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.