So here in Grays Harbor, the MSST is defined as one half the aggregate MSY spawner goal for the entire basin (no separation of Hump and Chehalis)
In the cited table, the MSY goal is listed as 11388 kings and the MSST is listed as half that number, or 5694 kings.
Interestingly, that does NOT reflect the co-managers' (WDFW/QIN) current aggregate chinook goal of 13146. Under that MSY spawner goal, the MSST should be 6573. I've got a call out to help reconcile the discrepancy.
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So how does all of that shake out for a river like the Chehalis that has only met its chinook goal 4 times in the past 20 years?
Looking back at the last 8 years (data presented at first NOF meeting about GH) managers were overfishing GH chinook 5 of those years.
But because not one of those overfishing years has come anywhere close to reaching the MSST, PFMC will do nothing to improve the plight of Chehalis-origin kings.
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Same story goes for Humptulips coho.... a stock that has NOT reached it's wild spawner goal but once in the past 20 years!
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This aggregated mixed-stock harvest model really works AGAINST key natural populations. Their individual demise is simply masked from an aggregate perspective
As far as GH chinook, the Council can simply shed any responsibility because exploitation rates on GH-origin kings in PFMC fisheries is already VERY low (historically somewhere in the 3-4% range). PFMC could wash their hands clean and reasonably claim that the PFMC fisheries do not substantially contribute to the overfishing on this stock. By the PFMC's own conservation standard, there is no compelling reason to change.
Nice and concise but very disturbing.
It appears like a whole tribe of witch doctors have been exposed using voodoo pseudo-science to fill up the hulls of the ocean fleets when using a known failed management policy (MSY).
This published paper explains how MSY derives from government policy that is disguised as science while explaining the history of MSY.
Here is a paper written by Finley, C. and Oreskes, N. 2013. Maximum sustained yield: a policy disguised as science. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70: 245–250
https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fss192“Overfishing is most commonly explained as an example of the tragedy of the commons, where individuals are unable to control their activities, leading to the destruction of the resource they are dependent on. The historical record suggests otherwise. Between1949 and 1958, the US State Department used fisheries science, and especially the concept of maximum sustained yield (MSY) as a political tool to achieve its foreign policy objectives. While there has been much criticism of MSY and its failure to conserve fish stocks, there has been little attention paid to the political context in which MSY was adopted.”
Where did MSY come from?
“Chapman defined MSY as making “possible the maximum production of food from the sea on a sustained basis year after year” (Chapman, 1949). The basic idea was to harvest fish stocks until they showed signs of overfishing. At that point, restrictions to slow the catch could be applied. On the face of it, the policy was logical enough, but it rested on four assumptions: (i) that scientists were able to accurately estimate existing stock levels for the major economic fisheries, (ii) that scientists could accurately recognize when stocks had reached the maximum sustainable levels, (iii) that governments would act promptly to curtail fishing when those levels were reached, and (iv) that scientists could accurately identify the levels at which recovery was sufficient to permit fishing to resume. None of these assumptions was supported by a strong empirical base, and all four were subsequently shown to be incorrect (Pauly, 1994)...”
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