Originally Posted By: Carcassman
Another concern I have about the pinniped predation on salmon is temporal and spatial. Temporally, they (Harbor seals, I think) take a lot of smolts. Removing them saves smolts, for 3,4,5 years down the road; assuming that marine survival and our extremely conservative marine managers allow the additional smolts to survive to return.

Most of the predation by adult pinnipeds that at least makes the news is after the fish have passed the SRKW. Such as Ballard Locks and the Columbia. So, killing these pinnipeds benefits the SRKW if the surviving adults are allowed to spawn and all that additional production is allowed to return to the SRKW. This action has an additional year of waiting for benefits above letting the smolts go.

This is faster than habitat fixes but still lets the SRKW continue to auger in.


During that most recent Prey Working Group session the WDFW's expert on pinnipeds (and harbor seals in particular) Jeffries opined that any effort to reduce harbor seal populations would need to be broadly based spatially rather than focused just around choke points/river mouths. That seemed rather counter intuitive to me but he is the expert. Anyway, if that were to occur it could reduce impacts on returning adult Chinook beginning in the Straits with cumulative "saving" increases the surviving Chinook move further toward natal streams.

Edit: A big bull Orca and six or seven cows/calves made the turn around Possession headed north toward Everett on Friday evening. Pretty cool.


Edited by Larry B (07/15/18 05:26 PM)
_________________________
Remember to immediately record your catch or you may become the catch!

It's the person who has done nothing who is sure nothing can be done. (Ewing)