WDF reduced some hatchery production on coho in order to bring Canada to the table for US/Canada negotiations. Fish Wars get kinda ugly.

BC has long said if the US gets AK off their fish they will get off ours.

And the US will never get AK off Canadian fish.

That was a quick circle right back to NOAA's statutory obligation/authority for recovery of ESA species.

Politics trumps (pun probably intended) the law all the time.

Though more fish may return, they are smaller and harder to catch.....for the SRKW's

For Decades, I have thought we should return to terminal fisheries.

Proper maintenance of each fishery would be more easily monitored if it was taking place closer to the basin of origin.

What has been happening in AK for decades is a simple case of "low holing". Mostly Seattle commercials, head North to low hole every other user group. We have read 'ad naseum' about how older year class fish simply have no chance in the killing grounds of the open ocean.

If allowed to return to natal streams, without the massive ocean take, would provide the SRKW's with ample LARGE chinook to eat.

NEVER GONNA HAPPEN.....................

That is the truth. As long as Alaska and Canada are ocean fishing we should, too. I'd be more then happy to give up ocean fishing if everyone did, it wouldn't be that long before stocks rebounded. Bob R

Big difference on this one is simply how visual and documented it is and your right AK will not do anything. That said this is going to end up as big as Boldt and not just the ocean as it will be the full range the creature uses for habitat and foraging which includes Puget Sound.

The suit will have to consider the whole N Pacific ecosystem. Right now, the abundance of pinks (including the AK hatcheries) is hammering the rest of the system. But, we don't know if the pinks are just that good at competition or if our harvest of other parts of the food chain (crabs, squid, forage fish) leaves too little for sharing.

If the case is done narrowly, such as looking just at the marine mixed stock fishery on Chinook, then failure of the SRKWs will be the long-term result. If it goes deeper, we have a chance.

I'd like to see a straight-up scientific study that really tries to understand whether the SRKW will adapt if their customary salmon stocks continue to decline. I don't know the answer, but it seems reasonable to think about how things would actually play out. Creatures tend to fight to survive and Orcas can swim. They are not locked in PS. If fish elsewhere are more abundant, and it make sense from a calories burned perspective to travel, they may do so. Also, they are killer whales--apex predators. Their cousins in the open ocean eat marine mammals. Do the SRKW have genetically modified teeth or jaws such they they are not able to attack marine mammals or have they just learned over generations that it's better and easier to eat fish (I don't know the answer)? If the latter, is it not possible that hunger would cause some of them to target pinnipeds in PS, as an alternate food-source and/or to reduce the population of a common salmon predator? Perhaps natural selection would favor those in the pods who hunt both fish and marine mammals and over time the SR population would eventually come to feed in a way that more closely resembles that of migratory Orcas.

Adaptation takes time, and evolution takes eons. Man has accelerated the exploration of the earth to a point that animals cannot keep up.

It's complex, and even if the whales could adapt quickly their health and reproduction may not. The ugly truth is we are trying to find a solution where we can continue to over harvest (or maintain current harvest) on stocks that have weakened to the point of near collapse.

What we are seeing in micro here in the PNW is fast approaching in macro, when huge portions of the worlds fish stocks collapse. On a global scale it is scary to read how many billions of tons of fish are removed from the seas on a daily basis.

Hell, we may not want the whales eating seals and sea lions. Soon, they may be the only thing left to eat for ourselves.

The SRKWs migrate at least as far south as Monterey Bay to chase salmon. They evolved to eat fish and one has to look at what changes would need to occur.

Say that a 40 pound Chinook contains 40,000 calories. It takes the whale 2,000 calories to catch it. We have reduced the size to 20 pounds. To get the same 40K calorie input they need to catch and eat 2, with a cost of 4,000. So, they need to pull out some blubber, which releases toxic chemicals stored there.

Some sea lions, when faced with a similar situation (poorer quality food) grew to smaller sizes. So, if the SRKWs lost, say 30% of their size they would now be in balance with their food. But, the big, old ones ould just starve.

It is very complex, and we are not looking at it in a holistic way.