State to test gillnet alternatives on Columbia River

In what might seem like a time warp, purse seines, beach seines and fish traps will reappear up and down the Columbia River this summer.

A Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife test of alternative commercial fishing gear will be expanded from last summer's pilot project, with new work scheduled from mid-August through October.

However, years of further testing are likely before Columbia River commercial fishermen use anything other than gillnets to catch salmon and sturgeon.

Alternatives to gillnets are getting more attention as ......

http://tdn.com/lifestyles/article_6411aab6-7a64-11df-b279-001cc4c03286.html

Some of the salmon will be kept in net pens for up to 48 hours to see if they survive. "We may need guards," LaBorde said. "Our biggest fear is what the sea lions will do around these nets."



My guess is the fur bags will say thanks and eat everyone of them, and not a damn thing the state can do about it without a court order.

"We have always said there is a role" for gillnets, LaBorde said. "There are places, times and species you can fish gillnets. They will be effective and not impact wild populations."

I guess under legislative attack the last couple of sessions that comment needs to be expected, but not accepted.

so during a budget crisis the commericals have made the states DFW's spend money on ways to increase the catch of the gillnetters.. awsome political power the commericals have.

Are you referring to the article or something else.

Wish they'd "test some of these methods" on the Chehalis system before all the runs are "down to zero".....

Just my take on "its all about the Columbia"...there are some other river systems in this State.....

Last year I saw the tribe throw in nets in Hoqium. How far up river do they fish?

Nothing is preventing the tribes from switching over.

Actually it says here this started in PS and Washington Coast..So I guess its working so well up there they want to implement the same plan on the Columbia.



http://www.hatcheryreform.us/hrp_downloa...g_report_12.pdf

The HSRG has used these products to review and provide recommendations for state, tribal and federal hatchery programs; first in Puget Sound and coastal Washington (2001–05) and now in the Columbia River Basin (2006–08). The HSRG’s specific recommendations are not presented as the only possible solution, but rather as a clear demonstration that current hatchery programs can be redirected to better meet both conservation and harvest goals.


Just reading the report Aunty, I didn't write it!

The 17 recommendations presented an array of possibilities. Each river is assessed individually for benefits and adverse effects of hatcheries for harvest and conservation along with regional concerns that those rivers preside in.

The HSRG also concluded the hatchery and harvest reforms alone will not achieve recovery of the listed populations in this ESU—habitat improvements are also necessary. In addition, the effectiveness of habitat actions in this ESU will be greatly increased (more than doubled, under the HSRG assumptions) if they are combined with hatchery and harvest reforms.


Interesting report!

[/quote] Guess you should have READ the article.



Selective harvest methods have been recommended by MANY bios and a few managers as one step that is under utilized to protect wild/native runs. That would include most of the members of the Hatchery Scientific Review Group.

All the added BS by the "hate CCA" crowd is based on assumptions.

[/quote]


I did read the article and guess you should should of also.. but ill just use your quote since it was the basis of my orginial comment..

i'll repeat and use short statements.

A) The government has no money.

B) 1.9 million is being taken out the funds used to pay for hatcheries and instead being used to research commercial fishing techniques in the CR.

seems pretty striaght forward... the DFW's are spending money that could go to other things (like hatcheries) to research somthing for a user group that contrbiutes the LEAST amount of revenue or total amount of USERS to those DFW's.

let me expand.. please TRY to read it all before you hit relpy to tell me how stupid i am.


First of all dont you think that the best Selective harvest method would be to recommended a elimination of non-selective net meathods and instead use, the already proven most selective- troll meathods- in-order to protect wild/native runs. But that would increase the potentail costs of the commerical CR activity. Since thats not acceptable to that group the government is using hatchery funding to research "alternate meathods" that keep costs and time commitment low for commericals. i call that a demostration of political power..

But this has many layers..

commerical fishing has been researching their own techniques for over 100 years. They know what works and what does not and what by-catch rates are (since say what you will but a net filled with by-catch is worth less then a net filled with the target species). The industry knows by-catch rates.. just ask them and save the 1.9 mill

SOO..Why in the world are by-catch rates being, again, researched?

I bet you could spend a few hundred bucks and ask the offshore trollers what their hatchery to native rates are, AND since we do have the data for hook caught mortaility vs net caught mortaility, it seems the 1.9 million from the hathcery fund could be saved and we could switch to already proven "more selective meathod"..

All the BS from the "i dont think about anything i just post" crowd really just rely on thier own ignorance and un-yeilding devotion to a club.
big words, scary thoughts, not your average mindless fundrasing banquet discussion huh?

joshua.

now please tell my why i am stupid..

When we manage every fishery the same way? After 35 years being involved at different levels of the agency I can honestly say I am unaware of ANY fishery being managed.

What we have is a system that is driven by politics, budget, and court decisions which resembles someone trying to herd cats in the back yard. Pick a better word AM as manage is not the appropriate one to describe the cluster f...................we have.

hatchery funding.

[/quote] now please tell my why i am stupid.. [/quote]

Hard to say....You sniffed glue when you were a kid.....?

now please tell my why i am stupid.. [/quote]

Hard to say....You sniffed glue when you were a kid.....? [/quote]

You're not stupid kid......

You soon will realize we're 5-8 years from fishing really taking a turn downhill..... No commercials and LACK OF FUNDING and everyone believeing we're saving the last wild fish = less hatchery fish in the Lower CR....

Keith

convoluted? seems rather linear to me but if you can point to the error of my ways i'd love to hear it, please EDUCATE me (no sarcasim) snippy comments from your peanut gallery do little good.

Since in the absence of any real discussion on a solution, people seem resolved to instead drawing lines and forming clique's around insane solutions with preposterious goals.


I would love to hear your "insider" knowledge, and disucss with me how using gov money allocated for hatchery funding for INSTEAD a reasearch project for a minority user group (commericals) of the dfw's is not a purely political result of thier influence. Or how researching on meathods of alternative commerical harvest cannot be a duplication of research that has been done over and over and over. OR how even if alternative meathod of commercial harvest is somehow is an alternative to the larger problem (As highlited by keith.. and he's right on) that the over all decline of both fish return ROI and future funding of the entire system is at risk.

please i'd love to hear anyone's solution about .. its a much better read than "your a poo-poo head".

joshua

me think ors is a commerical

He would'nt be the first. I have a hunch more will show up before the net issue is resolved. They will continue to look for something to fight about, even though they will now have other H's and predatory concerns in line with sportfishing organizations. In order to win, they have to destroy their opponent. Yet, if they destroy their opponent, noone will help them defeat or overcome the other issues. Not in this state or anywhere on the west coast.

Columbia River fishery debate rages on.By Hobe Kytr

Sunday, June 20, 2010

According to a May 16 Columbian guest column authored by Bryan Irwin, Northwest regional executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association, the mark-selective recreational fishery for summer chinook has “clear biological benefits for salmon and is part of the solution to increasing wild fish returns to their native habitats while providing increased fishing opportunity for hatchery salmon.” The truth is somewhat murkier, however.

Summer chinook have a relatively low mark rate. For several years it was figured to be 35 percent-40 percent, meaning fewer than four out of 10 of these fish were adipose fin-clipped hatchery fish. That means that an angler would have been likely to handle at least three unmarked, and therefore presumably wild, summer chinook for every two hatchery fish retained. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife recently revised the mark rate upwards to around 60 percent, which is still significantly lower than the mark rate for spring chinook.

Irwin’s claim that the mark-selective fishery is beneficial is dependent on the certainty that unmarked fish caught and released survive the experience. There is a slight problem with that assumption: There are no independently verifiable data to back it up. No one has ever conducted a hooking mortality study on the Columbia River.

One of the problematic issues regarding release mortalities in mark-selective fisheries is water temperature. The waters of the Columbia River during summer chinook season tend to be about 65 degrees, which is nearing the point where the temperature alone can cause salmonid mortalities. Add to that the stress of being hooked, played out, handled and released and one can readily see that it is highly possible that a good many of these fish will not, in fact, survive the experience.

Upper Columbia River summer chinook are not Endangered Species Act-listed; they are considered healthy. For many years, WDFW staff has reported that their spawning habitat is fully recruited. There is no genuine biological reason for a mark-selective fishery for summer chinook. The management agencies yielded to pressure from the sport-fishing industry to institute a mark-selective fishery for summer chinook to stretch out their time on the water. A 15 percent mortality rate was arbitrarily assigned to the fishery, with no data to back it up.

Political decision
Instituting a mark-select sport fishery for summer chinook was a political, rather than a biological, decision. Irwin is using this opportunity to make political hay by bashing the gillnet fishery. He is, after all, an officer of the Northwest CCA. Earlier this year the CCA attempted to get on the ballot in Oregon an initiative to ban fishing with gillnets and tangle nets. It didn’t work, in large part because they didn’t stick with the truth.

The fishery for summer chinook is conducted when most Columbia River commercial fishermen are in Alaska for the fishing season. Last year there were three openers between June 18 and June 30, totaling all of 32 hours. Compare that to the 46 days of sport fishing Irwin is promoting. Last year, our commercial fishermen landed 2,371 summer chinook and 219 sockeye salmon, using 8-inch mesh net. Those are fish that were made available to the general fish-buying public, which constitutes the vast majority of us.

By June 16, when the summer season officially began, most of the listed Snake River spring-summer chinook have already passed Bonneville Dam. Sockeye and steelhead are small enough that they typically swim right through an 8-inch mesh net. The fact of the matter is, the most substantial non-Indian mortalities for wild steelhead typically accrue in the sport fishery, not in the commercial. Perhaps Irwin should address his concerns for their safety there.

Hobe Kytr is administrator of Salmon For All, an Astoria, Ore.-based organization that has represented the Columbia River food-fish industry since 1958.
http://www.columbian.com/news/2010/jun/20/truth-about-columbia-fishery-is-murky/