New article on salmon recovery out on Tidal Exchange today. Read, Share, discuss!

https://tidalexchange.com/2018/03/15/fisheries-mgmt-for-dummies-2-recovery-you-try-it/

Makes sense, That's probably why Washington state won't even consider this idea.

What idea?

Read the article.

Washington is doing what they suggest which is banking on habitat restoration as the solution.

I suspect the "banking on habitat restoration" will be 100% lip service, as it always is. At best our "habitat" work has been nipping at the edges of slowing down the destruction.

No way in hell anyone will want to spend the time and money required to turn Puget Sound back into a good place to be a wild salmon.

Fish on...

Todd

Exactly, So that's not working, Let's just cut the fishing back some more, Like we have been doing for years now.

If we don't want to fix the habitat then we mitigate with hatcheries. Either/or. If we are unwilling to control population, growth, and sprawl then hatcheries are the ONLY way to get salmon for harvest.

I like the simulation.... A LOT!

It has application far beyond the Stilly.

It gives one great insight on what it would actually take to recover populations ANYWHERE in the state.... even in places where habitat is much better than the Stilly.

Willapa Bay chinook immediately came to mind as WFWC/WDFW has a policy aimed at rebuilding those coastal chinook. Mind you, the habitat is NOT ideal chinook habitat.... but what's there is in hella'better shape than what you I-5er's have in Pugetropolis. For that matter, chinook habitat is hella'better ANYWHERE on the coast than what chinook have in PS.

Because of the much smaller human environmental footprint, it's the only region in WA where chinook haven't been ESA listed.... the last best king populations in the state with the least spoiled habitats available for their ongoing viability/recovery. That's kind of a BIG deal that seems to have escaped the fish managers

We've f'd it up just about everywhere else. If WDFW can't find redemption here, then where?

So even before the simulation went prime-time, I had a chance to play with the first draft. The reset is a nice addition. As is the button for invoking production from the conservation hatchery to keep the "life support" going.

As I concluded over a decade ago in an ancient thread...

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/forum...html#Post399440

.... it's as if the Stilly is a patient in the hospital ICU, and pulling the plug on the hatchery would be the equivalent of pulling the plug on the critically/terminally ill patient.

In the end, the only thing that can possibly bring this population back to viability is habitat restoration. Everything else is fruitless full court press that cannot be sustained.

The big problem with this argument (no matter how valid), to Todd's point, is that habitat restoration on the scale it would require to achieve recovery is absolutely never going to be funded. It's WAY too much money, WAY too far down the list of spending priorities. We need to face that reality. For the most part, the habitat we've got is as good as it's going to get.

The other problem with putting all the eggs in the habitat basket is that it supports the absurd notion that current exploitation rates (outside Puget Sound) are appropriate. I will go out on a limb and guarantee that, if by some bizarre miracle the habitat were restored completely, it won't produce a significant number more fish unless we increase escapement goals. In case anyone hasn't noticed, those continue to go the wrong direction, despite the fact that habitat improvements (however small) have been made. Why's that? Because when NMFS sees run forecasts that don't allow for the standard, bought and paid for commercial exploitation rates, they go ahead and schedule fisheries at that rate anyway, leaving the Tribes and the States less to work with in their fisheries. Our co-managers all want their fisheries, too, and the only way to get there is to lower escapement goals for the limiting stocks, blaming the habitat. Just as it's irrefutable that habitat is the ultimate population limiter, it's irrefutable that lowering escapement goals so we can all fish will NEVER lead to more fish.

In a nutshell, I think salmon (and many of the plant and animal species that depend on them) are screwed; ultimately by loss of habitat, but at present, because of intentional, unrelenting overharvest. "Recovery" is a pipe dream. I think we need to be a little more realistic in our goal-setting. For example, I think doing enough habitat work to support 10-20% more spawners (much more realistic than the whole enchilada), then reducing harvest to achieve a similar increase in escapement, is a practical approach that might allow us to achieve enough recovery to uphold reasonable fishing opportunities for all stakeholders for quite a while.

It's a good article, and I understand why talk of reducing harvest is a slippery slope for the sport fishing fleet in Puget Sound. That said, to claim fishing (in general) is not part of the problem is disingenuous, and potentially damaging to the cause of raising awareness of the plight of Puget Sound salmon.

To get anywhere, we need to quit doing the same things wrong, year after year. Clearly, the status quo won't work. It's past time for us to move on from the idyllic image of fishing over historical run sizes and start living in the present. If everyone's willing to sacrifice just a little, we should be able to achieve some small measure of improvement. It just comes down to making the tough decisions that need to be made in the short run. Without that, there is no long run.

Fleaficker -

I agree that the status quo has not been working. The issue is that since the ESA listing of Puget Sound Chinook in the vast majority (all?) of the Puget Sound basins the key habitat supporting the region's Chinook has continued to decline. If Puget Sound wild Chinook and by extension any fishing in the sound is to have future the status quo of declining habitat has to be reverse.

The beauty of the stimulation provided by tidal exchange is that one can test your theory that all that needs to be done is reduce the harvest some and improve the habitat to support 10 to 20% more fish. To test your idea I increased the habitat capacity to 940 spawners (125% increase) and reduced all fishing impacts to zero (as much as harvest can be reduced) and still without the conservation tribal hatchery program the population still goes extinct.

Unfortunately more and more the habitat situation on the Stillaguamish is becoming the norm and without changing the status quo of declining habitat quality the region's ESA listed Chinook are head directly towards extinction. Yes we can and probably should reduce fishing but all that will do is buy a little time before to inevitability of extinction.

Curt

Applying the sim to WB, where the goal is ultimately 4300 wild spawners.

I set habitat sufficient to carry 5500.
I set marine predation at 40% to reflect pre-terminal harvest (BC/AK interception is actually closer to 50% )
I set the inside ER at 14% which is where the WB Policy eventually expects us to land.

This scenario produces a viable steady state population of spawners of about 1600-1700.

If we could somehow get BC and AK to cut their interceptions down by 1/2 (20%), the sim ramps up to a population of 3500-4000 spawners in just a few generations.

If we improve habitat access/quality to 7500 fish, we ramp that population up to a steady state of about 4500-5000.

The actual numbers might differ from reality, but I believe the interaction between the variables is on solid ground.

...

I did one final exercise to see what level of exploitation restraint it would require to reach a steady state of maximum sustainable abundance.... where the population reaches equilibrium at carrying capacity.

That happens at about 15% exploitation (regardless of who is doing the exploiting).

So when is Seattle getting mowed over and replanted with trees

I absolutely agree, and thank you. My point is that, realistically, prolonging it is the best we can do at this point, so why not do that instead of accelerating the process (the status quo)? One thing we never try is letting more wild fish spawn, more often, on purpose. Never have, and I'll bet you a dollar we never will. Just too economically painful, I guess....

The problem with Ricker is that it is an economic analysis rather than biological. What is the minimum investment in spawners to get the maximum catch? Completely ignores any sort of inter species effects.

In AK, wild coho are fished at 60% (at least in the particular SE AK stream I am familiar with). The catch has varied from 1,000 to 8,000, with the appropriate escapement. It is sustainable at any of those levels.

What changed the catch? Pinks. No pink spawners, 1,000 coho catch. Approximately 2 kilos of pinks per square metre and you harvest 8,000. That number of pinks, at the higher levels, certainly exceeds an MSY calculation for the stock.

That is a nice, but simplistic, way to look at it. The downside of the large pink escapements is that they appear to depress Chinook survival and may outcompete coho in the ocean.

Recovery is going to take looking at the whole ecosystem, and this will include the invertebrates that feed to fry and smolts, including the predators like pinnipeds, terns, and cormorants. Doing it within dozens of silos will guarantee non-success.

FleaFlicker -- my kind of a-ha moment with this tool is trying what you're suggesting -- which is "letting more wild fish spawn" and seeing that it doesn't really do anything. That's, to me, the point of all this. The gravel is effectively incapable of doing anything with those spawners. The escapement is (at least apparently) directly linked with habitat carrying capacity. You can increase escapement by cutting fishing, but not in a way that leads to recovery. You just get more fish escaping and not finding good habitat for their redd.

Carcassman, it's certainly true that it's an ecosystem wide "habitat" problem. I think the point of the article is again that cutting FISHING right now isn't going to do jack squat for recovery. It will not produce larger returns in future years--what it arguably will do is decrease the chances that an overly optimistic forecast will in turn lead to overfishing. So if that's what we're doing we shouldn't call it a "rebuilding escapement rate" we should call it a "less likely to go extinct" escapement rate.

Have we tried to put more fish on the grounds that "won't take them"? In the 80s we probably doubled chum escapements above "MSY". Damn, the production increased. In the 90s and 00s we took pinks to probably 50x MSY. Same thing happened. Admittedly, then runs have since declined but decadal shifts in ocean production have been known to drive overall numbers.

Pinks and chums spawn in the same places as Chinook. The pinks spawn at the same time. They have a similar freshwater experiance in that they are short-term rearing fish. Why, other than the fact that Chinook are so damn popular in marine mixed stock fisheries, are they so different in freshwater?

When WDF first set Chinook escapement goals for Puget Sound they explicitly said that the goals were nowhere near utilizing the available habitat.

We know that mass spawning actually cleans the gravel and removes the fine sediments that are currently entrained in the gravel and significantly reduce egg-fry survival. What is the plan for cleaning the gravel if we are not going to use spawners? Also, and getting back to the problems with MSY, mass spawning has been shown to produce fewer fry per female (competition, superimposition, actual digging up of eggs) but sends more total fry to the estuary. And economist wants more fry per female, and ecologist wants more fry.

Also, as to "rebuilding escapement rate". When I was in the game, the RER for a number of PS stocks was actually greater than MSY calculated for those same stocks. It looked good, made ya feel warm and fuzzy, and just kept the stocks on a downward spiral.

You just have to love WDFW's salmon management. This year's return to the Deschutes facility in Tumwater, 29,000 Chinook showed up. Only one hundred were released above the trap (to spawn?). Yep! One hundred! Probably all males. Although not the best Chinook habitat, certainly some successful spawning/hatching could have taken place with a large escapement. I'm sure glad that the watershed got to benefit from those hundred salmon! And I know that the landowners in the watershed appreciate being strictly regulated for the sake of salmon. A bigger escapement of that huge Chinook return would certainly have benefitted the up and down Coho population through nutrient enhancement. Who's running this madhouse, anyway? (Just my continuing disgust with WDFW, so pardon my bitching)

That tumwater hatchery is a head scratcher. Maybe they're going to food bank? It seems like they should release way more up river.

I moved to Oly after they closed Capitol lake but I heard stories about people having fun chucking eggs below the i5 bridges.

Besides an educational experience for kids seems sort of pointless.

There's a reason why most graduates of the top fisheries university in the nation do not go to work for WDFW.

If our state really wanted to save our salmon/steelhead they'd be in my building 24x7 recruiting full time.

As is, when I hear what the educational/science experience is of the upper managers in WDFW (if they even have any) makes me cringe.

Don't get me wrong - there have been and are, a few good scientists at WDFW, but their bosses make decisions based off of their own career paths, not good science or the positive future outcome of our fisheries.

WDFW needs to be run like a business, not a bloated and ineffective state agency. Maybe when Trump get's out of office....he can come in as the new Director and drain the swamp.

The ditch running through Oly was once a great salmon and steelhead fishery.

Now it's eye candy for libatards.

No swamp was drained in Mr. Fibb's first year in office. He tried to stock a swamp with gilded turds, but many of those found their way to an outlet, and disappeared downstream. Not the expertise you want if you're trying to upgrade the WDFW. Keep looking...

There are, or will be, significant problems with allowing Chinook to spawn in the Deschutes.

WDF actually released adults up there and monitored the returns. The unmarked adults that showed up could be explained as the surviving "drops" (hatchery fish the missed being clipped). The bigger problem is that if you get wild fish spawning up there there are expected to be ESA conflicts. Those conflicts would impact fisheries on the returning hatchery fish.

I do find it difficult to fathom why you had a fairly "pure" opportunity opportunity to harvest the hatchery fish (Tribal or NI) and it wasn't used. There used to be a pretty good Squaxin GN fishery that targeted those fish.

And thank you to Parker for the comments on hiring and staffing...

If I remember right, the ESA issue came up in the past. The state simply stated that if it was an issue, they would pull the fish ladder around the falls. This effectively stops all fish from going up, as historically it was very rare that any could make it up. I believe it was thought possible that some might be able to get around the falls during a high water event, but that is was unlikely and that it would not be consistent enough to produce any viable run. Historically I do not believe there were any anadromous fish present. Last I saw they still have a gill net fishery there, but it is likely that the fish are so dark by the time they start to cluster that the tribal netters focus on other areas for more valuable fish. By not netting as heavily in the immediate area, more might be able to get through.

There were fish a thick in the 70's.
Funny how man has actually forgotten how to make it so again.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

The falls were impassible (or nearly?) until the fishway was built on the 1950s, same money that built, err partially built the Sunset falls fishway on the Sky and the Granite falls fishway on the SF Stilly. The push was to get fish up into vacant habitat to make more and free fish!

The Deschutes fish passage issue came about after mass marking had entered the scene and harvest rate management on the unmarked fish became the metric. Like Carcassman indicated, it complicated the fishery in that, you had to manage for these free fish (naturally produced in the Deschutes, as if they were wild ESA fish. Easier to just not pass them.

And yes, all food grade fish end up at the food bank, via the state contracted buyer.

Meanwhile our state continues to spend millions rebuilding hatcheries like the Puyallup Clark Creek Hatchery.


Why?????????

Trout. A pathogen free, spring fed water source allows the facility to raise trout and transport them outside of the Puyallup watershed. If you moved the production to, say, Voight's then trout could only be planted in the Puyallup watershed.

I agree that cutting sport fishing in Puget Sound won't save $hit. I have thoroughly enjoyed the handful of trips I've taken in Puget Sound, and I support you guys keeping whatever opportunity you can. Fantastic place to be on the water.

That said, the problem I see with the (neat, if depressing) model is that (through no fault of its own) it includes ZERO data from multi-year periods of INTENTIONAL escapement over MSY. That, in my humble opinion, is at least a significant part of why it paints such a bleak picture.

Ask yourself if current escapement goals will EVER, even in Garden of Eden habitat, produce anything remotely resemblimg a "recovered run." I think the only logical (or perhaps even sane) answer to that question should be a resounding "No." That's my point. Unless the ocean fisheries reduce their level of impact, we'll only enjoy good fishing inside when the forecasts are underestimated. Same as it ever was....

Fleaflickr02,

In an environment where a salmon population cannot replace itself, meaning that 1 spawner always produces less than 1 recruit, there is no such thing as an MSY escapement goal. The management concept of MSY assumes both population productivity and an environment that facilitates that productivity. That is what allows "surplus production", that number of fish over and above spawning escapement that can be safely and reliably harvested without threat to future production.

In a case like the Stillaguamish, or the model's Simuguamish, the spawning population, no matter how small or how large, simply cannot replace itself on an average annual basis. It's an environment that necessarily leads to extinction. Were it not for the Stillaguamish Tribal hatchery program, Stillaguamish Chinook would have likely gone extinct before now, or would be hovering dangerously close to it.

At extremely low population levels, like the Stilly, it can be possible to a population to hang on for years. This can happen by the few spawners using the very best of the overall poor habitat, and the resulting fry using the very best of extremely limited juvenile habitat. In such a case, the population is functionally extinct, but not factually extinct.

Sg

Sg:

Thanks for putting the focus on the Stillaguamish (where it belongs when discussing most Puget Sound fisheries), but it leads me to a question I've asked many times, and to which I've never received what I understood to be an answer:

I accept that the Stilly's escapement goal is driven by its severely compromised habitat. That said, if habitat is the driver of ALL escapement goals, how come the habitats in the Queets, Quinault, Hoh, and Sol Duc (not pristine, but excellent by modern standards) aren't assigned much higher escapement goals than the rivers thought to be all but destroyed (Stilly)?

My guess is that, because achieving higher escapements, whether for one river or 100, would require meaningful, across the board limits on mixed stock ocean fisheries, that's simply not considered a real option. The largely unsubstantiated, over-generalized argument that the habitat won't provide a return on any investment in escapement does much to keep that status quo intact, methinks.

Habitat is (at least was) not the driver when the Chinook, pink, chum, and LW sockeye escapement goals were set by WDF. They are all averages. Chum was the highest 3 years in the days base. They have no relationship to habitat.

As I have noted before, when WDF set the Chinook goals they clearly stated that these goals would not utilize the available habitat. When chum escapements significantly increased in the 80s and 90s, valuations by WDF using the Ricker Curve, showed that the MSY goal should be raised as productivity went up with the escapements. The sockeye goal was "experimental", based on some recent escapements. When WDF discovered that they had miscalculated the number and it should have been 400-500K instead of 350, they left it at 350.

Fleaflickr02,

As Carcassman indicated, habitat was not used to set any of the salmon spawning escapement goals in the early 1970s. As far as I know, there were no escapement goals for any species prior to US v WA. My recollection is that escapement goals for Chinook, chum, and pink were based on the average escapements for the period of record, which I think went as back as 1968 at the most (for Chinook). I don't think any serious spawning escapement estimates were made for anything prior to that time.

The exception to averages was coho. Zillges used and developed a habitat based model in 1976 that actually wasn't and still isn't half bad. Turns out it under-estimated habitat because a lot of small water bodies that coho use weren't included in the Williams stream catalog of 1975.

As co-management evolved, both state and tribal biologists agreed that escapement goals should be based on something more solid than average escapements that occurred more or less by coincidence. The Ricker model was generally preferred, and the intent as I recall was to "probe" with high, medium, and low escapements to determine the best or "correct" goal. The thought was that since run size escapements are usually high or low, the needed range of escapements would be observed within the coming years.

Well it was easy to get medium and low escapements with predicted returns, probably (IMO) because over-fishing of Chinook and coho in Puget Sound was an already established pattern. But in order for the model to give a good fit to data, you need some really high escapements, not just medium, low, and slightly higher than medium. No party was willing to give up the amount of harvest for a number of years that would be necessary to really fill the graph with some high escapement numbers. The Ricker curve can only give a value based on the data points that are entered, and since few or no high points are included, the curve is skewed lower than it might otherwise be. I don't know if any PS Chinook escapement goals have been changed from the original averages or not. My guess is not, because status quo is nearly always more comfortable in the human condition than change, especially change that might be accompanied by pain, as in not harvesting some hypothetical paper salmon.

C'man,

I thought the Lk WA sockeye escapement goal was based off of the estimated smolt capacity and productivity of the lake, which was based off Lk WA prior to METRO and the lake clean up that began in 1968, which significantly reduced its productivity. There is plenty of spawner-recruit data to make an estimate, and I believe the model kicks out a number in the 100,000 to 150,000 range. The co-managers could change the goal if they wanted, but again, it's about that human condition thing, and not science after all.

Sg

They put a lot of money into that Cedar sockeye hatchery.
What a waste of money for poor returns and fish you'll never get to fish for.
SF

The 350K was based on some recent observed escapements and was set up for the Cedar River ONLY and as a test to see how it worked. As "management" evolved, the goal was applied to the whole basin. Which actually lowered the Cedar goal.

But, recalculation a year later showed that there had been a significant under-estimate that was used to set the 350K.

At the time that goals were being set the IPSFC bios looked at the lake and river and suggested that if Lake Washington was a Fraser trib that their goal would be a million.

As is noted, recent evaluations show that the goal could/should be lowered. But, the same argument about not loading up with spawners (try half a mill, a mill) to see how that works.

You are right that PS coho were all that was actually based on habitat. Again, to show the intransigence about raising goals, the Skagit system was physically surveyed (not taken from maps) and about twice as much habitat was found to be there. Goal remained the same.

The creek I worked on was mapped at half the available anadromous area used to set the coho goal.

I pointed this out repeatedly, here and elsewhere, and received a ton of pushback from those that thought there would be a miraculous return of sockeye that would be open every summer.

Hasn't resulted in one additional season yet, we'll see if it ever does.

Fish on...

Todd

At its best, LW was for some reason very marginal for sockeye. Returns were generally not much better than 1:1. Another interesting aspect is that the smolts are about 2-3x Fraser smolts for size. This suggests, to me, that there is significantly under-used capacity. BUT, it is also quite possible that the bottleneck is when the fry first hit the river. Few survive but what does then grows well.

LW sockeye have one of the longest spawning seasons for any salmon. They should spawn in about a month. I suspect that they are still evolving to adapt to the lake. They've been there only about 80 years.

The other aspect is that the really big runs that set off the frenzy came about the time that Metro came into being. Or, to put it another way, the lake was cleaned up and became less productive.

CM -

Do you suppose that part of the issue with lake Washington is the complex species array that lives in the lake. At last count more than 40 species are now found in the lake. The stickle backs and long fin smelt as well as the juveniles of nearly all the rest of the species would be direct competitors with the juvenile sockeye for the daphnia and other zooplankton.

I would be surprised if there is another sockeye lake in the world that has such array of species; the majority of which are exotics.

While I have not looked into the LW in depth in a while there where several years when 50 million or more juvenile fry made it to the lake but experienced very poor survival. Suspect that food competition during the first few weeks/months is great and many of the sockeye starve. Those that survival may well find abundant food later in the summer accounting for their larger size. Maybe Sam Wright was right the best hope for consistent sockeye smolt production would delayed release of larger fry in the fall.

The good news is that fewer sockeye is good for the Chinook!

Curt

Curt

I think that the early lack of food is one of the big issues. The long spawning time is another as it is an indication that the population has not figured out a single solution.

We did raise some kokanee over the summer at S Tacoma and put them into Summit Lake in the fall in an attempt to bypass the smallmouth. They were clipped, so we could have it evaluated. Anyway, the fall plants contributed better to the fishery than did the normal spring plant. But, the fall fish were actually smaller in the catch. Still, more fish and releasing a huge bunch of fall smolts into LW would probably boost the sockeye return.