I'll let you folks be the judge....

http://www.pcouncil.org/wp-content/uploa...k_NOV2104BB.pdf

2014 saw the PSC/PFMC's chinook technical committee adopt a new "biologically based" (aka MSY-based) escapement goal for Grays Harbor chinook. The new and "improved" goal for Chehalis is now under 10K.... 9753 to be exact.... down from the longstanding habitat-based goal of 12,364 established in 1979.

36 years in the making, and this is what we get? It seems every time we run up against the challenge of chronically failing to meet conservation goals, the fail-safe strategy implemented is to simply lower the performance bar. Depleted run? What depleted run? With the stroke of a pen.... VOILA!.... all better. See folks.... the run is doing JUST FINE!

It baffles the mind just how many strategical convolutions the co-managers are willing to devise in order to feed the insatiable harvest machine. I guess it's just WDFW doing what it does best.... harvesting our way to recovery, one depleted salmon stock after another.

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What really caught my eye is how flat and broad the top of this Ricker curve turns out to be:



There's a pretty big escapement range that produces essentially the same recruitment of 26-28K pre harvest adults. Yet predictably, managers will focus their attention on the smallest escapements theoretically capable of producing that level of recruitment. It's not about biology at all, but instead it's about the human construct of YIELD... and mathematically maximizing what can be EXTRACTED from that biological system.

Looking at the dataset, it's clear to me that overall stock abundance (adult recruitment) takes a distant second seat to maximizing the number of dead fish in totes. At S-msy of 9.7K, adult recruitment R-msy sits at about 26K. That same abundance can also be achieved at 21K spawners, but there would only be 5K available for harvest instead of 16K.

The rub is the predictability and certainty expected by users and stakeholders. Biologic systems are by their very nature unpredictable and unstable. In our haste to manage down to the most minuscule of margins .... fueled by the conceited hubris of managers believing they are wielding tools with the precision of surgical scalpels instead of butter knives.... the tendency is to err on the side of chronic OVER-harvest.

It's bad enough that northern intercept fisheries slurp up half the total production...



Unfortunately it amounts to about 4 out of every 5 every harvested fish, leaving the home team with only scraps.

Not exactly new. back in the mid 70s WDF identified that they had a problem meeting some PS escapement goals for Fall Chinook. The problem was hatchery production which resulted in "excessive surpluses" when they tried to manage for the wilds. The solution? Lower the goal. And, as proof of quality management, they hit the lower goals.

Also, when the Chinook goals were established in PS, the justifying document stated that it would not be rational to try to seed the available habitat.

"They managed them till they were gone"

My Dad

There was an editorial cartoon in the Seattle Times, sometime post-Boldt. It was a father and son looking at a stuffed Oncothynchus longgone and the dad said "They just sort of disappeared, a half at a time".

Studying this graph, I find it interesting that there are basically no 6 year old GH kings that make it past SE-AK and NBC. Any fish genetically destined to be a 6 yr old has already been subjected to relentless pre-spawn harvest pressure thru years 3, 4, and 5 in the ocean pasture that VERY FEW survive to that 6th year. Then they get picked off in the northern portion of their range in that final year. By the time they start their southward migration to home waters there's so dam few left that they don't even show up in any of the WCVI or coastal WA catches. It's literally a genetic dead end for that older/larger phenotype.

Boggles the mind how anyone with half a conscience could willfully bonk one of these oh-so-rare fish when against all odds, one finally reaches home waters.

The incredible shrinking Chinook is due to the relentless marine mixed stock harvest that takes the most aggressive feeders and the fish with the potential to live the longest. If you want Chinook to return to their historic large sizes, confine the harvest to the rivers.

I'm down with that idea, but I think the big $ will vote otherwise.

I think the Russians manage their nook harvest like that to some extent, Carcassman. Anyone know if Siberia has hog chinook coming back?

The final and perhaps most urgent aspect of this new and improved Chehalis goal is how it will affect the decisions at NOF next month.

The 2014 NOF was initiated with the old goal when they released the pre-season forecasts last March. By the GHMP, a retrospective review of the immediate past 5 years escapements MUST occur. Unless Chehalis has met escapement goals in at least 3 out of those 5 years... THERE SHALL BE NO CHINOOK DIRECTED FISHERY.

For 2014, only ONE year (2011) had made escapement in the previous 5 years

Out pops the new goal in May 2014. The bar has clearly been lowered for the 2014 return... now sitting at a paltry 9.7 K. But to date, the 2014 escapement has yet to be released to the public or to the GH Advisors.

Suppose for the moment that Chehalis makes the new e-goal. Because of the 3/5 rule there should be absolutely ZERO chance of a chinook-directed fishery on Chehalis stock for 2015. In a best case scenario, e-goal will have only been met 2 out of the previous 5 years.

<<<< BUT >>>>

No one has stated if the new and improved e-goal will be retrospectively applied to all previous returns. Why is that important? It makes a HUGE difference because at least 2 of the previous 5 years have made the lower goal. Suppose 2014 comes in over 9.7K.... that makes it 3 out of 5. Ironically, we could potentially be fishing on Chehalis chinook after only a 1 year abstinence, totally defeating the conservation intent of the policy.

The new goal could potentially be applied in this completely disingenuous fashion. Such a scenario would be absolutely criminal.

I'll be extremely vocal about insisting that WDFW have the discipline to ensure that the 3/5 benchmark MUST be based on meeting the prevailing escapement goal in the respective management year. In short, the only year subject to the new e-goal SHOULD be 2014.

2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 were all managed to the old goal of 12.4K. Management success or failure has already been determined in the books for each of those years. We're NOT going to re-write history here, folks.

Doc

It's not about the fish, it's the fishing. If the goal is too high to be met somebody will push for ESA listings. The managers have to find a goal they can hit, reasonably regularly, to avoid a listing. Listing would cause too many problems. They are faced with a difficult choice. If they can't hit the goal, they need to reduce fishing. But, if the problem is only habitat, the ocean, and such so that the stream's capacity is lower, we can still fish.

What a concept! Cannot meet the egoal so just lower the egoal!

Even if, it is an environmental issue we could do our part by stopping harvest until the run improves.

Isn't that what we, as a society, do in most everything? Can't pass tests in school, stop giving them. Give everybody a trophy for participating.

Nothing we can do about the new goal now.... etched in stone tablets at PSC/PFMC and QIN/WDFW are more than happy to tag along for the less bumpy ride.

I just don't like the potential for mis-using the new goal to re-write history. Like Vedder likes to say about boobies... failed management IS failed management. The new goal may help the agencies to rationalize and whitewash the sins of the future, but no way in hell it can cleanse the sins of the past.

Doc,
You have that backwards. QIN and WDFW didnt just "ride along for the less bumpy ride". QIN/WDFW jointly did the escapement goal analysis and presented this to PSC and PFMC science staff. These technical committees reviewed the analysis and approved the methodology. THe PSC and PFMC members heard from the scientific committees that approved the methods and then voted to accept the analysis that produced a single goal for GH Chinook. The single goal was a sum of the Chehalis and Humptulips analysis but the official goal in these forums is a single value.

Understood its an aggregate goal of 13.3K (down from 14.6K).... and fully realize that QIN/WDFW did the actual groundwork. It's something they've wanted to see at PFMC for some time. I'm just saying that they're all merrily holding hands thinking that somehow this will be better for the resource, that somehow this makes things easier to achieve. All the while killing another 1300 kings each year without remorse.

If history has anything to say about it; yes, it will be easier in the beginning because there's a bit more breathing room right off the bat, but over time they'll just go right back to old habits, managing right down to that last fish and they'll have just as a hard a time consistently meeting the new goal.

Then what.... lower it again?

There is an interesting aspect of stock-recruit relationships, at least for PS chum. WDFW set goals in the 70s based on the average of the 3 highest escapements. Then, in the 80s and 90s runs expanded, escapements went up, and something "odd" happened. Ricker curves said that the MSY goal needed to be raised because when significantly more fish spawned, they got higher returns. The opposite is also true. As you make the runs smaller, as you evaluate smaller runs, the models (of course) say the goal needs to go down.

It will be a continuous decline. In another decade the analysis, which will be statistically robust, will support another decrease.

The thing I find most interesting about Ricker curves is how anyone... I mean ANYONE.... can draw such an exquisitely shaped curve out of a dataset that looks a helluva lot more like a random scattergram? Yes I get the concept of carrying capacity and density dependent productivity, and fully accept it. But to construct a theoretical mathematical curve to describe that interaction is a fool's game when you look at real live data points.

Look, here's the raw GH data.



Now put the points on a simple spawner-recruit X-Y graph and you get these for each sub-basin....

Chehalis:



Humptulips:


Imagine for a moment that the Ricker curve is not superimposed on either graph.... just the data points and the linear replacement line.

You'd have to be some psychotic Greek astronomer on potent psychedelic drugs... you know, one of the dudes who identified and named all the constellations... to see some imaginary curve in that scatter plot. GMAFB!

Chinook and coho spawner-recruit data that is applied to the usual stock-recruit 101 functions (Ricker or Beverton-Holt or hockeye stick) quite often look like the splat from an open choke 00 buckshot pattern. This is one of those.

Extracting a relationship between spawners and recruits using the data presented is foolish. Forcing the data to fit a Ricker assumption simply demonstrates that a conclusion was pre determined prior to the analysis of the data. An independent technical review would no doubt point this out, the data do not support any conclusion about escapement whatsoever.

Give me a break! Four digit accuracy from a data set where the standard deviation of the mean is 4,329. It is no wonder you never see the 95% confidence interval posted with a Ricker curve. One really cannot be sure that there is a difference between 12,364 and 9,753 with this data set. Why not keep it where it has been. Oh right, it will cost 2,611 dead fish in a bag and maybe prevent targeting Chinook.

comparing only spawner/recruit data for any species is $hitty science...

Rivers are an ecosystem and every fish that swims, spawns AND dies affects the populations of all the other species in that ecosystem...