What an indictment of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife by its former biologist, Sam Wright!

PETITION TO LIST PUGET SOUND COHO SALMON (ONCORHYNCHUS KISUTCH) AS AN ENDANGERED OR THREATENED SPECIES UNDER THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT (ESA)

TO: SECRETARY OF COMMERCE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION, NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE

From: Sam Wright (Petitioner), 1522 Evanston Ct., NE, Olympia, Washington, 98506 (360-943-4424, samwright@scattercreek.com). Petitioner is a fish biologist with 45 years experience in managing fish populations and fish habitat.

Subject: Petition the Secretary of Commerce to list as Endangered or Threatened the Puget Sound populations of coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and to designate critical habitat.

These same populations were previously evaluated for possible ESA listing in the following September 1995 report: ....

Deliberate and Planned Overfishing

Table II-I (page 9) of the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Wild Salmonid Policy lists 89 Washington Pacific salmon naturally spawning populations that are deliberately overfished in order to harvest comingled hatchery fish (Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. 1997. Final environmental impact statement for the Wild Salmonid Policy. WDFW, Olympia, WA). The 14 populations that are listed for Puget Sound coho salmon are as follows:

Nooksack River coho

Lake Washington/Sammamish tributaries coho

Cedar River coho

Green River/Soos Creek coho

Newaukum Creek (Green River) coho

Puyallup River coho

White River coho

Nisqually River coho

Chambers Creek coho

Deep South Sound tributaries coho

Deschutes River coho

East Kitsap coho

Dungeness River coho

Elwha River coho

None of these populations have established spawning escapement objectives for natural spawning, thus fisheries are never constrained in order to put natural spawners on the available natural spawning grounds. None of these populations appear on the list that the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) must consider when managing the ocean salmon fisheries (PFMC. 2003. Fishery management plan for commercial and recreational salmon fishery off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California as revised through amendment 14. Pacific Fishery Management Council, Portland, OR.). Eleven of the 14 populations form the immense South Puget Sound Hatchery Salmon Management Zone (HSMZ) which encompasses everything from the Lake Washington system southward. The only escapement goal given is as follows: “Hatchery rack return of 52,000 adults.” (PFMC 2003, Table 3-1, p. 11). There are no quantified coho salmon escapement objectives in any form for the Nooksack, Dungeness and Elwha rivers. All three river systems are Hatchery Salmon Management Zones.


More information/detail here...
http://www.flyrodreel.com/blogs/tedwilliams/2010/february/petition-puget-sound-salmon

why is the deschutes even mentioned? it's a run spawned entirely by hatchery broodstock. if that river didn't have fish ladders, they wouldn't even exist.

Well he's not popular but I think he's right, recovery needs to start in the ocean and work its way inward not the other way around. If it takes 50-100 million to buyout charter/troll operations and the rest need to be on a 20 a year limit it would be the best money BPA/Feds ever spent.

Only works if you get BC and Alaska ocean intercepts removed. Take harvest off one species it just moves to another.

Pretty sure BC has been scaled way back with the buyout and SE is moving the troll fleets more inside to target local stocks. But this one's Coho, Sam must of seen the recent PFMC report with the 70k+ wild mortalitys and came unglued..

I'd say he named every weak stock in the Northwest in an effort to get PFMC to scale back the ocean fishery.

Since ESA listings have no effect on the Canadian coho fishery, I don't see any benefit to listing PS coho. There is good evidence that fishing in the north sound is not harming the wild runs because fishing is only allowed when the wild runs are forecast above the escapement goal. South sound is a different story. The wild runs were sacrificed to the altar of hatchery exploitation rates decades ago, and the wild runs have been extirpated. Most coho in south sound have Green River hatchery coho genetics, although a few other - hatchery - blood lines might exist as well. If the point is to restore wild coho to south sound streams, the solution is easy enough. Close the hatcheries. The existing coho will easily colonize any available habitat in short order.

Plus Sam has a few errors in his petition. The Deschutes River near Olympia had no historic coho run due to Tumwater Falls, and the wild (lhatchery origin) coho don't do especially well there anyway, possibly due to nanophytes. And the White River in the Puyallup basin is essentially a wild native stock, having been planted very little since the river was written off due to the many years PSE dewatered it with their hydro project. Since the water was restored, the native coho run has been doing quite well; hardly a case for ESA listing. There may be others.

Sg

It will be interesting to see where this ends up. I think Sam is entirely accurate in reporting the natural populations that are considered "secondary" to hatchery populations. These designations still exist in the legal sense of the Puget Sound Management Plan, and those populations certainly have been impacted by harvest rates that were far higher than those that natural populations could sustain, as well as hatchery programs to "mitigate" the high harvest rates. However, even with those designations, pre-terminal harvest rates have been reduced (not to say that some terminal rates may not still be inconsistent with establishing/maintaining natural populations) and many hatchery programs have been changed substantially since the document that Sam quotes. In other words, in some of these places natural populations could be doing reasonably well despite not actively managing for a natural escapement goal. I guess taking another look at the status of the ESU as a whole is not a bad thing. With the designations as secondary populations, however, there has not been a high priority in monitoring the status of many of these populations, so I'm not sure if a status review will shed a lot of light.

I am probably not the smartest guy in the world, but the fact that we are even talking about it means to me that we have some sort of problem. From there I do not believe politics can fix anything, take our current ( and previous administrations) as case in point. We will all argue for "our right" to fish until the last one is gone. humans by our very nature are a scourge upon the earth.

Look up the word hypocrite in the dictionary and his picture is there...

The guy that is behind the petition...


–noun
1.a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.
2.a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, esp. one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements.


This is the same guy that was once in charge of managing all these stocks... and doing his level best to see they were harvested into the ground... and now he's saying they need the protection of the ESA. Go figure.

None of these populations have established spawning escapement objectives for natural spawning, thus fisheries are never constrained in order to put natural spawners on the available natural spawning grounds. None of these populations appear on the list that the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) must consider when managing the ocean salmon fisheries (PFMC. 2003. Fishery management plan for commercial and recreational salmon fishery off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California as revised through amendment 14. Pacific Fishery Management Council, Portland, OR.). Eleven of the 14 populations form the immense South Puget Sound Hatchery Salmon Management Zone (HSMZ) which encompasses everything from the Lake Washington system southward. The only escapement goal given is as follows: “Hatchery rack return of 52,000 adults.” (PFMC 2003, Table 3-1, p. 11). There are no quantified coho salmon escapement objectives in any form for the Nooksack, Dungeness and Elwha rivers. All three river systems are Hatchery Salmon Management Zones.



He's going after the Ocean Fisherie for sure, but I agree the ESA listing is being used way to much.

If the purpose of the ESA is to maintain or recover threatened and endangered ESUs (discreet stocks within populations), then one needs to ask which native and wild stocks would be maintained? Sam knows very well that the past management actions, like the south sound HSMZ (hatchery salmon management zone) have already extirpated these wild stocks. The only coho to recover in these locations would be locally adapted populations of Green River hatchery origin coho. This would be like using the ESA to develop wild populations of Chambers Creek steelhead in all Puget Sound rivers, excepting that it could actually work with coho, unlike the Chambers Creek steelhead.

I don't see how this action will "go after" the ocean fisheries. The ocean fisheries are already constrained by natural stock exploitation rates for north sound (excluding Nooksack) wild coho stocks. That action allows plenty of south sound coho to return. It's the local management plan (terminal area hatchery wipe-out fishery in the jargon) that prevents south sound tributaries from receiving sufficient natural spawners. Putting an end to that is no big deal, really, but what higher objective is served when those wild stocks are already gone? I guess I just don't see the point or benefits of a listing in this case.

Sg

Don't know Salmo PS fisheries are not something I follow closely, but Sam wants them considered when PFMC is setting seasons..Would this constrain Ocean Fishing more? Maybe he figures some of those wild mortalitys might stray and repopulate some of these streams with new escapement goals.

samwright@scattercreek.com

Might be the best way to get answers..

Salmo

There is quite a bit of effort on the Columbia, Cowlitz comes to mind, where essentailly hatchery wipe-out fisheries are being reconfigured for "wild stock recovery". I don't see an evolutionary problem is letting whatever succeeds in those Puget Sound streams from being allowed to re-fill the habitat.

They might not be "native" but they would certainly be evolving in existing conditions.

What carcassman said applies to the entire lower Columbia ESU for both chinook and coho, not just the Cowlitz. Basically all of those populations were written off, overharvested, and replaced by hatchery fish, mostly originating from the Cowlitz River. Nonetheless they are listed. Same goes for Puget Sound Chinook, where all of Hood Canal and south Sound (Green River south) were written off. They were still listed, moreover, two Hood Canal populations as well as the Nisqually population are now considered essential for recovery. Like I said, it will be interesting to see where this goes.

Sam is the one that got the Yelloweye listed so I am sure he can get this isted as his is familiar how to do it. I hear it is pretty easy to get an ESA listing and about an act of God to get it removed.

Rivrguy -
While historically there were a lot of Puget Sound coho caught in the more northern waters (mostly in BC waters in the West coast of Vancouver fisheries) those catches have been greatly reduced and has been so for at least a decade. That west coast Vancouver Island fishery used to take 1 to 1.7 million coho, in recent years that catch has consistently been less than 50,000. Teh reason for that reduction was not so much a concern of Washington stocks, rather it was the collapse of a number of BC stocks.

What is scary is that even with that catch reduction we have not seen all that much of an increase in returns to the Puget Sound. This of course is largely an issue of decreased marine survival (yes that issue again). During the 1970s and 1980s the average smolt to survival for such coho stocks as Wallace coho was about 15% (and at times reach as high as 25%). Now it is only about 1/3 of that rate.

With that poor marine survival it is a little surprising that those north Sound and Hood Canal rivers that are managed for wild coho are doing as well as they are.

SBD -
While there is no defending hatchery management zone management common in south sound (and elsewhere) Puget Sound wild coho compared to other areas are doing pretty well (of course the others are mostly ESA listed). If you look at PFMC's 2010 coho forecasts the PS expected natural coho forecasts is nearly 300,000. This compares favorably to other areas - twice the expected returns to the Oregon or Washington coasts and nearly 20 times the expected natural returns to the lower Columbia.

When the status of PS coho was last reviewed by NOAA fisheries there were a lot of unanswered questions and concerns about thosse hatchery management zones. However that review resulted in just a finding that PS coho were a species of concern. While the situation with PS coho remains very much a mixed bag it seems to me that there has been some improvement with the wild coho. In additional to the north Sound and Hood Canal stocks as noted by Salmo g. there has been improvement in the White river and wild coho numbers in the Cedar are improving. The Cedar coho that are getting above Landsburg are roughly doubling every generation (remember they were excluded from that habitat for century but seem to be successfully re-colonizing that habitat).

Somehow I doubt that this petitioning effort will result in another ESA listing but wouldn't it be nice if it does provide that needed lever to address those distasteful hatchery management zones. I suspect it could be much like some of those South Sound Chinook where the "native" stocks are gone but wild populations developing from the hatchery stocks. Of course a major management actionn in that direction would be wild coho release in virtually all of the Puget Sound/Straits salmon fisheries - have to wonder how much support there really is for such a move.

Tight lines
Curt

In going through the regs for the past 6 years, fishers in MA 5,6, and 7, have basically been MSF for coho in July, August and September with a couple of exceptions in late September/October after the Thompson River (Canada) fish are supposed to be through the area. We've learned to live with it.

MA 13 has also been MSF for coho.

The question then becomes would those who fish MA 8-1, 8-2, and 9 through 12 accept a MSF fishery for coho?

A couple of other questions:

How much of the increased catches in past years was due to hatchery production in WA waters that has been cut back over the years?

What was the impact of the PDO on fish survival for WA/OR waters fisheries over the past 25+ years? Might that be changing now?

Wouldn't that be something? However, it appears that the listing of PS Chinook has done little to get rid of these pesky zones, even 11 years after the listing. Still tons of hatchery fish being released and allowed to spawn naturally, without any recognition by the managers in the draft harvest RMP that this could be a problem.