Public Hearing on Ocean Salmon Management Options tonight

7 p.m., Chateau Westport - Beach Room, 710 W. Hancock, Westport

Public hearing, sponsored by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, to receive comments on the proposed ocean salmon fishery management options adopted by the council during its early March meeting.

... if folks want to get on the record for the which of the 3 ocean options they support.

The Coho projection for our state is dreadful.

The Coho projection for Alaska is over an additional 550,000 Coho available in 2016 over their 2015 season.

Interesting to see how contrasting projections play out this season for these areas.

or they see Washington isn't expecting those fish so more for them

The general rule of the PDO and such is that when conditions are good in AK they are poor in the lower 48 and vice versa. It should be expected that when runs down here suck for biological reasons they will boom in AK and vice-versa.

Maybe one of you guys can clear this up for me. I had heard about (and observed) the inverse relationship between run sizes in Alaska and the lower 48 year to year. I also heard (I think) that all Pacific Salmon migrate to waters around Alaska to feed. Is that right, or do our fish stay closer to home when ocean conditions are better here?

It depends on the species and stock within a species.

Steelhead go way into the N Pacific, almost to Asia. The other species are "more" coastal oriented. I think WA coho don't go too far past BC while some Chinook certainly visit and then stay in AK.

The managers have distribution data for all the species and most of the stocks.

NOAA has stated that contrary to earlier beliefs, many salmon from North American rivers roam far at sea in the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. The oceanic distribution of the salmon is dependent upon the species and point of origin.

"Salmon such as the pink, chum, and coho from central and southeast Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington State, migrate out into the northeastern Pacific and Gulf of Alaska."

I once caught an Icecycle Creek tagged hatchery fish in Sitka.

Talking about Alaska, it was interesting to find out that even after the extremely low Coho returns to the lower 48 and the low Coho returns to Alaska this past year that the average price paid for Alaskan caught Coho was a staggering ten-year low price of $0.65 per pound.

A little checking around turned up the prior year had almost doubled to 43 million lbs. of Coho caught which was the largest Alaskan Coho haul of this century when checking back the past 15 years and the average price paid was $1.15 per pound.

I’d like to see a genetic sampling being done of Coho and other salmon species being caught in Alaskan waters.

We already know Alaska and BC fisheries take a large percentage (likely even a majority) of our hatchery fish. What I'm more curious about immediately is whether more lower 48 fish stay closer to home in years of good ocean conditions (if forage is good on the coast, why migrate?). If they do, it might point to the Alaska and BC fisheries as the ultimate "ocean condition."

If more of our fish head to the Gulf of Alaska and surrounding seas when ocean conditions are poor locally, one would think that would greatly exacerbate the impacts of intercept fisheries, adding a painful over-exploitation insult to the injury caused by the poor ocean conditions to begin with.

Lucky Louie's info about coho sales in Alaska last year is interesting. Perhaps the relatively abundant Chinook were accounting for more of the demand for salmon than in other, recent years, explaining the low price/pound on coho?

We've known for decades that AK and BC play a major role in the abundance of many of our salmon stocks. Those numbers, based on tags and genetics, have been around for ages. There is simply not enough political horsepower to do a damn thing about it.

Have folks seen this:



Original TVW link (as the video is a bit grainy on youtube): TVW salmon seasons 2016

Any news from PFMC?

so....Is it still the case that area 6 is still open through April???

We could close it entirely for the next 10 years and never see an increase in returns if we don't get Alaska and BC commercial fisheries to quit killing all of our fish. Seems like selling our coho for cents per pound only makes sense for those that care only about money. Conservation and ecology have no bearing when their only concern is about money.

It's not just commercial fisheries, it is the mixed stock oven sport up there too. A dead fish doesn't spawn whether killed by a troller, gill netter, or sporty.