Having conversed with those in the know and picking up on more and more potential elements of the recent release of the 2019-2029 Puget Sound Chinook Management Program, some troubling items have come to light. In order to protect certain Puget Sound native King runs, a closure of Rec fishing westward of Neah Bay through the Straights and on into most of Puget Sound is under consideration. The very popular Rec San Juans Blackmouth fishery is also in jeopardy--and is possibly targeted for NT commercial harvest. Some have gone as far as projecting that the 20 yr. selective marking policy will also be scrapped. I need to emphasize none of this is chiseled in stone--yet well beyond rumor status.
I don't need to continue onward re: all this, but instead ask that you carry out your own scenario.
Moving forward, ponder this: whereas the WDFW Director and his various Mgrs. should be working for and moving toward recovery of lost opportunity, they have instead conspired without the Commission's oversight to enter into a long term agreement that not only solidifies the losses suffered, but fuels the continued decline of Rec salmon fishing amongst WA stakeholders. We all know lost habitat is a major issue... but their published objective to protect and preserve harvest opportunity has been better met for the Tribes than the people who pay their salaries.
Happy New Year? We can wait and see...but we best become more proactive right now to even have a slim chance for that being the case.

The most troubling item on this Puget Sound Salmon thing....is that all the meeting, phone calls, emails, EXCLUDED the complete WDFW Commission...this is a move that must be reversed.

This whole move fuels the fire that Tribal/some WDFW personnel are allowed to have "secret meetings", then apparently come up with a 10 year plan...that affects the Chinook fishery in that area of the state.

It seems to me, that the time should have been spent working on a plan to curtail Chinook fisheries BEFORE the fish get to Washington State.

I watched the whole tape on the December Commission meeting, some members of the Commission were clearly pissed on this 10 Year Plan.

Only corrupt politics can lead to a management strategy such as this, where the ones most responsible for the accelerating demise of the fish will be rewarded with still more harvest.

Rec anglers catch A LOT of the State's share of salmon in the marine areas off our local shores. It's the majority of the allotted rec catch, year in, year out. I can't imagine that the sport ocean fleet (historically the most successful at lobbying for rec fisheries) will let that happen without a fight, but if it does happen, you can be sure the saved quotas won't be left alone for the orcas to eat or to spawn. That's not how we roll. My guess is that the lion's share will go to Alaska/BC fisheries, with the local tribes mopping up whatever is left above further reduced escapement goals with gillnets.

I do hope I'm wrong. I'd be much happier knowing the fish were actually going to be allowed to make it closer to home, even if the orcas and tribes are the only ones who get to enjoy the benefit. At least they're "locals," for crying out loud.

I'm with DrifterWA: The relentless overharvest up north is what needs to be curtailed.

Here is WDFW's Mission Statement: Our Mission
To preserve, protect and perpetuate fish, wildlife and ecosystems while providing sustainable fish and wildlife recreational and commercial opportunities.

FAIL: The Department wraps it's Ten Year Plan in the veil of conservation, yet it's ONLY plan to protect ESA fish is to do away with Rec. fishing! There is no plan for habitat, supplemental brood stock or anything else. Purely a method to remove the most vulnerable stakeholder off the water.

Now, lets look at the Commission:
While the Commission has several responsibilities, its primary role is to establish policy and direction for fish and wildlife species and their habitats in Washington and to monitor the Department's implementation of the goals, policies and objectives established by the Commission. The Commission also classifies wildlife and establishes the basic rules and regulations governing the time, place, manner, and methods used to harvest or enjoy fish and wildlife.

Clearly the Commission should of been deeply involved in the entire process of creating this plan. They ARE the BOSS! Key word above is MONITOR! The Senior leadership at WDFW Choose to, or better yet CONSPIRED to leave the Commission out of the details! SO WHY?

It is evident that WDFW and the Commission serve two different masters. WDFW caters to tribal interests, and at a very close second commercial wants. In fact, Commercial's and Tribal fishermen are one in the same for all practical purposes!

The Commission on the other had, is the representatives of Rec and Commercial interests. The ONLY representative of Recreational Fishermen is the Commission.

So, you see, by removing the Commission from being involved in the making of the Plan, WDFW effectively removed the Rec fishermen from the equation. And with the Rec fishery out, all the opportunity that should of gone to the hook and line guy can now be spread out to the other two (Tribal and Commercial)! Had the Commission been involved, we would of seen a VERY DIFFERENT PLAN! One with Recreational Fishing given equality.

Some say "No big deal, Somebody will fix this before it goes through"
WRONG!!! NOAA has the plan. They are working on approval right now. They will not allow any tweaking or fixing until they have run the numbers! They already indicated that some systems need to be MORE RESTRICTIVE! You know the government. Once you give them something, you can't get it back!

SO, You have some options here guys.

You can continue to stick your head in the sand and let other people do the heavy lifting.

You can sell all your gear, or go fish Canada

Or, you and take a stand and fight.

First and foremost, those responsible for leaving the Commission out of the loop (Dir. Unsworth, Ron Warren and Mike Grossmann perhaps) need to be identified and disciplined publicly.

Next, WE MUST push to get ALL the Commissioners confirmed by the State Senate. Without confirmation they risk removal by the Governor at his whim. They cannot stand up to issues that might be against the Governors interest but good for us, unless they are free from worry of being canned by the Governor.

Finally, WE MUST bombard the Governors office, the Representatives the talk shows, the media, Talk to Owners of Sporting good stores and Mom and Pop gas stations you stop at when out fishing. Go to the marinas where you launch, EVERYONE and ANYONE to END THE GD SECRET MEETINGS this Department feels are perfectly OK!

If you want to be MORE INVOLVED, Send me an Email at:
OpenNOF@Gmail.com
We welcome all! We can pool our talents to win this war!

To add:

The 10 Year Plan was negotiated in secret to set the parameters for NOF negotiations which are also accomplished in secret (non-public) meetings.

Yet we have been told to not worry about the Plan because there will be those annual (but secret) NOF negotiations.

I feel so much better......(dripping sarcasm).

Maybe I should weigh in as I have been on the front end of this and in the meetings with WDFW after the plan was signed.

Major problems are outlined above. The biggest constrain that was agreed to was the Stillyguamish component. This is a change from all fishery managements prior.

1. The Stillaguamish Impacts were lowered to 8% and made a ceiling and not a target. This was modeled for us after the plan was signed and not before. This should have been done before signing onto to anything, to know where we stood.

2. The Stillaguamish impact required by NMFS for the PSCHMP was to be lowered from 25% previous to 24% coast wide. No other restrictions were required.

3. We previously managed to stay under the Southern US rate of 15% but all impacts from Alaska, Canada, and Lower US could combine to not go over the previous 25%. We averaged 13% in Southern US.

The 8% is for both us and the tribes. In the last 5 years we have averaged 13%. These numbers are

2017 2016 2015 2014 2013
11.5% 14.2% 13.6% 10.0% 15.7%

Now take the new 8% as a ceiling and not a target, so we manage UP TO 8% without going over and you can see that we would have had even more constrained fisheries in the last 5 years of our already short seasoned fisheries. Look at 2016 when we pretty much didn't have saltwater fisheries and its at 14.2%?
6.2% over? Wow.

Taken straight from page 167 of the Management plan, "Due to the limited productivity of existing habitat, it is unlikely that fishery actions alone can rebuild abundance of Stillaguamish Chinook to higher levels."

So even stopping fishing will not recover this fishery but yet we are willing to wipe out other saltwater fisheries? This will only save roughly 9-10 fish and break Washington's economy?



Back to the Managment Plan. It was supposed to provide flexibility in managing fisheries for NOF for the 10 year plan. As I told WDFW I understand the reason but when you gave everything away with the Management Plan there is nothing left to bargain with. Gave it all away up front.

This is not a tribal issue but WDFWs problem with negotiating with the Stillaguamish tribe. As this go forward I am hearing that some of the other tribes are starting to figure out that this will jeopardize their fishing too. The best outcome would be for WDFW and NWIFC agree to revisit the agreement and both agree to remove the Stillaguamish portion and take it back to the previous 15% or even lowered 13% target but no ceiling.






Hope this helps, along with no one and Commissioners not being consoled is unacceptable. I guarantee you that had the fish committee of the Commission been advised this would not have been the outcome. They are part of WDFW as the policy makers and should not have been shut out.

Please email the commission and tell them that you want the Commission to tell the director to rescend or modify the agreement removing the Stillaguamish component as Washington State cannot afford it. Tell your personal reasons why.

commission@dfw.wa.gov,

Lets add Pinnipeds to the equation. Go to this link to read: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14984-8#Sec2

Pinniped consumption of juvenile Chinook salmon was a substantial component of predation mortality coastwide, but particularly in the Salish Sea. Of the estimated 27.4 million Chinook salmon consumed coastwide by harbor seals in 2015 (Fig. 3), 23.2 million were smolts consumed in the Salish Sea. The percentage of the total coastwide smolt production consumed by harbor seals increased from 1.5% (3.5 million consumed out of 236.8 million estimated total production) in 1975 to 6.5% (27.4 million consumed out of 423.4 million estimated total production) in 2015. Harbor seals in the Salish Sea (i.e. Puget Sound, Strait of Georgia, and Strait of San Juan de Fuca) accounted for 86.4% of the total coast wide smolt consumption in 2015, due to large increases in the harbor seal abundance in this region between 1975 and 2015 (8,600 to 77,800), as well as a large diet fraction of Chinook salmon smolts relative to other regions (see supplemental material).

While (West Coast) predation on Chinook salmon by marine mammal predators increased, annual harvest by commercial and recreational fisheries decreased from 3.6 million to 2.1 million individuals, equivalent to 16,400 to 9,600 metric tons (Fig. 4a). At the same time, predator consumption of Chinook salmon increased from 1.3 to 3.1 million adults (we exclude smolts and ocean age one jacks from the estimate because they are not retained in fisheries), or from 5,800 to 14,200 metric tons.

So we are not the problem but habitat and pinnipeds are the bigger contributor. But they are not being addressed and signing an agreement that does not fix the problem is ludicrous.

FYI, the exploitation rate based management objectives in both the old and the new plan are in terms of ceiling rates that cannot be exceeded during preseason fishery modeling. You may remember in some years having difficulty being at or under the exploitation rate for Lake Washington or mid Hood Canal during NOF process. These rates are/were not targets for the preseason process. It was expected that meeting these preseason ceiling rates that the post season observed values, on average, would meet the management objectives for each stock. The ceiling rates vary by stock and by the status of each stock for the upcoming season. Stillaguamish is likely to be in the lowest status level and hence have the most constraining exploitation rate. You are correct that in the new plan, meeting the rates for Stillaguamish is likely to be the most constraining of all the Puget Sound stocks under its expected low stock status.

In my conversations with both past and present State Legislators and lobbyists, they concede that over the past two decades "millions" have been conveyed to the special interest political action groups of the Treaty Tribes, and then moved on. Because it's widespread, "everyone does it", and therefore considered acceptable practice.
Those funds travel a specific path that make them legal--and in this case--legal is not synonymous with moral or ethical. The old adage of "Follow The Money" once again comes into play...and dovetails nicely with the quote above.

Your right Bender! In fact, one Representative told me when they reported for the first session as a freshmen, they were pulled aside by one of the seasoned politicians and "schooled" on how the money flows, and then was told they can get on board or get out...

Everybody knows its going on, and so many participate in the take that it has become "just the way things are done here". Which is truly sad.

Nice story, but without some verifiable evidence, a story is all it is.

Very true, however having the same thing repeated by separate and credible sources does lend some substance that there is a financial influence in our state politics that can be traced back to Sovereign Nations. Of course you can argue that money comes from a lot of different special interest groups. True. But how many and how much would be interesting to know.

They have to file donations (the legal ones) with the PDC. Who gets what from whom is all there.

Also, remember who provided the money for the hand recount in Gregoire/Rossi I.

What's on paper is all legit of course. It's about what's NOT on paper. The motives, the promises, the favors, the kickbacks, the carefully crafted messaging. Of course it happens. It's bullet #3 in the job description.

They just did it behind closed doors for crying out loud. Right in front of your face. What more evidence does one need? Do we actually have to have the urine tested to know that we're being pissed on? It's warm and PNW rain isn't warm. Here's your sign.

It would be nice to know. It seems to me the maximum campaign contribution per entity is $1900 but I may be wrong. Anything else would have to be considered a bribe wouldn't it?

I'll wager there are enough loop holes that any amount of money can be contributed legally. Or illegally.

Maybe I should rephrase that the other river systems ceiling rates have been managed to stay under a certain rate in place. Which has happened. The Stilly was at basically 15% ceiling and we averaged 13%. The target was under the 15%. But now the new 8% is not a target but a ceiling which is way way way lower then where we have been. So we are axing all fisheries to manage UP TO 8% so the target will be lower than the 8% if this makes sense. Then add in, that fishing is not the problem but is being used as the answer that does not repair the problem. If habitat is not repaired and you remove the hatchery fish ponds, stop all fishing, this river is still probably probably going to die out.

Not to forget that many Green river stocks were used in a lot of our rivers years ago. (I have some stocking records for this river but does not show where the fish were from. This is a correction from my original post) So are we saving a mixed stock fish with genes from another river, and treating it as a Natural Origin River Gene Chinook. This is the problem that I have with almost all of our PS fisheries is that there really is not hardly any, if at all, Natural Origin River Gene pool fish. They are bastardized or feral fish. Hatchery fish that have been introduced into that river that spawned naturally are now "Wild Fish." Not to be confused with Natural Origin River Fish.

I sat in a meeting with NOAA/NMFS not long ago and asked them if we were to pump up hatchery production on some river systems and were able to use commercial fishing or weirs to catch the hatchery fish, are you OK with this? The answer was a straight "YES!"


So while we are promoting and running on Hatchery Science Review Group's Theory that has been accepted and managed our our Chinook fisheries to the bottom, we are now living to what we have done to ourselves. The tribes were never behind this. We started whacking hatchery production so that the wild fish could recover without having hatchery fish on the spawing beds. This was accepted as the law of the rivers that happened a little over 10 years ago. We now have 43% less wild Chinook than we did then. See the problem?

Remember back when we had tribes, non-tribal commercials, and recs all fishing before that time and hatcheries were all pumping out fish? We were all fishing with full seasons? Well I guess we weren't happy and had to take each others fish and stop producing hatchery fish.

We did this to ourselves. Look at the coastal Chinook. If you have any time at all behind you fishing, you will remember that the Lower Columbia River Tule and the Willipa Bay Chinook were pumped out in huge numbers. The Tule was caught all up and down the West Coast all of the way to Alaska, The Willipa Chinook were caught in Alaska and Northern Canada, then in Willipa Bay. Those fish had a purpose. They supplied a huge buffer that let many other stocks get through and back to their home waters including Puget Sound Chinook.

ESA under prior NOAA Management let ESA and our HSRG cut those stocks to the bone. They are no longer a buffer so more and more of our ESA listed rivers are in more jeopardy than ever. When they do make it home we have a pinniped problem that is not only hurting our Chinook but even causing our Orcas to be fed. Our Washington Hatchery Chinook production has been cut 60% and Coho 74% since 1989. Now why aren't we fishing?

I have been in front of Gov Inslee several times, once with some of the tribes, and he has been clear every time in saying we need to make more fish. If you want to keep fishing the answer is not keep cutting production but to increase it. We would all be happier if we were back to full seasons.

Using the Stilly as the example, if fisheries are reduced as far as we can, if habitat is being fixed as fast as we can afford, and the run continues to decline the write it off.

Choices must be made. If we, as a society, are unwilling to fix the habitat so it will produce the fish (we've had 20+years of listing already to look at track records), if we have cut all the fisheries to the bone and it still doesn't work then that stock is "done".

The "Fish or cut bait", "[Bleeeeep!] or get off the pot" needs to take over. If they are not rebounding (regardless of species/stock) the declare extinction and move on. If they continue to decline we are not doing enough. If we are unwilling to do more, then quit throwing good money after bad.

OK... CM, I get the nuts/bolts practicality of your last post...

BUT...

the moment you declare any one at-risk stock/substock to be expendable, haven't you by extension doomed every other stock/substock to the same fate?

The train of logic goes like something like this...

Come now, it's NOT all chinook that are in particular peril.... some of the depressed stocks are doing rather well in the context of what still remains of historic abundance. The Stilly fish are simply inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. Why suffer the inconvenience and cost of trying to save something spiraling toward extinction regardless. Sad though it may be, they are regretfully expendable. Scarce conservation dollars aren't just growing on trees, you know. Besides, all those other Puget Sound stocks are doing so much better than the Stilly fish. We'll focus on those instead.

Lather
Rinse
Repeat.

Again
and again
and yet again.....

Just remember to substitute the next weakest stock/substock each go 'round.

...

Species loss comes about from society's tolerance/acceptance of the shifting baseline... the insidious progressive decremental depletion whereby each new generation of conservationist sets out to "conserve" an ever smaller population that over time becomes RARE. As the critter of interest becomes still rarer in number, an inversely exponential sum of time/talent/treasure is invested in the race to save it once and for all. Think of the millions and millions spent on bringing back a handful of Redfish Lake sockeye.

Daniel Paully (in his TED talk that I posted a few weeks back) noted how we never lose abundant species, but rather ALWAYS the rare ones. By the time we allow them to become "rare" enough, their eventual loss can be more easily dismissed as inconsequential... and incomprehensibly unworthy of the obscene investment of time/talent/treasure required to maintain the species on life support.

People suck.

Which pretty much makes the time, money and energy invested in ESA/EPA stock restoration totally impractical...Doc takes it to the top once again!! More hatcheries and negotiations with AK and BC look like the preferred course of action to me...

You're absolutely right Doc. That is, unfortunately, the way this train is headed.

My hope ( I am actually optimistic on occasion) is that actually having to kill off a stock might make people think. I recall an old Star Trek, where the crew got in the middle of a war between two planets. They fought by doing modeled attacks, determined the kill, and then people went off to death chambers to die, as the model said. Something like NOF modeling. The Star Trekkers destroyed the computers, forcing them to actually go to war. I think it was Kirk who said that they would likely actually make peace because real war is messy.

Extinction is like that, too. We claim to want to recover Chinook, Killer Whales, and such. We just don't want to do what is needed. So, we either kill them off slowly, taking enough time so the decision makers are dead or out of office, or we simply bite the bullet, write them off, and fully develop the Earth.