Freespool,

It would help if there were a common definition of recovery, instead of just tossing the term around as though everyone meant the same thing, when they don't. I'll offer one that's meaningful: Recovery is achieved when a depressed population can consistently, through natural production, produce a recruit to spawner ratio greater than one. When that happens, a population can and will expand to fill most of its habitat capacity. For Columbia R. chinook and steelhead above Bonneville that means reducing existing mortality rates, mostly from poor dam passage, so that SAR = R/S>1 when ocean conditions are poor (see comments to SW). However, reducing mortality from any source helps achieve the desired outcome of more recruits per spawner, whether it's fencing a creek in Podunk, Idaho, or reducing irrigation diversions, or adding better diversion screens, reducing harvest mortality, or most significantly: improving juvenile survival and passage around dams.


Stinking Waters,

Good and poor ocean conditions are interpreted (by those of us who think we know something) in two ways generally. Those are smolt to adult survival and growth rates. Smolt to adult survival is estimated with marked and CWT (coded wire tagged) fish. Average return rates vary by species and release location. For example, coho survival from Columbia River tribs averages half that of coho from WA coastal and Puget Sound tribs. Below average survival rates = poor ocean conditions, and above average survival = good ocean conditions.

Growth rates, when monitored, are measured by catching coho or chinook, usually, on feeding grounds. If they are larger than average for that date (relative to abundance), then ocean conditions are good. If they are smaller than average for that date, then ocean conditions are poor. I don't know that this type of monitoring is done more than anecdotally because sample sizes are small, local variation is great, and conditions vary over time within a year, so it's hard to make solid estimates from it.

Contrary to your and Stlhdr1's thoughts, above average WA coastal troll and ocean sport catches are positively correlated with above average freshwater chinook and coho harvests and escapements (spring chinook excluded since they don't show up in ocean fisheries in significant numbers). Chinook fishing off the WA coast has been pretty good this summer; coho fishing has been poor; both seem to correlate with expected returns to the CR.

Sg