Originally posted by grandpa:
That is a reasonable enough explanation. The tribes do not want to harvest "their fish". We don't want to harvest to many wild fish so we would like to mass mark. Thanks to Norm Dicks those who wish to take federal money must fin clip now. We have a long ways to go to achieve a reasonable level of fin clipped fish. Theoretically we do this so we can prosecute more fisheries and still protect the wild fish. Since the tribes do not participate in the plan to save wild fish for the most part why would they care to fin clip? Lots of fish of hatchery origin are caught each season that are not clipped but depending on where the fishery is a clipped fish could be the only fish the non-tribal fishers are allowed to keep.
Take Grays Harbor for example. Non-tribal commercials complain that they must use special mesh sizes and recovery boxes and keep only clipped fish while right next to them in the same fishery are the tribes fishing without the protections for the ESA fish .
That's the rub. Why fin clip if half the fish or more are harvested without regard to wild status? If snagging is so bad why is netting wild fish so tolerable to you?
I think you are taking this on a tangent. Lets be "real" here. What is the true purpose of applying the adipose fin clip to coho produced from hatcheries? You're "We don't want to harvest to many wild fish" is not the real answer. If it were, the adipose fin clip would have been removed as the "flag" for coded wire tagged fish 20 years ago when we started having low wild coho productivity and low coho marine survival concerns.
The real answer is that the State wants its fishers, sport and commercial alike, to harvest more of the hatchery coho that are produced. A reasonable goal. But why would some people call it "greed" call it "me first" or things of that nature?
The very reason that the State initiated and continues to pursue the adipose fin clip mark and the mark selective fishing on coho salmon (for example) produced in State hatcheries, is the same exact reason the Tribes (generally) do not support the application of the adipose fin clip on the coho they produce.
Its quite simple really... the producers of the hatchery coho are wanting their fisheries to derive the greatest benefit from the fish they produce. Again, call it greed or anything else you want... it is the primary motivator in both cases.
I am not so sure that my typical Sekiu experience of hooking and releasing 10 wild coho in order to keep one marked coho is a good way to protect wild coho... but that is my opinion. I was not able to follow these hooked and released fish to their home stream to insure they were able to successfully survive and reproduce.
And we do NOT have a long way to go to achieve a reasonable level of clipped fish. In the case of hatchery coho, we are nearing the 80% to 90% clipped rate for coho produced in hatcheries (all hatcheries) around the Puget Sound basin, if not higher. This excludes Canadian hatchery coho, of course, but I don't think Norm's sphere of influence extends quite that far.
"Since the tribes do not participate in the plan to save wild fish for the most part why would they care to fin clip?" Could you make a more broad/inaccurate statement? I doubt it.