Plunker,

As so often happens, the truth that lies between the extremes doesn't garner much press. Fishery scientists I know don't deny the role of marine survival and its likely relationship to a Pacific Decadal Oscillation. However, to say that fish are recovering because of it is extremely narrow minded as well as wrong.

It's true that we cannot control ocean survival. But what about freshwater survival? Are you saying that logging impacts that have made tributary streams nearly barren of spawning and rearing capacity due to mass wasting and so forth are irrelevant to salmon production or recovery? What if we had both healthy freshwater systems coinciding with high marine survival? Now, that would really look like something I could call recovery.

Calling the present temporary increase in production that is due solely to improved marine survival salmon recovery is specious and duplicitous. You seem knowledgable enough to already know that, so I'm surprised you'd be fueling this fire with misinformation.

Recovery is when significant productivity and capacity exists in anadromous fish habitat to sustain both the population and a viable fishery during periods of both high and low marine survival rates. We ain't even close to that kind of recovery. Sorry to pop the balloon.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.