You bring up a good point about fish ID. Decades ago WDF did a survey where they looked at ID by pier anglers in PS. Not only were some of the IDs wrong but they were way wrong. It was funny then, but not when ID is important to management.

To emphasize how hard ID can be, though, a friend BC was overseeing a project where bios went out all over the province, sampled fish, and sent specimens back to the Museum. The pros got lots of them wrong. In most cases it was because some species do, in fact, look much alike. But he was pretty concerned that fish he could easily ID were being missed.

As other threads here have discussed, Dolly Varden and BUll Trout can be hard to tell apart. So, in some places they are managed as native char with them being considered "one" species but the management needs of the weaker are met.

If anglers are generally unable or unwilling to distinguish the various rockfish species then management will have to close completely or allow harvest on the whole group but meet the needs of the weak stock.

WDFW is often criticized for overly complex regs. Maybe. But the simple reg when some fish need protection is closed. Not saying that there are not other forces pushing this closure, or other agendas working against anglers, but it is up to the angling community to know what they are catching and to, as many folks here are with this issue, to be involved in crafting fisheries that may make nobody totally happy but allow a fishery and protect the weak.