I'll let you folks be the judge....

http://www.pcouncil.org/wp-content/uploa...k_NOV2104BB.pdf

2014 saw the PSC/PFMC's chinook technical committee adopt a new "biologically based" (aka MSY-based) escapement goal for Grays Harbor chinook. The new and "improved" goal for Chehalis is now under 10K.... 9753 to be exact.... down from the longstanding habitat-based goal of 12,364 established in 1979.

36 years in the making, and this is what we get? It seems every time we run up against the challenge of chronically failing to meet conservation goals, the fail-safe strategy implemented is to simply lower the performance bar. Depleted run? What depleted run? With the stroke of a pen.... VOILA!.... all better. See folks.... the run is doing JUST FINE!

It baffles the mind just how many strategical convolutions the co-managers are willing to devise in order to feed the insatiable harvest machine. I guess it's just WDFW doing what it does best.... harvesting our way to recovery, one depleted salmon stock after another.

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What really caught my eye is how flat and broad the top of this Ricker curve turns out to be:



There's a pretty big escapement range that produces essentially the same recruitment of 26-28K pre harvest adults. Yet predictably, managers will focus their attention on the smallest escapements theoretically capable of producing that level of recruitment. It's not about biology at all, but instead it's about the human construct of YIELD... and mathematically maximizing what can be EXTRACTED from that biological system.

Looking at the dataset, it's clear to me that overall stock abundance (adult recruitment) takes a distant second seat to maximizing the number of dead fish in totes. At S-msy of 9.7K, adult recruitment R-msy sits at about 26K. That same abundance can also be achieved at 21K spawners, but there would only be 5K available for harvest instead of 16K.

The rub is the predictability and certainty expected by users and stakeholders. Biologic systems are by their very nature unpredictable and unstable. In our haste to manage down to the most minuscule of margins .... fueled by the conceited hubris of managers believing they are wielding tools with the precision of surgical scalpels instead of butter knives.... the tendency is to err on the side of chronic OVER-harvest.

It's bad enough that northern intercept fisheries slurp up half the total production...



Unfortunately it amounts to about 4 out of every 5 every harvested fish, leaving the home team with only scraps.