Originally Posted By: Carcassman
The Tribes will support the ocean fisheries, and encourage them, because it guarantees their inside fisheries.

When Hoh v. Baldridge was announced the decision said that an earlier fishery could not be used to close an Indian fishery. In this case, if the ocean rec fishery took all the harvestable, or most even, of Hoh coho then the Hoh's would be closed for conservation. Court said you can't do that. So, to their credit, WDF managers said "We'll close the ocean". Tribes and NOAA said please don't do that, just let the Tribes balance what is taken in the ocean.

So, today, we model a catch of (say) 1000 River A coho in the ocean. We model an in-river fishery that gives the Tribe 1000 paper fish in X days. They fish X days, catch whatever they can, and everybody is happy.

The ocean fishery gets the Cowboys out of Indian Country for fishing; no need to share the water so they want that ocean fishery to continue.


I suspected there was a reason why the Tribes never complain about northern intercept fisheries. So indeed, the lines are drawn between commercial and sport interests. There's some grey area in there (ocean sport fishery and Tribal ceremonies, for example), but for the most part, it really is us vs. them.