As a non-scientist my non-scientific opinion here is that the groups emotionally supportive of the feel-good "no keepy no fishy" philosophy grasped at a couple years of tremendously poor survival and called that a trend, put it in a chart and labled it science.

The WSC itself was founded in response to the closures of the North Sound spring C&R fisheries when it became obvious that drastically low ocean survival rates had caused the numbers to plummet... Only they chose to blame the decline on those who offended their feel-good "no keepy no fishy" philosophy rather than face the facts.

When the fish are stacking at their spawning destinations it requires nothing more than common sense to let them spawn in peace.