By not fishing!

It’s pretty clear Gov Inslee could give two sh!ts about the sportsmen and women of this state.

http://www.king5.com/mobile/article/news...e/281-528561846

Tell me, where within that article is fishing even referenced?

“Under the order, state agencies will find ways to quiet state ferries around the whales, train more commercial whale-watching boats to help respond to oil spills and adjust fishing regulations to protect key areas and fish runs for orcas.“

Ah, thanks I didnt see that. And do you suppose that is automatically a net negative for Fishing interests??

Not really interested in getting into it. I did read the article though and recalled that it mentioned fishing restrictions, since you asked I c/p’d the quote. All I will say is I have ZERO confidence in this State. With that said I hope that whatever they do to try and “manage” whale health and populations works out better than the way they’ve “managed” the commercial and sport fisheries in Washington.

To chime in I don't see that as necessarily being an automatic net negative but it sure does cast a big net with potential huge negative impacts on recreational fisheries.

We will have to see how the Commission and WDFW reacts.

Oh, and here is a link to the agenda for the most recent meeting of the WDFW Budget and Policy Advisory Group: https://wdfw.wa.gov/about/advisory/bpag/agenda_030218_BPAG.pdf.

Lots of language therein about how to increase revenue and cut expenses.

I agree whole heartily that the various state agencies and government need to take action now. I'm very interested to see what direction and dollars Inslee will provide for immediate action.

Can we expect to see major changes if Forestry management for DNR, increase efforts to reduce pollution and water withdrawals from DOE, Accelerated replaced of fish blocking culverts and more fish friendly road systems for DOT and more control from Dept. of agriculture to provide more fish friendly farming?

Not holding my breath but it is clear to anyone who looks at the current plight of Puget Sound Chinook and the continued downward trend in their abundance that any meaningful long term increase in abundances will have to come via increased habitat protection and restoration. Somehow doubt the decision makers of the region orca concern goes that far.

curt

Providing food for the whales requires, primarily, changes in location. The harvest needs to shift to areas past the whales. First, of course, is the ending of fisheries on juvenile and immature salmon. Then, fish those that pass the whales.

Another benefit is that the cost in fuel per pound will be reduced as the fish will be significantly larger and closer to "home".

Managers could still use the same escapement goals. It would change fisheries but not eliminate fishing on salmon.

I think where the major impact will be for both the Commercial and Recreational will be in the large mixed stock fisheries in the Ocean, Strait, and Sound. It will be interesting for sure!

Give that man a GOLD star!

Restoration of habitat is the long term solution and need. Short-term (decade or two) significant cuts in mixed stock fisheries that intercept fish before the whales is the only way to get food to the whales now. Stick to habitat restoration and we risk completely losing the whales.

Need both.

I think the takeaways from this are:

Likely advancement of the "Orca protection/no boat zone" around the West coast of San Juan island, which will eliminate one of our states best late summer Chinook fishing opportunities and would also greatly impede transportation throughout the islands. As said it will remain to be seen what the stance of the commission and department will be, however, given what we've been seeing the past decade, I assume wholeheartedly they will fold like a house of cards.

A subsidization of whale watching boats to appease them for less opportunity to chase the whales. (In the article it states they should be trained as oil spill response... my guess would be as just-compensation for asking them to stay further away from the whales). Keeping in mind many rarely follow the distance restrictions currently in play.

An increase in taxes to foot the bill for research and implimentation (Inslee might as well change his name to Gimme at this point) which is the last damn thing we need in this state currently.

Given the current state of affairs with the degradation of stocks in general, the political environment of NOF, and the complete lack of leadership competency we have been seeing from the Department in general, I would think it would be pretty clear to all that this is going to mean nothing at all good for the recreational fisherman.... and quite frankly it's probably not going to mean a damn bit of good for the whales themselves.

Its good for Inslee, he wantz everyone to know he cares about whales. What a nice guy!

Shouldn’t the dilemma of the Orca be more than a Washington state/San Juan Island problem?

Who has Governor Inslee enlisted and teamed up north to help with the orcas cause?

I doubt there is really anything that WA can or will do that will make a detectable impact on the whales.

It will take AK, BC, WA, OR, and CA working reasonably in concert to actually fix the problems that have driven the whales down.

The heavy lifting on habitat is probably from the Fraser south. The major fishery issues are from the Fraser north. But unless we deal with all the components, failure is the result.

One of the primary reasons for my pessimism is that. like salmon, there are a myriad of problems. This allows each problem-causer too say that "He's doing more damage, fix him not me". If we closed the ocean the whales still face the toxics and the Chinook poor FW habitat so fix those first.

Canada is already talking about shutting down large areas to fishing to study the whales feeding behavior.

Just listened to a news report about Gov Inslee signed an executive order forming an Orca protection task force. The next few years could be real interesting. The Tribes say they are board. The question, on board to get recs off the water? Or, mass produce hatchery Chinook. The latter is something they could probably get away with, even under hatch vs wild ESA restrictions. Other restrictions could come to regulate water/shipping commerce, something IMO would be difficult, clean up storm water runoff pollution, super expensive, boat speed limit and protection zones w/ more enforcement. The report mentioned that historically the population has been lower than now and bounced back. My take is we are at a low point in the population cycle. Species populations in nature, other than humans, always find equilibrium based on their environment. Possibly this is what is presently occurring. Trying to be an optimist, I really hope some way we can get more PS Chinook out of this. Chinook that will stay inside PS.

Chinook that stay in PS accumulate higher levels of toxins than those that go to the oceans. The whales, and the humans who eat the Chinook too, would be better off with ocean-run fish.

The population of whales is looking for a new equilibrium. It will be controlled by how much food is available.

In the article I read, NMFS Regional Administrator Barry Thom said, "it's not too late." Unfortunately I think he is wrong.

The actions that can be taken right away or in the near term would result in small incremental benefits to the southern resident orcas. I doubt that is enough to prevent further population decline. And of the near term actions that can be taken, lip service will be the most prominent one, whereas actions that could make a significant difference will have too high a social and economic cost to the movers and shakers who control actions government agencies actually take.

The near term actions are mostly of the type that would treat symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem; the root cause being degraded habitat that produces too few Chinook to adequately feed orcas throughout the year. Restoring PS freshwater and marine habitat to produce adequate forage for orcas will take a longer time than the whales likely have remaining. And that amount of habitat restoration is extremely unlikely to ever happen anyway, given the other over-riding priorities of society, which mainly are the development of the PS area to accommodate the Californication of western WA.

Sorry to be so pessimistic about the whales and Chinook restoration and recovery, but if society and the state and federal agencies really want to feed Chinook salmon to the orcas for the next 50 years or more, it will have to be with hatchery Chinook because the natural habitat simply cannot and will not produce the abundance and diversity of forage the whales need.

Sg

Yep

Looks to me like we are going for all out habitat destruction with all the new clear cutting going on in the Skagit and Stilly watersheds.

There is an old contracting/construction adage that you can have it fast, you can have it cheap and you can have it good (quality) but you can't have it fast, cheap and good. Kind of applies with Orca recovery:

You can have more Orcas, you can have more development, you can have more salmon (but adversely impact wild stock if any such thing remains) and you can have all the pinniped predators you want but you can't have more more development, more (and sufficient) Chinook, current/increasing numbers of pinnipeds and more Orcas.

It is way past time for NOAA to step up and address the MMPA as it adversely impacts Chinook numbers available for Orcas. I was disappointed (but not surprised) that apparently neither Mr. Thom nor Governor Inslee identified that issue when discussing actions to recover Orcas.

So right, Larry. That actually applies to all our resource management. Decisions need to be made. Publicly. There is no win-win.

Canada cutting back on harvest is good for U.S. fishermen, fish and Whales.
Habitat improvements will also help.
Increased hatchery production is good for fishermen and Whales. It will be good for fish as soon as we start moving our hatcheries off the spawning grounds.
We will have to remain vigilant to stop the proposed closure areas like we are seeing in Canada.
As for the Whales themselves, I think the concern is a little overboard. JK and L pods had 71 whales in 1976 and have 76 now.

Several years back, when we had the large salmon returns, there was a baby boom. In the last few years, with the dismal runs, mainly blamed on the ocean conditions, there has been a bit of a die off. So, is this current concern a short term panic? As stated above, there are more now than in 1976. The current population, it appears, should be able to produce around 9 babies a year. It seems with a little help, they could recover to new highs fairly easy. The 1800 population was estimated to be around 200. Considering that 46 were captured in the 1970's, it should not be that surprising that numbers are down. I would guess they did not target the older orca's, which would have greatly limited the breeding number. With just a little help, this population has lots of potential to bounce back. I have a feeling that the present concern about raising Chinook numbers may not help, as these fish will not be heavily present during the spring. Stopping the harvest of forage fish and helping to increase there number and reducing local predation by seals and sea lions may be a much smarter approach.

1) I'd like to see a graph of whale population vs puget sound chinook hatchery production.

2) Also like to see a graph of whale population vs average puget sound chinook size.


If 1) shows a good correlation, the remedy might be easy. If 2) is better, I think its a heavy lift.

Is there a map that shows their yearly migrations, that is to say where they are predominately at during any time of the year as evidenced over a a long period of time? I don't exactly trust that the remedies will exactly fit the problem. With a 30k king surplus for just the Deschutes, a 20K plus at Skok hatchery, and surpluses a few other places, a huge surplus of chum at hoodsport and the canal, it is clear that there should be plenty of salmon at certain locations and for certain periods of time. Tracking them closely should reveal what stocks they are targeting and which ones need to be worked on. Again, I just don't trust those in charge to actually make the right decisions if this is a real issue. I think it is probably up to those of you with a deep knowledge of the local fisheries to keep a tab on what is going on and making sure that the correct moves are made. Other wise we will just see more money going to special interests with little progress, and more reductions that make no sense.

Out of the dozen trips I made to the West Side of the Juans last summer, the biggest impact that stood out in my mind was watching seiners drop in off eagle point with the whales coming. I think everyone watching had the same sense of uneasiness watching what could have been a slow motion train wreck.

Timing worked out and nothing happened.... well except the 4 seiners basically taking dinner off their plates and corking 50-60 sport boats including 1 who had to fire up the main, without time to pull gear up, to avoid being seined.

Krisjack brings up a great point though with timing. Dumping millions of smolt into stocks that aren't consumed by Orcas won't do anything. Similar to how the Canadian Troll fleets were able to hone in on the several specific runs down here, the orcas are most likely targeting certain stocks. I would assume the fish checkers in the Juans would have Coded Wire/tag information to support which stocks are present in the orcas domain.

"One of the most important food sources is spring chinook salmon from the Columbia River. Orcas use the mouth of the Columbia as a winter “buffet,” stopping on their annual migration from their home in the Salish Sea south to Monterey, Calif., and north to southeast Alaska.

“Every time they go by the Columbia, they stop and they forage for days and days and days on end,” Giles said. “They don’t behave like that in any (other) single location across their range.”

The decline of the orcas coincides with the drop in salmon numbers. Historically, two rivers were critical — the Columbia and the Fraser in Canada, where the salmon that the whales eat in the summer come from."


Northern Orcas depend on the Fraser. Southern Orcas depend on the Columbia.

Puget Sound - not so much. Puget Sound has a flaming metric butt ton of hatchery kings returning to it. Kings that we can't fish for because of political and non sound-science decisions that favor the tribes, orcas, political careers, and other fisheries (SE AK, etc).

You telling me that these Southern orcas only eat endangered ESA Stilly Chinooks while in Puget Sound??????

Actually, they eat Dyes Inlet chum. It is necessary to look at the whale's migration patterns to fire what they want when. Historically, I doubt that Puget Sound was really great for Chinook except the Skagit. Modest numbers, but nothing like Fraser and Columbia. Makes sense to focus there.

Just how much, in the name of conservation, have we cut back on Chinook production in the Columbia? Any and every cut in hatchery production shifts predation to wild fish. Couple that with increased pinniped and bird populations and most idiots could figure out that the wild fish would suffer.

Nothing is going to be done to Alaska unless it forced onto them by the Federal Courts. Since nothing is done to them, BC will take WA fish to make up for what AK takes. And they will take WA fish in trade for the sockeye. Wilkerson pretty much tied Fraser sockeye to PS coho.