After reading Mr. Turner's comment to the editors blog, this whole thing becomes even more ridiculous. According to Turner, everything would be OK if there is agreement to reduce the harvest on the Puyallup Chinook population from 58% to 50%. Are you f'ing kidding me? Anyone that thinks that an appropriate rebuilding (or recovery) exploitation rate is 50% for a population that is adapted to the hatchery environment (90% of the returns are hatchery fish) that return to a river with its lower 26 miles diked and an estuary that has multiple Superfund clean-up sites, has their head in very dark places. How can a population made up primarily of hatchery returns and crap habitat sustain more or less the same exploitation rate as Skagit Chinook, a population with little hatchery influence and some of the best habitat in Puget Sound.

I'm sorry, but Turner's details on this make this whole situation a joke. I would guess that if people were actually trying to recover Puyallup Chinook and were honest about its productivity, the RER for this population would be something that is half, or less, of this proposed exploitation rate. Good god! Either side (along with the feds) arguing for either of these arbitrary numbers is a total sham. If we're going to risk everybody's fisheries, let's at least do it for a defensible reason, i.e. to actually make a difference for the Puget Sound ESU as a whole.