Originally Posted By: Smalma
The 50% exploitation is for the wild ESA listed Chinook and comes from the Co-managers Puget Sound Chinook management plan (latest edition is from 2010) and federally approved. The 50% exploitation includes all fishing mortality - directed and incidental. Those allowable impacts were determined after detailed modeling such that fishing at or below those levels would not significantly increase the likelihood of extinct over the next century.

Yes you are correct Curt, but it very likely that this population is simply being sustained by spawning of strays from the hatchery program, so it is also likely that a 58% (or higher) harvest rate would not significantly increase the likelihood of extinction over the next century as the population is being maintained by the hatchery program. Should it happen to become extinct during that time, the managers could simply go back to the hatchery population and let them spawn wherever they want, and pretty much end up with the same population. That is what is so infuriating about the fact that limitations of harvest on this particular population is what is driving the near term existence of Puget Sound fisheries.