I appreciate the explanation Sg.

I must admit my comments to Keith were rather tounge in cheek. I find it hard to believe ocean troll and sport fisheries on salmonids would greatly affect recovery. My concern of course is with in-river treaty/non-treaty commercial gillnet fisheries.

Your comments concerning using smolt to adult survival rates as one of the measuring sticks for ocean conditions confirms some of my suspicions. While growth rates may seem to provide a good calculus of overall ocean conditions on the surface, the sample size and variation factors prove to provide too little data to make an overall determination.

Could there be other factors involved affecting smolt to adult survival rates? Perhaps the fact that these smolt spent their lives in concrete pens until entering the river? River conditions at the time of release? Predators in the estuary? In-river competition for food?

Seems some of the above factors could vary widely from basin to basin making it difficult to find a baseline or common factor in all basins so as to attribute ocean conditions to smolt to adult survival rates.

I guess my general point is,....how in the he!! would we know for certain whether ocean conditions are good or bad? I am not contending that ocean conditions remain static over time. Perhaps we should just look to other factors that we 1) have more control over and 2) can properly measure so as to attribute common factors directly affecting recovery.