P.S. Chinook Management Plan (?)

Curious if anyone has any inside info re a revised P.S. Chinook Management Plan coming out and what it entails. It appears notice is set to be published in Federal Register tomorrow re the Feds commencing the NEPA/EIS process.

See https://www.federalregister.gov/document...nd-wildlife-and

I know nothing but I am extremely grateful for your post & the link you provided.

I see a key being what the definition of what "Limit 6" means; which I do not know.

We need to curtail the interception of Puget Sound Chinook up in British Columbia:
http://wildfishconservancy.org/images/news/CaughtFarFromHome2011journalchart.jpg

Recent data from Canada DFO says that other than the summer months, 100% of the Chinook caught in the BC strait of juan de duck are Puget Sound.

Guide to the 4(d) Rule:

http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/...izens-guide.pdf

Thanks very much

Hi BrianM. I sent an email to emi (link to her email was in the link you published above).

Poking around led me to this:
http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/fisheries/salmon_steelhead/PSsalmon_eis_noi.html

In your link, 3 high level options are listed, and a favorite is designated; I believe it adds exploitation rate to some stocks that are not currently using exploitation rate.

As the link I provided indicates, the previous plan expired in 2014 & this new one is a plan for the next 10 years.

Further reading by me finds that under the present plans, none of the ESA listed stocks are recovering, and that interception of these stocks in SEAK & BC is a major & well-known problem; with well over 50% of total mortality of many stocks happening up north.

A guide I know in BC is very active in fisheries negotiations & he indicates the party's who negotiate the Pacific Salmon Treaty are well-aware of this & similar problems which is fishing of mixed stocks of healthy and at-risk Chinook without regard to impacts on the at-risk stocks. The Chinook portion of the treaty will be renewed in 2018.

FYI under the last Chinook treaty in 2009 or so we gave Canada $30million to buy-back commercial troll licenses for the WCVI fleet; the largest interceptor of Puget Sound Chinook. I am on a forum in BC & according to commercial trollers on the forum, 9 years later only half the money has been spent & canada DFO has been offering low-ball offers to the fishers.

Thanks for the reply, ericl.

I too contacted NOAA and got directed to the same website. Unfortunately, that website contains a link to the Dec. 1, 2017 draft of the P.S. Chinook harvest management plan. My understanding is that this draft is obsolete. It caused quite a bit of controversy when first released and was one of the things that led to the resignation of former WDFW Director Unsworth. Subsequently, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission directed WDFW staff to renegotiate the plan, and NOAA also deemed it insufficient because it did not meet revised conservation standards. Thus, I'm surprised that NOAA would initiate a NEPA scoping process -- and request public review and comments -- without providing the public with an updated proposed plan.

This is complete speculation, but I’m guessing either one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing or, more likely, that NOAA is trying to jump start the NEPA process in order to complete the process prior to the 2020 North of Falcon season setting process. My understanding is that NOAA estimates the NEPA process will take 18 months, which would put completion around Dec. 2019 or Jan. 2020.

In any event, while I know this is just the scoping stage, I don’t see how the public is supposed to provide meaningful comments and concerns regarding potential implications and impacts, let along suggest alternatives, based on a draft plan that NOAA has already deemed insufficient on its face, and which is in the process of being renegotiated. At this juncture, I (and I assume most other members of the general public) really have no clue what will be in the final, renegotiated plan submitted by the state and tribes. And as we saw when the Dec. 1, 2017 plan was unveiled, the devil will be in the details (e.g., potential impacts to salmon populations and salmon fisheries (both tribal and non-tribal) will depend on specific exploitation rates/escapement goals for key populations).

Perhaps I'm missing something and someone else on the board can make sense of this for me.

Brian McLachlan

I live in WA but have fished down here about 5 times in the last 30+ years; been going to Canada. I want to get involved & up to speed on our WA Salmon.

If it were up to me I'd expand the scope of the Harvest Plan to address as many northern interception issues as I could. I believe there are several Chinook population bottlenecks, and that not all bottlenecks affect all populations. Trying one thing at a time (a common scientific process) is not working.

My view of Salmon management is that governments cave-in to harvesters too much. In 1985 or so the regional Canada DFO director talked about pristine spawning habitat on the Fraser river totally unused because the runs were fished-out. I think we need to remember that the few runs we have today are a small fraction of what we have driven to extinction. They started hatcheries on the Columbia back in the mid 1800 to mitigate extinct natural runs.

The process is pretty old school; each entity does their thing & throws the results over the fence to the next entity in line. Current interpretation of the tribal treaty's treats the involved tribes as separate nations; I don't see negotiations with the tribes more secretive than our PST negotiations with Canada.

The sports fishing community needs to get over the ugly fact that there could be millions of hatchery fish swimming around, but that due to real-work incidental mortality rates involved with C&R fisheries and the fact that these fish get fished 365 days per up north, we may not be able to fish that much.

Did the final plan ever get released?