"The 85% or so loss in productivity on the Stillaguamish system due to habitat destruction could produce many more fish than that every single year, were it still around, both chums and Chinook, not to mention steelhead, coho, pinks, and sea run cutthroat."

"Chinook salmon bycatch in 2004 was much higher
than the long-term average from 1990-2001.
BSAI Salmon Bycatch:
Chinook Chum
1990-2001 average 37,819 69,332
2002 36,385 81,470
2003 54,911 197,091
2004 62,493 465,650 "

In my above post when I was talking about the lost productivity of the Stillaguamish River, I meant that the entire amount of bycatch that is noted in your post, GBL, could be more than made up by the historical productivity of the Stillaguamish River.

That's just one river.

Add in the historical productivity of the other seven or eight major river systems in inner Puget Sound, all of which are larger systems than the Stilly, and I bet you could have 50 times the amount of fish that are represented by the commercial bycatch.

Almost all of that lost productivity, that would be measured in terms of tens of millions of salmon and steelhead, is lost due to massive losses of spawning and rearing habitat.

Combine that with the fact that those bycatch numbers represent bycatch of fish from a much, much wider range than just the inner Puget Sound, and the lost productivity due to habitat destruction is likely tens of thousands of times higher than that caused by current commercial bycatch.

Most every stream in Puget Sound has multiple fish stocks that are limited by their habitat, not by fishing...commercial, tribal, or sport.

Fish on...

Todd