Luke:

Can you say hatchery fish? The facts are that some wild fish are doing a bit better due to ocean conditions, but by far the vast majority of the fish we are getting back are hatchery fish.

There are those like the current Alaska governor who say that a hatchery fish is the same as a wild fish. I do not buy that.

To have healthy runs of hatchery fish we need a healthy environment, adequate flows and for the foreseeable future serious limitations on commercial, and sport catch. It really doesn’t mater how good the ocean conditions are if the returning fish can’t get to the spawning grounds, if the estuary is toxic, or if the netters kill them all.

If you want to count only hatchery fish, things are great. If you take a serious look at wild fish populations you will see that many, like the Puget Sound chinook, are endangered and many more are threatened. A recent study by a prominent fisheries expert found that roughly 75% of all naturally occurring salmon and steelhead runs in the Northwest are extinct or threatened with extinction. That is not a function of ocean conditions!