Parker makes an excellent point with regard to treaty and non-treaty fish managers deciding how to use (or waste) their respective shares of the resource. A salient point, IMO, is that if the practice of stripping hatchery chum salmon for their eggs is offensive, realize that you pay for it, and WDFW supports it by operating part of the hatchery system to produce chum salmon. It would be reasonable for WA taxpayers to ask why WDFW spends scarce economic resources when funding is allegedly tight, to produce hatchery chum salmon so that they can be wasted like this.

The situation becomes a bit more complex in the case of the Skokomish, where chinook and coho are produced at the George Adams hatchery (which is partially funded by Tacoma Power as Cushman mitigation), and chum salmon are produced at McKernan. I think McKernan was on the block for closure because of state budget issues, and treaty tribes may have picked up part or all of the tab to continue the chum program at McKernan. If that is the case, then really, we don't have much to complain about except that wasted fish are an eyesore.

Sg