Replying to smalma:

It is good news that escapements are improving in the Snohomish system (after 17 years in a row of not meeting those goals, while allowing harvest every one of those years.) But three of the last four years is still a long way from two chinook generations, which would be a minimum of ten years, so I will continue to defend my point that the hypothesis on habitat capacity is still untested.

Or undefended, at least by smalma. He says, "the latest information seems to indicate" that the existing habitat can't support more production, but doesn't offer any hint what that information is or what it proves. That's exactly the approach the RMP takes, and it's exactly the approach WT objected to. Yes, it seems likely that in some sub-basins habitat has been limited to the point where it’s carrying capacity has been lowered. But everywhere? That seems less likely. And how exactly has it been determined that habitat capacity has been lowered, where, and by how much?

How has the available habitat been quantified? How was its capacity calculated? Does the calculation allow for the habitat-enhancing contribution of marine-derived nutrients that could be provided by "surplus" escapement? If it is based on spawning/recruit models, we would again say it needs to be more thoroughly tested. Reductions in harvest rates are apparently helping in the Snohomish (or could a 3-out-of-4-year improvement be explained by other factors?). What were the escapements over the same period in the other major Puget Sound systems? Are the goals being met? If not, are those stocks continuing to be impacted by harvest, at what rate? If the escapement goals aren't being met, isn't any harvest rate too high? It's natural for smalma to want to focus on what appear to be the department's successes, but we need to look at the whole picture. Hopefully these are the sorts of things that can get sorted out in the EIS process.

Technically, escapement goals were not replaced in the RMP; they were eliminated. The only management "goals" in the RMP are the fixed-percentage exploitation rates. In other words, a percentage of fish are targeted for harvest, no matter what the run size. Say it's 20%. If 10,000 fish show up, 2,000 get caught and 8,000 will "escape" to spawn. Great. But if 5,000 return, 1,000 go on ice and only 4,000 spawn. And if only 1,000 show up, fishers still get to harvest 200, and only 800 escape. There is no "escapement" goal, only a harvest goal. The "Low Abundance Thresholds" that smalma refers to are the only management targets in the RMP that could trigger modification of exploitation. So effectively, they are the new escapement "goals," whether or not the comanagers have some other number in mind that they'd more or less like to meet, and the low abundance thresholds are generally about half the old escapement goals. And reducing allowable exploitation if a stock falls below the threshold (see smalma's appendix C), is only an option; the RMP itself only commits vaguely to "taking management action," which could conceivably mean anything, including leaving exploitation rates alone.

Finally, nothing in smalma's argument implies a defense of current hatchery practices. In fact it would tend to argue against using hatcheries as a recovery tool. Hatchery production can allow harvest opportunity (the question is at what ecological cost). But the RMP's underlying premise seems to argue against using hatchery fish to supplement natural production. If habitats are so limited that allowing increased escapement won't provide more fish, then how will putting extra hatchery fish on the spawning beds help? Doesn't letting more wild fish escape to spawn or adding hatchery fish amount to about the same thing, as far as habitat capacity goes? Either the habitat can accommodate the extra fish or it can't. And if it can accommodate the extra fish, certainly the more fit wild fish should seem a better choice. Of course, that wouldn’t “accommodate” harvesters.

I also encourage everybody to try and get ALL the facts. For instance, please note that I always identify myself and who I work for in these posts, so that my "biases" are laid bare, and they can be taken for what they're worth.

Ramon Vanden Brulle
Communications Director
Washington Trout