“The projected spawning escapement for Queets River coho is below the FMP objective of 5,800 natural spawners. Under court orders for Washington coastal and Puget Sound stocks, the treaty tribes and WDFW may agree to annual spawner targets that differ from the FMP objective. In 2017, the tribal and WDFW co-managers agreed to an escapement objective of 5,130.”
This is euphemistically referred to as "lowering the escapement floor".
For perspective, what they've done this year is NOTHING compared to 2016. In order to put together last year's NOF/PFMC ocean salmon fishing package, the escapement floor on Queets coho was lowered to 2900.
Things that make ya go, "HMMMMMMMMM?"
Since this is a yearly report, I noticed the low Queet numbers last year along with other agreements between WDFW and the tribes.
“Tribal and WDFW comanagers agreed to 2016 escapement objectives of 31,000 Grays Harbor wild coho, 2,900 Queets wild coho, 1,800 Hoh wild coho, and 4,000 Quillayute wild coho.”
http://www.pcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2016_Preseason_Report_III_FINAL.pdf “It is not
anticipated that any aspect of the final management measures would decrease long-term yield.”
Considering how inaccurate they are when
anticipating other things like say run projections, this style of gambling is not very comforting, especially considering the way the ocean hasn’t been cooperating.
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