You Don't Get to Fish Elliott Bay but the Tribes Do

[Smalma]

Salmonhawk -
I could not agree more - the fishers and the recreational fishers have absorbed more than our share of the burden of conservation for the wild salmon resource. That of course is the result of a couple factors. It is entirely poltical/economic that society has opted to use the vast majority of the inherent historic productive of the populations for uses other than fishing. Also as we all are aware the law of the land says that the treaty tribes are entitled to pound of flesh.

We all need to remember that even in selective fisheries the are wild fish mortalities - selecitve fisheries provide incresaed access to hatchery fish while potentially holding wild fish impacts to acceptable levels but wild fish are dying. As long we recreational anglers continue to insist that much of our fishing is in various mix stock fisheries we will always be limited to the weakest stock and will not be able to harvest our "full" share of the other stocks leaving those fish for more terminal areas. From the tribal prespective that is the State"s choice. The full non-treaty share could easily be harvested in each terminal area without those wasteful mixed stock fisheries if nets were used to harvest those fish. However thankfully the State has opted to fore go some of that harvest some of those fish to provide those mixed stock recreational fisheries because to provides lots of opportunity which of course equates to more economic value but remember that is a choice.

Nelly -
Why from the fish's point of view is it less damaging to kill them in a mixed stock recreation fishery than a terminal gill net? I can see why for an economic or society point of view that it makes sense to have those mixed stock fisheries however that decision is clearly a "political" based decision.

While I was out of state when all the discussion about the Elliot Bay fishery happened I suspec the time was driven in at least part by the timing of the tribal test fishery. However once again I must stress the undrelying issue with those green river wild fish continues to be that hatchery and wild fish are treated the same as when it comes to natural spawning. It is that allows decisions such as the one we just saw. Unfortuantely the tribe seems to hold nearly all the cards in this case and I suspect that we will continue to be frustrated.

Tight lines
Curt

[Salmonhawk]

Smalma,

Thanks for the responses. In my opinion, there is no comparison when we talk about mortality with regards to methods of harvest. As you state, the tribes are due their pound of flesh according to the law. The problem is method of harvest. As a society we are willing to risk some of the fish because of the economic and societal benefits of fishing. However, to use a method as harmful and as non-selective as gill nets on a depressed run is wrong. The tribes appear less than sincere when they talk about recovery and then ask for non- selective fishery on a stock we desperately need to recover.
Again, this is not a how are we going to slice the pie debate but a debate on how we are going to harvest and what is our true comittment to recovery. If we continue to allow non-selective harvest and do not require mandatory reporting of lost gill nets, then we don't appear to be sincere about recovery. If that is the case, then let's quit wasting taxpayer money, and time spent debating the issues. Let's pump the rivers full and go fish.

[Todd]

Method of harvest is 100% irrelevant. The only single thing that matters is the amount of critters that are killed.

100 dead ESA Chinook are 100 dead ESA Chinook that are not going to spawn, no matter how they were killed, whether that be direct sport harvest, release mortality sport harvest, commercial tangle net release mortality, purse seine release mortality, or gillnet direct harvest.

It matters not one whit...though it's pretty clear that everyone thinks that so long as there is someone else's mortality that can be measured, that "other" one must be the culprit.

That's if we want to keep politics out of the science, as Nelly suggested.

Without the politics, however, there's no way in hell we'd have a saltwater salmon CnR fishery, which might be just about the dumbest thing that WDFW has ever allowed in Puget Sound...for real? A fishery that has a tremendous release mortality, on ESA listed fish...and we allow that to happen, on purpose?

Fish on...

Todd

[Todd]

If we sporties kill 100 ESA listed Green River Chinook in all of our saltwater fisheries, then biologically it's exactly the same as if the same 100 fish were killed by a gillnet. 100 fish have not been allowed to spawn.

Society has accepted this because it love sportfishing so much? No, those who like to participate in those fisheries have accepted those dead fish because they want to go fishing...don't dress it up into something else.

But the economic benefits...yeah, yeah, yeah...those are exactly the "political" concerns that Nelly was talking about. Economics of the fishery has ZERO to do with the biological reality that 100 dead fish are 100 dead fish.

Ignore "political concerns", and you may as well hang up your fishing rods now...every saltwater fishery and many freshwater fisheries in this state are based on political concerns, because every single one of them kills ESA listed fish, every single one.

Frankly, I find the intellectual dancing required to ignore our own impacts while vilifying those of others to be a pretty sad aspect of sportfishing politics.

For my part, I try really hard to own my impacts...fishing is a blood sport, fish die when I catch them, whether I kill them and stuff them in the box, or carefully let them go. I haven't bonked a native steelhead since I was a little kid, but I'm certain that I have killed several more over the last 30 years, even though I avoid bait or barbed hooks when doing do. I've CnR'd a lot of wild steelhead, so I have killed some.

I think the first step in having meaningful conversations with the State, Feds, or tribes, is to first be honest...we all kill fish that need to spawn, none of us would be fishing for anything if all we considered were the biological needs of the ESA stocks, and that a dead fish is a dead fish, no matter who killed it, or how.

Fish on...

Todd

[Salmonhawk]

Todd,
I disagree with quite a bit of what you say but we are all welcome to say what we believe and more importantly, get involved in the process. That process is what has broken down here. All parties had an agreement and then one party decides to change it without telling the other party.

Also, when I said society accepts some mortality I didn't single out sportfishing. We are also willing to accept some commercial mortality because people like to eat fish. You want to change what someone says to try to make a point but you then ignore others. Why be so dismissive of the economics? Nobody on this forum has said we shouldn't have tribal or commercial fishing but why can't we discuss what may be better ways with less impact? Isn't that what we do in recreational fisheries with regards to season's, gear restrictions, and the like?

[Nelly]

Method of harvest is 100% irrelevant. The only single thing that matters is the amount of critters that are killed.

100 dead ESA Chinook are 100 dead ESA Chinook that are not going to spawn, no matter how they were killed, whether that be direct sport harvest, release mortality sport harvest, commercial tangle net release mortality, purse seine release mortality, or gillnet direct harvest.

Todd

Congratulations Todd. Your quote above is absolutely the most indefensable statement I have ever seen on one of these forums and as long as I've been reading these things, that's something of an accomplishment.

If the Muckelshoots round-hauled or purse seined the mouth of the Duwamish, letting the wild fish swim over the corkline, then I wouldn't have an issue with this fishery and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wouldn't bother you as much either.
So, let's dispense with the method of harvest misdirection.

At the end of the day, we have a run of wild chinook forecast to come in under escapement and we are non-selectively gillnetting them. Those are the facts and no one is disputing them.

However we got there, I hope you can agree it's the wrong "destination".

We need to change the direction of our salmon management and that may just include selective commercial harvest.

[Todd]

Rob, my point is that the 100 fish that die in my example don't matter any more or less biologically if they die due to CnR, gillnet harvest, tangle net release mortality, or purse seine release mortality...100 dead spawners is 100 dead spawners, no matter who kills them, or how.

The comments regarding politics and society's wants are more aimed at Tom's comments re: getting politics out of fish management...without the politics (including the economic arguments), there wouldn't be many fisheries at all, since none of them are good for ESA fish from a biological standpoint.

Everyone would accept what is best for this run of ESA Chinook...with no politics or economics involved. What would be best would be no commercial fisheries in the salt from northern Alaska to central California, no sportfisheries in the salt in any of those areas either, no sport or commercial fisheries in the Straits, San Juans, or Puget Sound...however, we, and everyone else, wants a piece of the action in all those places, so we use politics and economic arguments to get them...balance our societal wants, personal wants, and money to be made against how many of those Green River ESA Chinook we're going to kill while doing so.

I can guarantee that sportfishermen and commercial fishermen in BC and Alaska will have killed far more ESA listed Green River Chinook this summer than the tribes fishing in Elliott Bay will...hell, we've probably killed more than the tribes could kill even if they caught all the ones that are left by the time they make it to Elliott Bay...we've been killing this year's run of Chinook for five years, after all, and laying off of them while they're in Elliott Bay doesn't hold a candle to all the ones we've already killed all over the entire PNW.

100 fish killed in a tangle net fishery, or a purse seine fishery, or a sportfishing CnR fishery, or a sportfishing harvest fishery...is the same 100 fish killed impact as 100 fish killed in a gillnet fishery. It's not a lower impact, it's the exact same impact...100 dead spawners.

That being said...if the agreement preseason was to not fish on those fish in Elliott Bay for anyone (well, we do have a tiny Elliott Bay sportfishery for kings), then absent some extraordinary change in the forecast, we should have all stuck to that. A "more than they thought" number that still fails to make escapement doesn't constitute much of a change to me, not one that should justify a fishery.

The point of my posts is not to argue for the fishery to take place...I think it's ridiculous to purposely fish over the stock when it will not make escapement. I also think a marine CnR sportfishery for ESA listed Chinook is pretty ridiculous if the run is going to be under escaped.

I also get a little dismayed over the mixing of a biological and economic/political justification for the fisheries...biologically speaking, it doesn't matter if the fishery is the most popular in the world and makes millions of dollars, the dead fish are just as dead, and are missed on the spawning grounds just as much. If we're going to argue biological impacts, then we have to honestly assess what the impacts are, and that a fish killed anywhere, by anyone, by any method, is exactly the same "impact" on the run.

Economic and political considerations do not change that...they just cause us to balance those considerations against the fish we will be killing, and seeing if it's something we want to do...but when we do that, we have to remember that user groups other than us have very different economic and political considerations that they bring to the table, and what makes sense to us doesn't make sense to them. We've mostly decided that selective fisheries that allow us to fish a lot for hatchery fish, and kill some wild fish while we're at it, is a good enough balance of biological and political/economic considerations...the tribes sure don't think any fisheries that are releasing dead wild ESA fish are very spectacular, they'd rather see those fish in their nets, or at least in the river, just as we'd rather see the wild fish go right by their nets and into the river to spawn, too.

Fish on...

Todd

[Todd]

Tom, even a good purse seine fishery will have some mortality of the fish that are released...and if it adds up to 100, then it's the same 100 that could be killed in any other way, that's my point.

If you're saying that if the tribes could conduct a fishery that would allow them to harvest their hatchery fish while killing less than 100 wild fish, then we'd be talking.

There is no such thing as a "no impact" fishery...if the fish are being handled at all, then there will be mortality...how much, of course, will only depend on how long they fish and how many wild fish are handled.

Fish on...

Todd

[Nelly]

Tom, even a good purse seine fishery will have some mortality of the fish that are released...and if it adds up to 100, then it's the same 100 that could be killed in any other way, that's my point.

If you're saying that if the tribes could conduct a fishery that would allow them to harvest their hatchery fish while killing less than 100 wild fish, then we'd be talking.

Even the worse purse seine fishery would have less wild chinook mortality than a gillnet fishery. My point is that we could commercially harvest hatchery fish and have a lot less impact on the wild fish that we're trying so hard to protect.

You can talk all you want about unrealistic scenerios involving the cessation of all saltwater commercial and sportfishing but at the end of the day we have wild fish at the mouth of a river facing a gillnet.

As long as I live you'll never convince me that it makes any sense at all to gillnet wild fish. Sorry, I guess I'm just unreasonable.

[Ffej]

Stated differently, a wild fish caught on a barbless hook properly released has a chance to survive. A wild fish snagged in a gill net has a "zero" percent chance.
In addition, the density of an endangered fish at the mouth of a creek is obviously different than the density of fish in the open Ocean. i.e. 1 in a bizzillion chance of catching a Green River wild chinook outside of Elliott Bay, great chance of snagging and killing one at the mouth of the crick.