The truth about the fish is its always been a mess, corruption on all sides. UW knew in the early 1970's that less than 1% of the available spawning habitat of the entire Quileute system was being utilized, the runs were decimated well before 1970, at least from historical natural abundance.

There was massive comercial fishing in terminal areas prior to 1900, hood cannal was full of fish wheels (piling type), there was a cannary on lake Quinault that processed the 20 million sockey run to extinction before 1900. All the rivers in Puget sound and up and down the coast were netted by whites on a comercial level prior to 1900. Thats when the first big run crashes happened and entire stocks were wiped out, what we had after that were the remnants.

This happened during and after, the whites gave the coastal natives small pox blankets for two or three rounds while Hudson Bay was doing business out on the coast. 98% of the natives on the coast died from European disease.