I don't know CM, mebbe ya got good reason to feel that way. This classic from Marvin Gaye is going on almost half a century, and it seems not much has changed.
"How much more abuse from man can she stand?"
The acapella vocal track really IS something to behold, folks. Only a heartless fool WITHOUT soul would be unable to appreciate.
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"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)
"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)
I grew up (ok, I got older, growing up is still out there) at a time when popular music often challenged us, asked questions. There are lots of songs in the soundtrack in my mind that force me to think.
I do find that searching YouTube for music videos of songs I remember as a kid is a very relaxing way to spend some time. Does recharge the batteries. Which, at my age, are lead-based......
If you look at page 90, it is two equal length paragraphs obviously written by two different people. The first explains what is happening, the second says “no it’s not” and sites a old Skagit river study that fits there distorted view.
Seems to me the solution might be to investigate what is happening in Chile. As I understand it those Austral Kings came from our state and they are big.
Do they nab all the baitfish in Chile, are they commercially fishing salmon down there? Do they dredge for every last bottomfish?
Heard of the anchovy fishery down there? Obviously, they are letting the salmon go. New Zealand would be another place to look at no marine mixed stock salmon fisheries but they doin hit other species. Hard.
Note, too, that in Argentina they have steelhead, derived from probably CA rainbows, that repeat spawn seven or eight times.
There is a chance to look at the biology of our fish absent the fishery history we have applied to them. Should be instructive, assuming that we will learn and not see that as "fake science".
Registered: 03/03/09
Posts: 4393
Loc: Somewhere on the planet,I hope
Bit back I read a bit that the Chile Chinook do not have ocean exploitation. Minus that the fish simply evolved back to the natural genetics. Just takes time.
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Dazed and confused.............the fog is closing in
Once a fish species becomes just another dollar bill with fins, it's eventually doomed. Just more proof that humankind in incapable of true discipline in commercial fishing.
As if we didn't learn a HUGE lesson from the East Coast and the Grand Banks. This IS the legacy of the MSY mantra. History just repeating itself again....
There's a good reason money is so often referred to as the "bottom line." Every willfully poor decision comes down to it at some point.
The tax "reform" bill being shoved down our throats is another classic example of our refusal to accept reality any time reality dictates we must exercise restraint.
I haven't read the new management plan, but I'm skeptical already. "No size reduction for Puget Sound Chinook" ! REALLY? Are we using a 4 year time period? Now I regularly see quotes from WDFW as "5 year average", "10 year average", these are not long enough to evaluate the strength of any recovery. Look at our salmon numbers in Washington the last 50 years and tell me how we are doing. Meanwhile, keep commercially netting our Puget Sound herring and sending them to Alaska for bait so that the lodges there can keep catching our Chinook. And lets keep cutting back on our hatchery salmon production so that the Orcas can starve.
They don't ignore what we do, they take advantage of it. We're doing the same to BC. Heck, ask Idaho how well OR and WA treat Idaho-produced fish. Ask BC how well we traded their Columbia River salmon.
We complain (rightly so) when "they" take our resources but roundly defend our actions as being pure as the driven snow and justified.
Seeing is believing. For those who can't see it firsthand in your own "historic" catches, here's the evidence right out of the documented commercial catches over the past decade plus...
The fish have on average lost ~1/4 pound per year during this time period. Read more here....
On page 271, Chinook fisheries in the “exclusive economic zone” require 28 inch minimum size. This may work outside Puget Sound, but most our fish returning to hatcheries are under that size. So this fishery is selectively harvesting only the largest Puget Sound fish and has been for years.
A fish genetically programmed for the "large/old" phenotype has the deck seriously stacked against its survival in the present-day harvest milieu.
The very unnatural selection pressures being placed on large/old fish renders that life history strategy a genetic dead end.
Open ocean fishing over the "pasture" inherently places disproportionate exploitation on the large fish phenotype. We cannot harvest proportionately across the full spectrum of size/age class until the fishery transitions to a more terminal model.
The status quo will seal the coffin for the overwhelming majority of large chinook.
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"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)
"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)
And coho. You harvest the fastest growing fish all the time and you end up with smaller fish.
The Chinook were big and old because that is what worked best in the environment they lived in. Big fish can spawn in big water. What are creating is piscivorous Chums. The evolutionary hope for Chinook will be streams with enough flow to accept a 10-15 pound spawner in September but still have small enough gravel so they can dig in it.