I find it hard to shed any tears for the Alaska trollers, I think for 30 years they have been the beneficiary of hundreds of millions of dollars of Columbia River salmon mitigation funds. Those record number of returns they "worked so hard to rebuild" are hatchery fish. There has been little improvement in wild runs and there is no reason why Alaska trollers or any marine fishery should have a greater share of impact on ESA fish.

The data and graphs you posted are probably the best information one could expect for the funding available to gather the data. Spawner recruit data is a good example. Counting spawners is a well developed technique. Determining recruits is not so straight forward. For a given brood year catch plus escapement has to be monitored for the next 5 to 6 years. For each year the age class composition of the catch and escapement has to be determined so that the fish can be assigned to a particular brood year. A Ricker curve for a given year for chinook cannot be generated until years later, time to collect the data and then more time to do the analysis. The cost to do the work for most rivers other than the Columbia probably out weighs the value of the fishery unless those Alaska trollers are willing to pay their share.

The 5 and 6 year old chinook are disappearing everywhere. 5 year old chinook are gone in the Yukon River and are probably not long for many other Alaskan rivers. The only hope would be to limit chinook fisheries to terminal areas. Of course those of us in Seattle who fish area 10 know how well that works.