Very expensive salmon

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localboy

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State on the hook for $768 for every salmon caught in Puget Sound
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Puget Sound's popular blackmouth fishery — made possible by a complex system of hatcheries that produce and rear these plump young versions of chinook salmon — costs $768 for every fish that's caught.

That's a calculation made by the state Auditor's Office in an audit released Friday of the state's politically popular key winter fishery.

Each year the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife produces hundreds of thousands of the juvenile salmon in hatcheries, then raises them for 14 months or more in ponds until they lose the instinct to migrate. Then the fish are released for fishermen to hook for sport.
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But some of the same environmental conditions that helped push wild chinook onto the Endangered Species list — such as pollution and habitat loss from development — mean few of the young blackmouth live long enough to get snagged. And the many fishing restrictions imposed in response to the 1999 listing of wild chinook also scaled back chances for anglers to try to catch the hatchery chinook.

That means catch rates for blackmouth are such a fraction of what they once were that the state may produce 900 fish for every one an angler nets. And each of those 900 fish costs about 85 cents.
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011571859_fishaudit10m.html
 
How much per annum does the state receive from sales of licenses, sales tax on fishing equipment etc etc etc..? and what is it spent on ?

Merv
 
Have no idea. I just found it funny/humerous/interesting how they analyzed the numbers and came up with an amount.

The article doesn't mention how much is returned back into the economy via the entire fishing industry in Wa. State; boats, fuel taxes, revenue from sales of licenses, taxes on equipment bought in retail stores, tourist dollars & taxes from charters etc; the list goes on.

It's some expensive salmon though. :lol:
 
That article really high-grades the facts to push a point of view.

Aside from the fact that quality sport fishing drives a huge economic engine (thanks, localboy, for pointing that out), those eighty-five cent smolts are needed to ensure the health of rearing habitat up streams. The carcasses of returning salmon are a prime source of nutrients for the very critters fingerlings need to survive on as they approach the size needed to migrate to the sea.

In Oregon, various places, hatcheries are reversing the long-established practice of isolating the waters upriver of the hatchery from any taint of returning adults, on the premise decomposing spawned out fish will contribute to a risk of disease at the hatchery. And, on top of that, removing barriers (or, ferrying fish past the hatchery dams), which in the past prevented natives from passing upstream to use whatever spawning habitat the creek might have.

Anybody who has had to return a prime native springer to the water will appreciate the need to rebuild native stocks, if for no other reason than the chance we get to keep some.

Everybody wins if the native stocks get healthier.

Off the soapbox, now. Must be the musk of long-ago ironhead angling that got hold of me!
 
"But the program's goals were dictated by legislative edict in 1993 as a means to sustain and promote sport fishing in Puget Sound. It's paid for by license fees derived from saltwater anglers, money that is dedicated to improving fishing. So as salmon listings have curtailed other angling opportunities, there's been little political will to cut back blackmouth production."

Seems we left this part out.

Sark
 
Yep - when the anglers are paying for it via license fees dedicated to that purpose, a title of "State on the hook for $768 for every salmon caught in Puget Sound" seems a little bit off. A title like "Anglers don't realize how little is accomplished by the black mouth hatchery they are paying for" might be more accurate. But that's long and complicated. Also, it's not EVERY salmon caught in the Puget Sound that's in the calculation. The wild salmon that are caught are not counted in those numbers. But that's complicated too. Better to have a short, inaccurate and deceptive (but catchy story) to print in the paper.
 
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