While many often contend that there is no one actually addressing the issues that face our fish and fisheries, they are flat out wrong. There are many groups and individuals working on the issues that most affect our Puget Sound fisheries, those issues mainly being centered on hatchery/wild interactions and habitat.

Those two factors affect our PS fisheries more than all other factors combined, dwarfing the effects of any harvest, anywhere.

The problem is that most folks don't like to hear the truth...they like to hear that it is all the commercial or tribal fishers faults...it tweaks their emotional responses, and that's what drives people to sign up for an organization.

Show them the truth, and they fight it tooth and nail...as I said, they aren't actually interested in the truth.

While appealling to the emotions of the potential membership, and encouraging them to send in their membership fees, even if harvest were almost completely curtailed there would be little benefit to the fish, and little or no sportfishing opportunity.

As one leader said to me when I asked him about this, "A win is a win, right?"...wrong. How can it be a win when there is no benefit to the fish, and the result is the end of sportfishing in much of Puget Sound?

The fact is, habitat work is not sexy enough to get people involved, and hatchery/wild interactions are so poorly understood by the average angler that even attempting to explain it is most often completely futile...they tend to practice a particularly insidious form of ignorance...it's like they put their fingers in their ears and just keep yelling "Commercial nets, tribal nets!!" at the top of their voices so that they don't have to hear anything that doesn't align with their pre-determined emotional reactions.

Frankly, it's the reason why there are so few people actually doing the heavy lifting for our Puget Sound fisheries...they have to do it because they really care about the fish and the fisheries, because they sure don't grab the headlines like the guys yelling about nets.

There are certainly places where harvest is an issue...there are many places where it is as big an issue, if not a bigger issue, than is habitat or water quality/quantity.

Puget Sound is not one of those places.

Fish on...

Todd