FnP -
I think I'm getting what you are aiming for - thanks of having the courage to actually propose specific actions on which to base this "new management". So far I think we have:

1) Maximum numbers of wild fish - assume that marking all hatchery production the goal.

2) All fisheries wild salmon/steelhead release (apply to all species?). How about other species - halibut/ling cod etc?.

3) Gear would be limited to a single barbless hook with no bait or scents - selective gear.

I guess I assuming that to be successful that we would need to cap somehow the total fishing impacts on the wild stocks. In that light I would ask the following questions on what critieria the manager should use to accomplish this management shift.

1) Are you ultimately justed interested in having maximum numbers of wild fish in the fishery or on the spawning grounds?

2) Assuming that at least a partial goal is to have more wild fish on the spawning grounds. How much total fishing imapcts on wild stocks would you suggest while killing the hatchery fish and releasing the wild fish. In other words how much below MSA escapement are you willing to go to access the hatchery fish and have CnR on the wild stocks?

3) Assuming that we are to cap the fishing impacts on wild stocks would you regulate mixed stocks fisheries based on impacts on the weakest stock or an aggregate of the stocks?

4) In such an approach it is likely that fishing season would need reconstruction. Would you recommend that we build the new fishing structure from the rivers out adding additional fishing in more mixed stock areas if impacts are still available? or Would you build the fisheries from the outside in - opening the more inside fisheries and river fisheries only if additional impacts or available?

By the way the paradigm shift in management you are seeking has been and still is occurring. That kind of approach is very much what the co-managers had put forth in their fisheries management plan for the ESA listed chinook. That is limited directed fishing on the listed stocks with impacts from only the fishereies directed towards hatchery fish and/or other species. The goal has been to put fish on the spawning grounds to challenge the habitat capacity and productive while encouraging the restoration of the habitat. Fish are being put on the spawning grounds rather than killed in fisheries in the hope that society will make the needed changes to provide that additional habitat. While not exactly what you are shooting for I believe it is much closer to what you are proposing than the "old paradigm".

Again thanks for time to clarify for me what you are striving for.

Tight lines
S malma

F5A,

I meant escapement goals. However, as escapement goals are reduced, lower escapements usually follow. Smalma’s summer chinook example should help explain that.

FNP,

I think you need to acknowledge and understand the disconnect between fish management agencies and the actual managers of fish habitat. Fish agencies do try to influence habitat management in a positive way, and do realize some success. However, the overwhelmingly vast majority of habitat management decisions are made by agencies that permit and promote development of the natural environment in ways that degrade fish habitat.

Not all of us in the fish business cling to MSY. As Smalma illustrated, the Snohomish coho are being managed outside the MSY range, and the results appear quite positive. He has also illustrated in other threads that Puget Sound wild steelhead are managed above the MSY range as well. The results are not so good, but that’s because of other variables, that seem to be outside management control, that limit smolt to adult survival. I think the present barriers to moving well beyond MSY are some of the institutional advocates and the treaty and non-treaty commercial sectors, whose short term interests benefit most from MSY.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Hmmm, I just noticed something in this thread.

Carrying capacity is greatly diminished in the Snohomish system overall.

The largest wild coho escapements in the last 40 years have occurred in the last 5 years.

The decline of the wild steelhead run has reached a critical state, resulting in the ending of the popular Sky C&R season 4 or 5 years ago.

Could there be a correlation between the extreme abundance of wild coho smolts and apparent lack of wild steelhead smolts, (competition) considering the fact that they share a fairly similar early life history?

Great post FNP, and nice juicy thread from everybody involved. It looks like it is a landslide poll that MSY has overstayed its welcome from a recreational fisher's standpoint. "MSR" sounds like a great alternative on paper. Implementing change in this f%#*'d up political atmosphere seems like another thing altogether. . .

fb

4Salt,

I’d venture that capacity is significantly reduced from a benchmark time of, say, 1850. There remains a lot of capacity, reduced by the reduction of oxbows, side channels, backwater channels, sloughs, estuary, and lower summer flows due to land use changes. Next, I’d venture that productivity is far more significantly reduced than capacity. Productivity reductions come in the form of siltation that reduces egg to fry survival, reduced population of some of the benthic macro-invertebrates that fish forage on, and probably the smaller amount of marine derived nutrients in the form of fish carcasses. Productivity is further reduced by stream channel simplification - straightening, lack of LWD, etc.

That 4 of the 5 largest coho escapements of the past 40 years have occurred in the last 5 says that both productivity and capacity are large and have been underutilized for the last 4 decades.

I don’t think there’s much relation between large coho runs and smaller steelhead runs. As juveniles, the species partition rearing habitat pretty effectively, and it’s quite common for good coho rivers to also be good steelhead rivers. Remember, it’s not just the Sky. Every Puget Sound river basin is getting poor steelhead returns compared to the 80s. The puzzle we can’t figure out is why coastal steelhead have recovered from the downturn of the 90s, but the Puget Sound streams have not.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Thanks Salmo! I figured the experts probably already knew the scoop.

4salt -
Interesting observation, I have actually thought about that situation some for the last several years.

Salmo is correct in that there is a fair degree of partition of the rearing habitats between coho and steelhead in the tributary streams. That is not to say that if one species was at low abundance the other would not use some of that habitat. In the case of the Snohomish I doubt that relative abundance of coho and steelhead have had much to do with the decline of steelhead.

On the other side of the coin for decades the biomass being returned to the Snohomish by the natural spawning salmon was typcially between 1 and 2 million pounds. In the last 4 years that has increased to between 3.5 and 7 million pounds of carcasses. If the amount of salmon carcasses is an important factor in over all productivity of the river we should be seeing benefits soon.

The situation with the wild steelhead on the Snohomish likely very little to do with the management of those fish. The last few years the over all fishing rate on the wild steelhead has been about 3.5% (hooking mortaltiy in WSR and tribal commerical catch) while the fishing rate on its chinook have been in the 20 to 30%, and for coho in the 30 to 50% range. The wild steelhead by far are being managed the more conservatively than all other anadromous salmonids yet they are the only ones not doing well.

Tight lines
S malma

So basically, it seems that perhaps the problem lies in the forage that the Steelhead use in the salt rather than in the river? Do they feed on different things in the salt than Coho or Chinook? It would seem likely to me since we rarely catch them in the salt.

Also, do any steelhead ever stay resident in the sound like Cutts and BM?

Gary -
Steelhead not only feed on different food items than coho and chinook they migrate to much different areas in the ocean. The steelhead seem to head offshore into the high seas directly. Steelhead are found throughout the north Pacific. The west coast steelhead have been found west of the international date line. In contrast the coho and chinook basically stay along the coast line and rarely migrate outside of the continental shelf.

There is little evidence of steelhead staying in the Sound rather than migrating to the ocean. Typically the only time one sees steelhead in the Sound is as they migrate to and from the rivers. That said rarely what has been termed "half-pounders" are see in our rivers. They are fish that returns to the river the same fall that migrate as smolts. With the fish returning within months of smolting it is hard to imagine them migrating very far off shore.

Tight lines
S malma

Smalma

You are getting pretty close to what I would consider “ideal” management from the sportfisher’s point of view, but as you said, the devil is in the details. Simply said, I am interested in maximum numbers of fish (wild or hatchery) to support the greatest number of angler-fish encounters in the sport fishery, AND maximum numbers of wild spawners on the gravel.

Another aspect of maximizing recreation (completely independent of MSY/MSA/MS-whatever) that we have yet to discuss is ALLOCATION. I understand that from a biologic standpoint, a dead fish is a dead fish, and the only thing that matters is an accounting of dead fish equivalents (impact). I can’t imagine that a salmon or steelhead cares much whether it perishes as a gillnet harvest, net drop, sport harvest, release mortality, or sea lion lunch. However, the readers of this board have an obvious bias in their preference, me included.

Regardless of who is killing the fish, until all the players are willing to commit to and invest in wild salmonid recovery, we will face difficulties in achieving the management that best serves the fish. Here’s my preliminary wish list of features for the ideal management plan.

1) Manage at 90-100% of MSA, as you put it “challenging the limits of carrying capacity”.
2) Selective gear/methods for ALL participants. Hook-line, seines, weirs, traps to permit live capture and unharmed release of at least 90% of non-target stocks encountered. Any method with release mortality greater than 10% BANNED.
3) 100% marking of hatchery stocks.
4) Impact on weakest stock(s) determines when fishery closes.
5) Terminal preference for spatial allocation.
6) Recreational preference for user allocation.

To use your Columbia River spring chinook example, I too believe the paradigm is on the right track in its intent, but execution is far from ideal. Let’s look at each of the six criteria I listed above.

1) Total impact set at 2%... excellent. Most commendable part of the plan.
2) Selective gear/methods…. utter failure that makes 1) totally meaningless. How can you call it “selective” when two-thirds of the fish the nets encounter belong to ESA-listed runs and the vast majority of them do not survive release?
3) 100% marking of hatchery stocks…. only in your wildest dreams!
4) Impact on weakest stocks…. HMMM the wild steelhead debacle rages on!
5) Terminal preference…. OK no ocean fishery targeting springers.
6) Recreational preference…. Only on paper. Yeah we got a 60/40 split on the document, but when the in-season return gets downsized midway thru the run and the nets have already exceeded the combined commercial and sport impact, who gets shut down before we even have a chance at our decreed share?

Bottom line, we sports still take it in the shorts!


I should add that this “new paradigm” is only the result of having ESA protections shoved down WDFW/ODFW’s throats. It wasn’t until the listed runs were at risk of extinction that fish managers were coerced into prudent action. And even in the face of those protections, the MSY mindset lingers like some latent incurable brain infection pushing them to HARVEST HARVEST HARVEST…. irresponsibly proposing tripling of the wild steelhead impact to justify additional non-selective netting of hatchery springers.

On paper and in the media, the managers like to portray themselves as the clean white-as-snow saviors of threatened runs. But just like a brand new chrome “silverbright” salmon can deceive the unsuspecting shopper at Safeway, given enough time, the old chum eventually shows its stripes. Not surprisingly, they’re the color of harvest!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot this one that I mentioned in my earlier post:

7) NO WILD BROODSTOCK for hatchery egg-take unless wild escapement is clearly projected to exceed MSA.

Over and out!

FnP -
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my questions about the guidelines to implement management under MSA. You obviously thougth quite a bit about those details. As I understand your thoughts on MSA and the desire to error on the side of the fish I think your answers are spot on. If I were to answer those questions my answers would have been very similar.

I would agree that ESA has been a large factor in the shaping of current management (paradigm shift?). However I think it is more important to focus on the result and use the situation to build for future management rather than worry about the why.

As has been discussed a number of times the allocation problem is fixed by federal treaties (non-tribal/tribal) and the state legislature (mandate to maintian a viable commerical fishery). Hammering on the managers are not going to change those realities. That energy is better served directed at those that has the power to change the allocation formula.

Let's take the final step in building this new management pardigm and see what fisheries would look like. I'm going to stick with the chinook example and use Puget Sound chinook needs for resource protection (I'm more familar with those details than elsewhere in the state).

1) MANAGE TO ACHIEVE 90 to 100% OF MSA- Given the allowable take under US/Canada salmon treaty there would be no chinook fishing in Washington except under exceptional marine survival which would not be known until after the fact. Because the chinook imapcts have been used up by our neighbors to the North there would not be any Washington marine fisheries for any salmon species. Any marine fishing would be the escapements even further below the 90% minimum. Don't know if you are willing to and by how much you are willing compromize on that level to allow any marine fishing.

Freshwater season (salmon and steelhead) could be allowed and would likely be quite good as long there is complete separation between the chinook and the target species.

The treaty expires in 2008 so if their impacts are changed there may be room for additional fisheries in 2009.

2) SELECTIVE GEAR METHODS WITH A MAX. OF 10% -
For the recreational fishery we have all ready established that would require selective gear (barbless hook and bait ban). Given the high mortality of small "shakers" caught with down riggers it may require the banning of "riggers".

3) 100% MARKING OF HATCERY STOCKS -
Progress is being made in that direction but obviously there is much to be done. The "Dicks" marking requirement will help. Would you make an exception for the Double Tag Index (DIT) groups - the release of coded wire tag fish without a fin clip to evaluate selective fisheries?

4)WEAK STOCK MANAGEMENT -
Meaning that any mix stock fishery is limited by the status of the weakest stock in the fishery. This will limit any mixed stock fishery, once any stock falls to 90% of MSA no fishing where ever that stock may be.

5) BUILD THE FISHERIES FROM THE RIVERS OUT -TERMINAL PREFERENCE
Any substantial fishing in the terminal areas will use all the impacts so all fishing will be limited to the rivers and bays at the mouths of the rivers.

6) RECREATIONAL PREFERENCE FOR ALLOCATION -
see comments above

Obviously any major change in the management paradigm may require substantial changes in fishing seasons and opportunities. It is typical for folks to expect changes in fisheries other than those that they are interested in. However in a change as dramatic as you are proposing all our fishing will be restructed. The acceptance of these changes have always been the obstacle to changing management structures. I suspect that to achieve the paradigm you are suggesting requires no ocean fishing it is essentially dead on arrival.

Are the folks that voted for this option in the poll ready to change their fishing to achieve these goals? or Does anyone want to change their vote?

Has been an interesting discussion. Thanks all. I'm will be out of town for the weekend however if this thread is still alive when I return I will check back in.

Tight lines
S malma

Great thread Doc, some really interesting comments. Thanks to all who have participated.

Smalma

The strategy we are discussing was NOT what was asked in the poll. I chose the poll question rather carefully, knowing that there was probably widespread opposition to MSY.

I don't think ANYONE needs to change their vote... MSY has had ample opportunity to prove itself, and now it's time for it to go. It may have been a great concept on paper and Ricker was certainly a genius to figure out all of the subtle nuances of maximizing yield.... BUT.... in real-life application, the only thing it has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt is that salmon can be maximally harvested toward extinction!

I thought this was a pretty interesting quote from 1977:

Like you said, it's tougher to come up with a palatable alternative that allows us to keep fishing and yet promote genuine wild fish recovery. Nearly 30 years have gone by since that quote, and we're still groping for a solution.