaving an oh so tiny sliver of a fraction of 1% of harvested Satsop-origin king (on a good year!) for WDFW-managed fisheries.

It's high time to FINALLY throw the home team a bone and give GH recs an opportunity to take a hatchery king home for the table.

Otherwise, what's the point in making them in the first place?

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.