End of salmon fishing eventually???

[magnanimous_j]

"End of salmon fishing eventually???"  for the sportsman maybe?  we're the ones that usually loose first while the natives continue to net. I wish this state could learn fron Canada on how to manage our salmon.

Look at the population densities of Canada vs. the US and you'll see why they have such an easier time.

The natives are an easy target, and I don't like their netting, but there are simply not enough of them to be causing the kinds of reductions that we are seeing. Salmon, like other game animals, are the middle of the food chain. The ecosystem anticipates, if not relies on, massive harvests of these animals by predators every year. It was that way a million years before humans ever wandered over.

We are destroying their habitat. If we aren't paving over it directly, industrial run off and silt are destroying the salmon's spawning beds.

[HuntandFish]

Nets account for most of this problem. And I am talking about indian nets across half the river (bolt decision allowing nets to stretch across only half the river at a time) any moron that know how rivers run, knows that the channel typically only covers half or less of the river. Guess which part of the river the indians net! This equals close to 100% of the fish being "caught" when the nets are soaking, and the indians ask why the decline. They blame others because there ancestors never experienced a decline with the same practice. They need to look closely at the amount they are netting, they used to net just for sustenance and now they are netting for commercial and monetary gain, which increases the amount they net.  This whole thing is so frustrating and no one is doing anything about it because it is bad PR to say an ill word about indians.

And yes the snohomish is netted heavily, and so is every other river that has a salmon run! The solution to this problem is remove indian nets which account for such a large portion of the harvest each year. Heck we don't even know how much because a large majority of the harvest from the indians is not reported.

I could go on and on, but I wont.

Thanks,
H&F

[Moose22]

It is amazing how much of OUR natural resource is being sold to France (fish) and China (shellfish).

[runamuk]

"End of salmon fishing eventually???"  for the sportsman maybe?  we're the ones that usually loose first while the natives continue to net. I wish this state could learn fron Canada on how to manage our salmon.

Look at the population densities of Canada vs. the US and you'll see why they have such an easier time.

The natives are an easy target, and I don't like their netting, but there are simply not enough of them to be causing the kinds of reductions that we are seeing. Salmon, like other game animals, are the middle of the food chain. The ecosystem anticipates, if not relies on, massive harvests of these animals by predators every year. It was that way a million years before humans ever wandered over.

We are destroying their habitat. If we aren't paving over it directly, industrial run off and silt are destroying the salmon's spawning beds.

but salmon were not netted the way they are now..if they cannot get to the spawning beds they can't begin to reproduce at all so habitat becomes sort of a non issue until they can get upstream....

[WDFW Hates ME!!!]

So reallt it all boils down to nets... Be it native, or commercial the nets are non-discriminate.

Also the ocean conditions play a huge part in it. Look at some of the videos of the herring fishery. Take a million pounds of salmon food out of the ocean and see how long they survive.

[FC]

but salmon were not netted the way they are now..if they cannot get to the spawning beds they can't begin to reproduce at all so habitat becomes sort of a non issue until they can get upstream....

A simple leap of logic there, well said!

So reallt it all boils down to nets... Be it native, or commercial the nets are non-discriminate.

Yes, nets are the root of the problem.

[singleshot12]

NETS have been responsible for completely wiping out certain wild strains of steelhead and salmon from our Western rivers, extinct! never to be seen again!  Netting continues while millions are spent and wasted on save the Chinook. Eliminating nets goes hand in hand with habitat restoration(you'd think?) The way it's currently managed defies  logic and reason.
  The world of Salmon politics bites

but salmon were not netted the way they are now..if they cannot get to the spawning beds they can't begin to reproduce at all so habitat becomes sort of a non issue until they can get upstream....

[bassquatch]

Yeah, but the powers that be will 'Imminent Domain' your land right out from under you for the sake of saving the salmon when they see fit! I walked away from buying 27acres in Stanwood because by the time you factored in the setbacks from the salmon spawning stream you were really only getting 12 acres, 7 of those were wooded....you sure were paying for 27 though! You couldn't even let animals within 200 feet of the stream so virtually all the pasture land was off limits.....so it's not nets that are the big problem it's cow poop! 

[singleshot12]

Yeah, but the powers that be will 'Imminent Domain' your land right out from under you for the sake of saving the salmon when they see fit! I walked away from buying 27acres in Stanwood because by the time you factored in the setbacks from the salmon spawning stream you were really only getting 12 acres, 7 of those were wooded....you sure were paying for 27 though! You couldn't even let animals within 200 feet of the stream so virtually all the pasture land was off limits.....so it's not nets that are the big problem it's cow poop! 

And a little bit of cow poop is the least of the salmons problems. The salmon is being used for other political agenda's plain and simple. Like putting the family farm out of business so it can be developed

[groundhog]

Obviously there are many reasons for the decline in Salmon numbers. Ocean conditions, the Marine Mammals act, over harvest by commercial fishing, over harvest of escapement by natives, the damming of the Columbia River, and habitat to name a few.
In Alaska our King salmon runs are down state wide. Habitat is not a problem. I think the off shore high seas draggers (trawlers) are a big part of the problem. Kings spend a lot of their time very close to the bottom while other salmon species are suspended in the middle depths. These foreign owned Trawlers drag huge nets along the bottom that catch anything in their path. While they are not supposed to be specifically fishing for kings they keep them anyway.

I am surprised that no one has even mentioned the Marine Mammals Act. Seal and Sea Lion populations have exploded since the Marine Mammals act. Their main diet is Salmon . As long as they are allowed to increase in numbers unmanaged they will continue to hammer the Salmon populations.

[WSU]

Lets not kid ourselves.  Non-Indian commercial fisheries are a huge problem, as is habitat destruction.  The pollock/cod fisheries in Alaska kill tens of thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of kings annually as "bycatch."  Our Washington salmon are targeted commercially in Alaska, and then again in Canada.  There are rivers that have 70 or 80 percent of the adult salmon caught before they ever make it back to Washington.  This isn't done by foreign fishing fleets (although that may occur also).  The data exists to prove we are the problem.

Also, much of the netting occuring on chums is done by non-Indian commercials.  Those seasons are set by WDFW to allow the commercials to fish.  Can't blame the tribes on that one either.  Yes, the tribes are a problem, but we are a far bigger problem.

[FC]

I call BS on the habitat bit, I'm sure it plays a small part but nets are probably the other 99.9% of the problem...

[PlateauNDN]

Nets, regardless of who's using are a major problem.  Yes, by all means, please take the easy way out and point them at the Tribes if it makes you feel better and sleep better at night.  The decimation is occuring by more ways than one and if you don't care to educate yourself on that fact then sorry, by all means carry on.  Sure native fishermen are an issue but to say we are almost the entire issue is abusrd. 

[WSU]

I call BS on the habitat bit, I'm sure it plays a small part but nets are probably the other 99.9% of the problem...

Why is that?  Have you read some study indicating that habitat is not the problem? 

[JimmyHoffa]

Guess I should specify, when talking salmon issues my references to 'habitat' are from the river mouth/delta to the spawning beds.  If you want to include the ocean habitat (changing ocean conditions like temperature and acidity or the over harvest of forage fish and shrimp), then I could put more weight on the habitat issue.  But from what I've seen from visiting the coast in Alaska and parts of Washington, and what I've read about coastal BC; there are enough freshwater systems that if 'habitat' was the issue, then the declines theoretically should be confined to those areas that experienced development.  The latest I've heard is that numbers are down even in rivers and small coastal streams in areas that have had nearly no human impact.