WFC at it again

http://www.aktrollers.org/2020/04/18/ata...-april-17-2020/

There would be a few more “peanuthead” Chinook in our waters if not for them.

Using Grays Harbor Chinook as an example AK will take 6139 W & 2860 H followed by BC 3169 W & 1478 H modeled harvest this year. ( should be noted BC has said US get AK off their fish they will get off ours ) The total take of fisheries North of WA ST is 13,648 and what is known as Southern fisheries WA ocean, tribal terminal, and all NT in river is 6,190. A bit back NOAA was credited with determining that if all mortalities from everything from draggers to C&R the loss is over 80% of harvestable prior to entering WA ST waters.

Bottom line is unless a federal judge stops the slaughter this continues as the 10 year Annex that sets harvest levels was just adopted a bit back. In other words WDFW agreed to this. Right now in the world of Chinook WFC is the only game in town trying to force a reduction in harvest outside WA ST waters. It is what it is.

Little edit here. I have said it before and I will say it again, it is not a question of IF but rather WHEN that mixed stock marine fisheries come to and end. When you add all the ESA salmon stocks and now the Orca situation it will be the perfect storm. The Orca pods and migrations are so well known there is no disputing the situation.

Too bad the WFC cant be sued for relentless and consistent harassment. Although the troll fishery is one of the factors in the decline in Chinook stocks, the article brings to light the elephant in the room with dams and habitat degredation in Washington. Cant disagree and WFC always seems to want to go after the easiest target in these lawsuits they constantly come up with. Whatever happened to Washington Trout (PRE WFC) when they were actually involved in stream rehabilitation and community involvement helping actual fish and not going after the big fish and settlements so to speak? I live in Duvall where they started and used to donate to them but i have lost all faith in them.

This is WFC's business model. Like so many other similar groups, they live on lawsuits and donations.

In the past they have mostly gone after rec fisheries, and we all know how easily NMFS and WDFW roll over on recs. It's almost a non battle.

Will be interesting to see what the commercial sector has to say about it.... WFC may be biting off more than they can chew. It would be nice to see someone countersue them into bankruptcy.

WFC has learned how to go after the low hanging (as laying on the ground) fruit. They win because the agencies they sue aren't doing their jobs. Otherwise, they wouldn't win.

As Rivrguy says, the marine mixed stock fisheries should have died long ago. Makes no ecological sense, little or no management sense, but is a great moneymaker.

As noted above, the ultimate solution to the low numbers of salmon and whales is to permanently fix the habitat. But, the wild Columbia salmon will never be restored until the dams come out. Period. But, even if we could magically remove them all tomorrow it would be a decade or more before production got up high enough to feed the whales. The ONLY short term solution is to stop killing the fish they eat (and the resources that feed those fish) until they passed by the whales and are no longer available to them. Otherwise, extinction.

Amen to that, C'man.

The dams will stay until an alternate way of generating power is found, be it fusion or whatever. Take CM's magic wand and all cars & trucks are electric, then ask where does the power come from? Wind, solar, geothermal could put a small dent in it but not much. Coal, nuclear, more hydro are out so where does the power come from? Until that question is answered with a cost effective alternative nothing changes. In fish terms our only approach can be to reduce harvest to match the productivity of individual watersheds which will mean you have to address mixed stock fisheries over harvest. Harvest will still happen but it will be terminal based or where stock overlap is minimal.

Before Larry chimes in, we need to be holistic. Pinnipeds need to be reduced to a level that their prey can support just like fisheries are reduced to where the stocks can support them.

At the end of the day, we need to determine how many people we want on this rock. That decides everything.

"Eliminating the tiny Chinook harvest in Southeast Alaska will not reduce the toxicity level in Puget Sound and greater Seattle area; the undeniable source of “peanuthead” offspring."
I'm sure the Eye Doc will be commenting on the term "Tiny harvest" soon? As far toxicity goes they don't stay here long enough to get toxic, and if more time would be provided for growth in AK waters, maybe they wouldn't be "Peanutheads". They go North and get harvested period. As far as WFC goes, glad their focus has changed away from recs minimal impacts. Maybe they would consider law suiting the factory trawler Chinook bye catch next?

You can bet that Alaska fishermen out in the middle of nowhere have a weapon on board controlling pinnipeds at their leisure without scrutiny or prosecution. Something that used to happen in Puget Sound before the population boom 40 yrs ago.

If only the riot crowd fished.

Send em downtown.

Now that would be interesting especially if it included all by catch as WA & OR have impacts also. I am on a private BB and this was discussed several times by folks well above my pay grade in knowledge. To boil it down several participants thoughts are that by catch mortality of Chinook in other species harvested exceeded the impacts of directed Chinook harvest.

And just who will be the determiner?

Assuming 80% mortality on Washington origin chinook from trawlers and mixed stock fisheries occurring beyond Washington State, a reduction of those impacts by half could potentially result in 3x more chinook returning to our State than currently do. Simple math. Thats with no habitat improvement, same human population pressures. And it would happen immediately, not 20 years from now. It makes a lot of sense to address those out of state impacts.

In years past inland folks have had a rule. You restrict any marine or terminal commercial and the model says xx more fish will be back. At the end you always find many many more make it back. If restricted in the ocean reaching AK the numbers jump again. Simply put the governing agencies have about zero idea of the true impacts of fisheries. I think MR your correct and maybe being kind. If all fishery impacts on Chinook were stopped I think you would damage your laundry when the final escapement count came in. Then this Chinook are primarily 4 & 5 year fish so each year you did not impact the the number would increase as a 5 year fish has endured 4 years of harvest. The increased number and reduction in size seen in recent years would change little in generation one but by the time you got to gen 5 ( 25 yrs ) the size of Chinook would be dramatically increasing. Having worked with Chinook for 20 years you have no idea just how correct you are MR.

Ya got it Rivrguy except for the size thing. Right now, size of adult salmon in the N Pacific (coho and Chinook especially) is crashing due to food web issues. We have to not only stop killing the salmon out there but their food.

Back when I was working, there were some analyses that said it was the draw fisheries that were killing Yukon Chinook. But, because of the volume of fish taken in the trawls, the by catch was sub-miniscule. It may have been 50% of the run (made up number) but it was like 0.1%, or less, of the landed catch. As we know from selective fisheries, even low by catch numbers can have a huge impact.

Thanks, C-man.

Gosh, maybe having a commercial herring fishery in Puget sound isn't a good idea when we're trying to recover salmon?

Does anyone at WDFW know how to connect the dots to the salmon puzzle?

Tug, you worked there. You KNOW the answer. Silos.

Ah CM the old bug a boo. That the food chain harvest thing is absolutely correct but I have yet to catch many malnourished Chinook. That it effects the overall health and survival is undeniable. Then this the % of the run that is three year old fish is elevated above the past. For GH it looks like this. In 1986 by age group percentage of the run 3 - 13.2 / 4 - 23.8 / 5 -35.3 / 6 - 15.2. Then this in 2019 they were 3- 17.8 / 4 - 59.8 / 5 - 21.2 / 6 - 0.2 which is way past awful.

Bottom line for many generations now ( since the 70's ) our Chinook populations have had substantial increase in 3 yr spawners ( small ). A huge decrease in 5 & 6 year old spawners and 4 year class and increase in % of the run. Simply put we have increased the number of small fish and dramatically reduced the number of large fish spawning and this has resulted in smaller fish. Now the genetics are not lost but rather humans have altered the natural selection process. Remove human interference and natural selection will return the fish to what it was was if environmental conditions permit. Just went full circle to the food chain thing.

According to my research contacts, you don't see the malnourished Chinook as they die. What seems to be happening is that the larger Chinook are doing just fine, get up to adult size and head home. When they encounter warmer water the metabolic rate goes up. There are not enough calories in the food per kg eaten, so they essentially starve.

Plus, the salmon are getting smaller at age. In the old paradigm, where fisheries took the larger fish, the fish returning got younger but were essentially the correct size for age. Just more age-3 and less age-5 but the age-3 fish were properly sized for age. Now, the age-3 fish is smaller because they have lower quality/quantity of food to eat.

Perhaps we can put the salmon size into antler terms. A buck will get to be a 4x4 if it has the right genes and, most importantly, if it lives long enough. Now, in addition to killing off the bucks so they don't get old, the food no longer has the calcium supply, so what does grow is smaller.

I have a no disagreement at all with your thoughts other than your limiting the problem to food / environmental only. I remember a WDFW hatchery guy listening to the argument but it was about Coho size. I still remember his terse response. How do you start with a 10 to 12 lb average brood and get to a 5 to 7 lb fish. Net the hell out of them with a mesh size that allow smaller adults to escape for generations resulting a higher portion of small fish in the gene pool and hatchery eggtake. A fish and cow are very different but all creatures can be modified by altering natural selection be by natural conditions or those inflicted by humans. In the end I imagine it is a combination of both sides of this coin.

That's true in that what spawns is what isn't killed. That is likely more common with hatchery than with wild fish because of lower exploitation rates. But yes, fish the **ck out a run and you get very little both in numbers and size.

Heck, one year when I was in hatcheries the adult coho were, in many cases, smaller that what was "always" called a jack. CWT's proved it. Plus, fecundity is directly related to size. Smaller females have fewer eggs......

Didn't "Digger" Phelps essentially prove that the Puyallup Coho were shrunken in size due to successive years of selecting the larger fish by gillnetting? Doesn't this harvest of any salmonid by continually taking the larger specimens theoretically apply?

Many years ago, the hatcheries selected the largest fish available for spawning. I think that practice was terminated years later by a mandate to take fish across the size spectrum. Don't know what the practice is now.

The thing I learned about fish being around hatcheries over the years is that decisions have a real and nearly immediate effect on the creature. Culture decisions normally isolate this to the hatchery production ( dependent on straying ) but harvest effects both W & H. It just takes much longer to show in the natural production.

Been away from the game a bit Tug but they did move to take eggs from the full run spectrum rather than a certain timing or using run compression. The early timed hatchery Coho on the Satsop came from taking the eggtake from the front of the run only compressing the return timing window. You end up with a fish that is inclined to return early rather than over eight weeks.

It was know before Phelps. Bill Ricker, of Ricker Curve fame, looked at the changes in size over time for the five species of Pacific salmon. Fishing definitely was correlated with changes in size. Most of the time, it made them smaller. Sometimes, larger. In that case, fishing for sockeye, with the smaller sockeye gear, selected out the small chum. So, the chum run actually got larger.

Back in the 80s, Skagit coho were routinely in the hole and required protection. State and tribes fished the Bay and river for chum with, I believe a 6 or 6.5 inch minimum mesh. Caught lots of chum and no coho. December 1, end of salmon management, start of steelhead they dropped to 5 inch. Bam, coho showed up in the catch. For a month they hadn't been there, because they were smaller than the chum.

There are lots of by catch issues out there....

It's genetics. The genes that aren't killed are what you use. Very intensive selection. I know lots of folks complain, or did, that hatcheries breed "non-biters". Not intentionally, but if the 10% of the return that you use to spawn was too small for the nets, too early for the intensive fishery, and didn't bite a hook just what do you think the kids will look like?

A guy I worked with for years was an avid fisherman. He always claimed if you used the right gear in the right place in the proper manner you can get a Steelhead to bite, all about knowledge and skill. Salmon the same applies but if you could get one out of a hundred to bite as they swam by you were lucky. Next guy the same up stream but salmon once out of the salt their behavior is all over the place. Thing is if you fish a hatchery run for many generations with pole you will steadily remove fish from the run that inclined to be aggressive when in fresh water. I read someplace that they were going to add wild fish to an eggtake to try to counteract this.

Those wild fish still had to get into the escapement by not biting.

yup, yup & yup