The question was asked of R-6 " Nothing was discussed about the amount of Commercial boats that will be moving North into the Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor fisheries. Could you please tell me what the affects will be? "

Below is the body of the e mail from R-6 in response to the question. Now the model already under estimates NT Nets by 250% the past four years, just imagine what the increased number of boats fishing would do to the models accuracy! Do not know where they would fit them all but silly me did not know where 22 would fit in the river. Oh almost forgot. It took the gentleman several reminders and more than a bit to get the information.

The numbers are not formatted well but you can match them up to the categories.



RESPONSE:
As to your question about the potential effect of effort transfer from the Columbia River to Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor, there is no way to know for certain what shift in effort might occur. The critical factor is that of the human dimension and as a biologist not an economist or psychologist I can only speak to data from licenses issued during 2012.

There were 248 salmon gill net licenses issued for Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. Of the 248 licenses issues, 201 were active, the remaining 47 were voluntarily placed in a suspended status by the owner. Additional detail is provided in the table below.

License status

Grays Harbor Net / Willapa Bay / Total
Active 47 154 201
Suspended 12 35 47
Grand Total 59 189 248


Possession of either license allows the owner to operate in the Columbia River. It is worth noting that of the 201 active licenses only 24 owners possess a license for both Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. From that you can infer that there are 177 WDFW license owner that could operate in the Columbia River. As to the magnitude of a potential effort shift, in 2012 there were only 39 license holders who had no landing outside the Columbia River, in other words 39 of the 201 licenses operated exclusively in the Columbia. Of these 39 license holders 28 held a Willapa Bay license, so at most we could see an increase in the Willapa from 126 vessels to 154 or about 22% more than in 2012. For Grays Harbor the potential increase would be from 47 to 58 or about 31%. With the closure only affecting a portion of the Columbia and full opportunities in the SAFE areas it is unlikely that we would see a full shift in effort but some shift is possible.

Hope this helps, and again I apologize for the delay.
Sincerely