I'd like to agree with the balls part, though I don't believe anyone at WDFW has enough authority to change this without losing his/her job, regardless of testicular fortitude. WDFW's "decisions" get made on the Hill, by people we never see and by means even less transparent than NOF.

I doubt very seriously that Chuck Frigging Norris could turn the tide from any WDFW post today.

Your friend was a manager in a very different political climate. When he was calling the shots, there were still enough fish to support all State fisheries, to your point, largely because we weren't shy about planting fish. The Tribes also had nowhere near the lobbying power in the pre-casino era, so what the Tribes got at NOF was what the treaty provided (you know, as it should be).

Due to irresponsible, financially-driven decisions made at the Federal level (by the Department of frigging Commerce), mixed stock, open ocean fisheries have shrunk and depleted our native stocks to the point where whatever makes it back to severely compromised habitats is less in both number and fecundity. That paradigm assures more and more ESA impacts coming into play. As ESA impacts come into play, all of us (Tribes included) lose opportunity. The available opportunity is no longer enough to go around, so now someone has to lose. The treaty does a lot more to protect tribal rights in the current climate, so here we are.

I don't blame biologists. The science selected to support policy decisions is often the science that causes the least political pain at the end of the day, regardless of whether the staff biologists put it forward as "best available."