Originally Posted By: Carcassman
The marine mixed stock fisheries are what will **ck-up Chinook recovery. To get recovery, the fish need to grow to adult size and age. Probably the same with coho, to a lesser extent. They need to grow instead of being sucked up in the July-August fishery as aggressively gorging fish. As long as we lop off the older fish we won't get much for recovery even with closing the terminal areas.


This is spot-on correct for Chinook. Coho have an obligate three-year life cycle, so they only have about 18-20 months to reach their terminal size before they return to spawn. So ocean fishing for coho reduces overall abundance, but not size-at-maturity.

Chinook can continue to grow in the ocean until they reach a very large body size (e.g., see the above pic from FishDoc). But they can only do that if they can escape the high seas fishing. So ocean fishing for Chinook reduces the size-at-maturity and the abundance of the adults, as we've discussed at length on this BB in the past. So, yes recovery depends greatly on reducing exploitation in the open ocean. If fishing takes place in saltwater, it should occur near the river of origin of the adult salmon.

By the way, the Tribes have been telling us this for about 100 years.....


Edited by cohoangler (04/28/17 03:29 PM)