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The future of salmon in Puget Sound
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South of Heaven



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 07, 2018 10:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sea Wolf wrote:
Jay-

Great insight and concisely written!

And sadly true.........

Joe. Disgust


Side note: Good to see you posting again sir. Haven't seen you on here for a while.

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JamesTXSD



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 07, 2018 11:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dotnmarty wrote:
Well Jay, you're right. As Peanuts said, "we have met the enemy and it is us..."


Pretty sure that quote is from Pogo. I think the Charlie Brown/Peanuts quote appropriate here is, "Good grief!" followed closely by, "Rats!" Wink

Those in the whale watch industry have been calling for solutions to the diminishing salmon population and habitat (resulting in the severe lack of food for the Southern Resident Killer Whales). Tough choices for those in a position to be making those choices.
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hardee



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 12:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is some progress in our state eliminating the continuance of licensing for the open net pan fish farms. Those have been linked to disease in the wild salmon population in research in BC. Some of that has been posted here on the C-BRATS.

Harvey
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smckean (Tosca)



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 12:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
My point was that there is a direct correlation between fish habitat quality and riparian land-use.

Of that, I have little doubt.
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DrewbirdII



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 2:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Steelhead stocks have collapsed in pristine rivers with no fishing allowed at all for years. I believe if our pelagic fish biomass ( herring, anchovies, pilchard & krill ) are in as much trouble as they say, the Stillaguamish river is not going to recover in just 10 years. Salmon number's are bad everywhere. Its too much competition with incidental catches commercially, huge sea lion populations & pollution etc. We harvest "their" food to feed fish farms, health oil, fertilizer, bait & pet food. I remember the days we could take the skiff out and jig are herring before we started fishing just about anywhere! Jim
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Spike



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I can to this day, remember my third grade teacher tell our class how vast the oceans are. And that they are an inexhaustible source of food for the whole world. A lot has changed in those 50+ years.
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forrest



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 10:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are two major problems with salmon recovery that must be solved before there is ANY recovery. First, get ALL gill nets out of ALL waters. Gill nets can wipe out entire fish runs for small side streams since salmon tend to school together. Gill nets also select for the biggest, strongest fish. On the Columbia years ago the mesh size was 12 inches, then went to 8, now it's down to 4. Second, get the dam* sardine seines out of the salt water. Without a food source the fish can't grow or survive. The seines over fished Chesapeake Bay menhaden and the fishery collapsed. The seines went to the gulf of Mexico, the fishing collapsed, the seines went to California, the fishing collapsed. When I first was at Westport 15 years ago I was talking to an old guy on the dock. He was looking at a seiner moving by and said "I hate to see those guys coming to Westport". I asked him why. He said they destroyed fishing in California by sucking up all the bait fish so there was nothing left for the bigger fish to eat and they will do the same to Westport. He was right. There is no bait fish left out in front of Westport or any where else on the coast of Washington and guess what, the salmon fishing has collapsed. I contacted NOAA Marine Fishery about my concerns of the seiners taking to much bait about ten years ago. They told me not to worry as the seine fishery was going to only take 15% of the biomass. THERE AIN'T NOTHING LEFT OF THE MASSIVE BAIT SCHOOLS THAT USE TO BE OUT IN FRONT OF WESTPORT. No bait fish...no salmon. It's that simple.
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dotnmarty



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 10:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK, so it's too many people, over fishing, and destroying bait fish . Now, who is for more government regulation? Peanuts ? Pogo? Anybody? Embarassed
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PaulNBriannaLynn



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 10:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Every year the regulations for recreational fisherman in the Puget Sound become more strict. The perception is the recreational weekend warrior is having a significant impact. That may be true, and I think a lot of fisherman are willing to sacrifice for the future of our fish.

Yet I've seen commercial purse seiners come into the Puget sound, notably around marine area 9 and 8-2. Fish gather here in huge numbers feeding in schools and waiting for the fall rains to make their run up the rivers. These large ocean going vessels come in and pinpoint the schools using sonar, and place their nets around the entire schools. Fishing for the recreational guy goes from excellent, to the fish being non-existent in one day after these boats do their work in the area. I saw it happen year after year. it was a pretty commonly discussed issue around the marina, yet nobody does anything about it.

I've seen tribal nets placed on the Skagit and the Nisqually staggered in a strategic way so that no fish could possibly make it past. Its the same every year. Do they expect the fish to magically make it upriver of these nets to spawn somehow, or do they just not care?

There's an entitlement in both of these groups. They think they are entitled to the last fish left, and will take it by any means.

Its easiest to blame the guy out there fighting with barbless hooks working all day to get his fish or two to feed his family. Its much harder politically to blame the tribal poachers that nobody is willing to bust, or the commercial net boats processing millions of tons of fish for animal feed.

Alright rant over, I feel better.
Embarrased

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nimrod



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 12:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Believe me, I understand the tendency to blame overfishing, gillnets in the river, wanting to take the last fish etc. I took a lot of those calls during my career. But if that's what you believe, may I respectfully claim that you are misinformed or illinformed.

Go back and read the article. The whole article. With an open mind. Commercial fishing for wild Chinook salmon in Puget Sound is virtually nonexistent, has been for many years. None in the Stillaguamish River since 1986.

If you remove all harvest and a stock sustains itself at 1500 annually, that's the carrying capacity of that stock's habitat, everywhere.

Now look at Alaska. Massive fisheries with gillnets, purse seiners and trollers as well as recreational hook-and-line and in-river all-citizen subsistence gillnet fisheries for sockeye. Alaskan habitat can & does support those harvests sustainably because it has an extremely high carrying capacity.

jd
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localboy



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 12:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
...who is for more government regulation?


Quote:
Too many of the folk, who are active in wanting to solve our environmental problems are the same ones who support the politicians who proscribe to semi or completely open borders...


Oh, the irony...

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dotnmarty



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 1:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

on the other hand, too many of the folks who want the gov't to build walls on the bordersalso want to gut the EPA and the Dept. of the Interior and etc
Oh, the irony......
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forrest



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 2:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nimrod wrote:
Believe me, I understand the tendency to blame overfishing, gillnets in the river, wanting to take the last fish etc. I took a lot of those calls during my career. But if that's what you believe, may I respectfully claim that you are misinformed or illinformed.

Go back and read the article. The whole article. With an open mind. Commercial fishing for wild Chinook salmon in Puget Sound is virtually nonexistent, has been for many years. None in the Stillaguamish River since 1986.

If you remove all harvest and a stock sustains itself at 1500 annually, that's the carrying capacity of that stock's habitat, everywhere.

Now look at Alaska. Massive fisheries with gillnets, purse seiners and trollers as well as recreational hook-and-line and in-river all-citizen subsistence gillnet fisheries for sockeye. Alaskan habitat can & does support those harvests sustainably because it has an extremely high carrying capacity.

jd


If you reread the my post you would notice that I said get the gill nets out of ALL water. Alaska hammers Washington (and British Columbia) fish with their gill nets and laugh at us when we complain. Of course British Columbia also hammers Washington fish to pay back the Alaskans (Americans) for hammering their fish and Washingtonians for hammering the Frazier River sockeye which move into the Straights through Washington water. Gill nets are bad in ALL water.
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rogerbum



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 2:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are many, many issues that contribute to the decline of fish in the Puget Sound (and elsewhere) and some of the most obvious ones have been mentioned above - habitat degradation an loss, local commercial fishing (tribal and non-tribal), increased efficiency of both the recreational and commercial fleet (sonar, GPS mapping etc). A couple of less obvious factors are:

1) I don't think many realize the scale of the impact of the commercial ocean fisheries on our returning salmon. A large percentage of fish bound for our local waters are caught in Alaska and BC. For example, approximately 50% of all salmon caught in the SE Alaska commercial fishery are Columbia river bound fish. Ask any recreational fisherman who fishes on the west side of Vancouver Island and they will tell you about 90% of the fish they catch are Columbia River bound fish. E.g. without Columbia River hatcheries, much of the West coast of BC and Southern Alaska, wouldn't have much to fish on.
While the article I linked above talks about the percentage of the SE Alaska commercial catch that is Columbia River fish, it doesn't speak to the fraction of Columbia River bound fish that are caught prior to reaching the Columbia River. In many coastal river systems (Columbia, Grays Harbor), the estimates are that greater than 80% of the returning fish are caught prior to passing the south tip of Vancouver Island. There's no reason to think that anything different is happening to Puget Sound bound fish. So while we can complain about gill nets and purse seiners in our local waters, all of us are fishing on a small fraction of the available fish as most of them are removed by commercial operations prior to entering our local waters.

2) Another major issue is hatchery produced salmon and more specifically, the lack of cooperation between various governments on the percentage of planted fish and species planted. Over 5 billion (yes BILLION) hatchery raised salmon are release each year by a combination of Japan, Russia, the U.S. and Canada. Of those, the vast majority that are released are pink salmon and chum salmon. All of those fish feed in roughly the same waters (the Bering sea and the N. Pacific) on roughly the same food sources (or food sources that feed other food sources such as zooplankton and krill). So those hatchery fish and wild fish are all competing with each other for the same (limited) supply of food. There are no agreements in place to limit the number of hatchery fish produced by various governments so that those produced by others have a fair chance of survival. Rather it's a "cowboy" system whereby the most aggressive regions get back the most fish. One factor in finding smaller fish each year is undoubtedly the limited food supply being split amongst increasing numbers of hatchery (and decreasing numbers of wild) fish.

Ultimately, there are many "solutions" to the problems since there are many problems. Politically, that makes it easy for each group to point at the others and assure that nothing gets done. However, one thing that is absolutely clear is that commercial salmon fishing in the ocean is largest contributor to salmon stock declines. Also commercial interests in hatchery produced fish results in a system that is not cooperative between different governmental jurisdictions.

In the U.S. we have had prohibitions on commercial harvest of land mammals since the late 1800's to early 1900's. The reason for this was clear. Everyone could see the decline of various animals (bison being a prime example) and ultimately it was agreed that commercial harvest of a public resource could not be allowed if the public was to have full benefit of the resource. Commercial harvesting of land mammals was banned much earlier in most of Europe. Ultimately, I think that the same will have to happen with commercial harvest of fish from the seas. There are too many people on the planet to feed with this finite resource and commercial exploitation of fish almost always results in a crash of the population (or sometimes an extinction).

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nimrod



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 3:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I stand by my claim. If you remove *all harvest*, by every single harvest method, location, time, gear commercial, recreational, subsistence and poaching *and* remove all hatchery influences in the watershed, the Stillaguamish River will not produce more than 1500 adult Chinook spawners on an average annual basis, regardless of ocean productivity. This is compared to an estimate of 50,000 average annual spawners pre-settlement.

jd
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