Trying find fault with your logic but I can't with this exception. I fish BC and love it but they have this little habit. They do not record catch ( sports ) and with mass marking two places I fish have a freezer for snouts and seldom does one get to the freezer Coho or Chinook.

The other is Swiftshore. We bugged around it this past summer for Chinook and could not keep the Coho off. At one time we had a 20 to 1 ratio W over H. Watching how the fish were released around us I do not want to contemplate the hooking mortality as it is huge. Thing about C&R is it only works when you have a lot of hatchery fish.

Ocean fisheries were modeled with 2009 Council regulations and 2009 expectations for non-Council area
fisheries. Under this scenario, expected exploitation rates are 30.2 percent on OCN coho and 7.0 percent
on Rogue/Klamath hatchery coho. Expected spawner escapement is 104,400 for OCN coho (Tables III-7
and III-8). For Columbia River hatchery coho stocks, the predicted ocean exploitation rate (excluding
Buoy 10) is 62.1 percent on the Columbia River early stock and 72.9 percent on the Columbia River late
stock. Predicted ocean escapements (after Buoy 10) into the Columbia River in 2010 under this exercise
show that under 2009 ocean regulations, Columbia River early coho would not be expected to meet egg
take goals and Columbia River late coho would be expected to meet hatchery egg take goals (without
further inside fishing).

Thanks Smalma..This is what I'm refering to, if were going to have this high of an Ocean explotation rate we better be really sure of what the true mortality rate is..Thanks for the insight on PS fisheries from yourself and others..

Bushbear -
Regarding MSF coho fisheries for central sound - for those that like to harvest coho the issue to be dealt with is what to do with those wild stocks that are doing well? While I have no problem with wild coho release I can see where others might not be as supportive.

For the stocks to MA 8-1 and 8-2 (Skagit, Stillaguamish, and Snohomish) the PFMC 2010 forecasts are an aggregate wild return to those basins of 211,000 and a hatchery return 39,000. Not a very high marked to unmarked ratio. In one of the last 2009 "model" runs the projected total eploitation rate on all 3 of those wild stocks was expected to be less than 35%; the low abundance target ceiling.

Regarding smot survival rates - As I mentioned current survivals are well below that averages seen 25 years ago. While there has been some encouraging signs that things might be turning around still have not seen that expressed in fish returns. Unfortuantely I have yet to see much to indicate that things have turned around to any degree.

Note: If the survival was what was seen 25 to 30 years ago the Snohomish wild forecast would be 300,000 instead of the current 100,000.

OncyT -
While some of the basins have done a better job of emphasising natural Chinook production than others I don't expect much of a overall change (especially in areas like south Sound) unless NOAA fisheries and its Puget Sound TRT takes a more aggressive stand on the issue.

Rivrguy -
More specifically the issue is the number of MARKED hatchery fish. I agree that if it is much below 50% the benefits of selective fishing is more iffy. Do you think that a better alternative would be no fishing?

SBD -
As indicate in my reply to Bushbear generally coho wild expliotation rates in Puget Sound is lower than what you are citing for the Columbia. Last year the expected total wild rates on the north Sound "S" rivers was less than 35%, for Hood Canal it was expected to be 45.9%, for south Sound 49%. The Nooksack situation is the obvious exception were the expected rate was 68%.

Tight lines
Curt

No fishing? Good question. Yes / no / I am confused .........I think that is the thing I can not get my arms around. If C&R is to remain the hatchery production must be present, if the ratio is not there yes they must stop or allow 1 fish ( or whatever and your done ) as the mortality on W is lower than C&R. Anyway you cut it it is not a good idea to kill 3 or 4 wild with C&R to get one hatchery. I fail to see the conservation in that practice.

If Puget Sound coho were to be listed I suspect it would be similar to Puget Sound chinook. The Puget sound chinook esu includes all naturally spawning chinook in rivers and streams flowing into Puget Sound and the straits of Juan De Fuca east of the Elwha River. It also includes 26 artificial propagation programs (hatcheries). Listing individual bodies of water in the coho petition is more of a statement about habitat than harvest or hatcheries. Like chinook I suspect it impossible to find any distinct genetic or phenotype differences among the naturally spawning coho and hatchery coho in Puget Sound so the esu would include hatcheries. If coho were listed the fishery would probably be similar to the present chinook fishery. Mixed stock fisheries would be MSF and there would be freshwater and terminal area fisheries where any coho could be retained.

Smalma, in other words, the places that were managed for natural Chinook pre-listing still are, and the places that were managed for hatchery fish pre-listing still are. It doesn't look like the ESA hammer that everyone was afraid of, is much of an issue. With that in mind, why would anybody even bother to petition for a listing? Does Sam really expect a different outcome if coho are listed?

OncyT,

You raise the question about the elephant in the room, but is that elephant a mirage? What improvements to populations can be attributed to ESA listings? A whole lotta' work by a whole lotta' people for some pretty thin results in most cases.

Sg

whole lotta' work by a whole lotta' people

Sometimes I think people looking for work think this is a good way to make work..

SBD,

Hopefully, not a "whole lotta'" them.

Sg

Yeah me too, but I heard somewhere that the money involved with there not being fish is huge compared to what the actual value of the fish is..

Wn1A-
Once one gets out of the south Sound hatchery management area there actually is a significant amount of genetic structure in the Puget Sound Chinook populations.

A couple of examples - The Nooksack early stocks are very different than the rest of the Puget Sound Chinook and seem to more related to the Fraser group - which makes sense. The Snoqualmie fall Chinook have a different phenotype than the south Sound/Green River falls. Typically 20 to 30% of the returning Snoqualmie fish have a yearling freshwater life history (unique for Puget Sound falls) and can spawn much later in the year, occasionally spawning into December.

I suspect that with coho it would be similar; I seem to remember that there is fair degree of genetic separation between North and South Sound coho populations.

Genrally speaking hatchery programs are included in ESA lisitngs when those programs are considered to be essential to the maintenance of the stock in question. Unlike Chinook I don't recall any coho recovery hatchery programs so I'm not sure how many hatchery programs would be considered in the ESA context as being essential. In fact it is pretty easy to argue that most would more likely be damaging than helpful.

Tight lines
Curt

Once had the Director tell me that since the great rush to restore Salmon the number of people at the trough looked like a stampede, with everyone calling themselves consultants looking for anything to create a paycheck. Thing that bugged him more was that take the money away they disappear and the citizen advocates that worked so hard as citizen advocates would be all that is left. One of the tribes even had a flier out on a conference on " the habitat restoration industry " As always follow the money.

I had lunch yesterday with one of the recovery Bio's, its quite an operation that includes alot of very well paid people.

I'd be surprised if the total economic value of salmon and steelhead in WA (recreational and commercial) is greater than the total sum of money spent on salmon and steelhead harvest management, hatcheries, habitat management - including habitat improvement and restoration. It's an industry for sure. I can't complain, as it's kept me employed for over 30 years, although I didn't expect I'd ever be dealing with ESA listed salmon and steelhead.

When I first started out, most tribal fisheries organizations spent a small fraction of the annual value of their harvests on management costs. I remember when I first saw that management costs exceeded the ex-vessel value of the catch. That was an eye-opener. It influenced my decision to work less in harvest management and hatcheries and focus on habitat management. If only my retirement investment strategies had been so keen.

Sg

Yeah its sure grown, someone told me there's about 8 goverment employee's overseeing each one of the commercial fisherman..

401k is now a four letter word!

Smalma-

Thanks for the response, maybe not though, because I lost a bit of sleep thinking about the ESA, salmon, and evolutionary significant units. In ESA terms an ESU is a distinct population and it seems that for a population to be distinct it must have a high degree of reproductive isolation. Good examples are the desert pupfish living a few hot springs and rainbow trout in the great basin. Anadromous salmon on the other hand have low reproductive isolation. That is one of the features that insures that they utilize all available suitable habitats and also make it so difficult to determine what is an ESU.

It was certainly an error to say that there are no distinct genetic or phenotype differences among naturally spawning populations of chinook in Puget sound. That a Nooksack chinook stock seem to be more related to the Fraser group does make sense but are they a distinct population in Puget Sound. Without hatcheries geographic isolation might lead to a distinct population difference between chinook stocks in the far south sound and the north but the question is where would the boundary between the populations be.

Your example of the phenotype differences of the Snoqualmie fall chinook is interesting. If late spawning does not occur in the other rivers in Puget Sound then any strays entering the Snoqualmie would not likely be fall spawners. In that sense the late spawners would be reproductively isolated. 20 to 30% of the returning fish exhibiting this phenotype could be caused by a random gene expression and might not be enough to consider them a distinct population. If a selection process favored the late spawners and they became the normal spawning population then they might be considered a distinct ESU.

The question of what is a distinct population of salmon in the ESA context is not easy to determine. Genetics can't necessarily identify distinct populations, it only takes a few strays to insure gene flow between populations. It is likely that genetics can't differentiate the late spawning Snoqualmie fall chinook phenotype from the south Sound/Green River falls. Any competent scale reader could easily distinguish between returning fish of the two groups.