The Reward for Over-Fishing

A couple months ago, I blogged on Washington's Makah Tribe taking about 20,000 chinook from the ocean north of the Olympic Peninsula when their allocation for the winter troll catch was just 1,600.  I asked:

So, what's the punishment?

And reference what impact it would have on other fisherman, I noted:

There's no doubt that Washington is going to reduce the numbers others can take to make up for the surprisingly large Makah chinook harvest. 

Yesterday we found out that the Makah's winter troll allocation has been raised considerably for 2006, and to make up for this, the fishing seasons for other fishermen--excluding other tribes--have been restricted.  That last part was a bit of a twist.

Anglers are expressing anger and frustration over restrictions on sport fishing for salmon this summer in Puget Sound, saying they were made by state fisheries officials to accommodate a winter chinook fishery for the Makah Indian tribe.

As part of a comprehensive package of 2005 salmon fishing seasons negotiated this week in Tacoma by state, federal and tribal representatives and fishermen, north Puget Sound and Admiralty Inlet (state marine area 9) will not open to recreational salmon fishing until Aug. 1, two weeks later than in recent years.

However, the agreement also provides anglers with a new, seven-month season for marked hatchery chinook only beginning in October in the adjacent marine areas 8-1 and 8-2 off Everett and north along Saratoga Passage.

Both of those two changes will result in fewer wild chinook being taken and help protect weak stocks from Hood Canal and the Snohomish River system. Anglers say neither would have been necessary had the Makah tribe not been granted a 9,000-chinook quota for its 2005-06 winter troll season. The tribe's 2004-05 troll fishery created a huge controversy among anglers and state fish managers when it took an estimated 19,000 chinook, thousands more than were allocated.

Various articles have differed slightly on the number of chinook taken earlier this year and what the Makah's quota will be next year.  Nevertheless, they still took about 12 times more chinook than they were allocated this year, and their quota has been raised more than 5-fold for next year.  What a deal.

Admittedly, the Makah used to take about 50,000 chinook per year before it was classified as endangered.  Since that time, everyone has shared the pain of reducing their harvests.  Not everyone is sharing the pain since the Makah arbitrarily raised their take.

"The state pledged throughout this process there would be no new chinook harvest by anybody," Tony Floor, who represents recreational fishermen for the Northwest Marine Trade Association, said yesterday. "The state chose to make the recreational fishing community pay and underwrite the Makah winter chinook fishery. The other tribes refused to contribute one fish for that increase. Therefore the state tapped recreational fishermen."

...

Keith Robbins of Seattle, a longtime Puget Sound sport fishermen who operates Spot Tail Guide Service, said catch area 9, which for decades provided dozens of important chinook fishing spots to anglers, has now lost most of its best salmon fisheries.

"The long and short of it is that the selective fishery in area 8 and the two-week closure in 9 subsidizes the increase in the Makah troll fishery, and I don't feel good about that," he said.

Robbins added that he is frustrated that the state lacks data to show that cutting back in the south part of area 9 actually protects Hood Canal stocks. "It's frustrating to just keep cutting back. There's no way to know what percentage of mid-Hood Canal stocks are caught in area 9. It's time to start gathering data."

I'd noted in my previous post that the chinook the Makah harvested were in an area where salmon from a number of runs can be.  Thus, some of those salmon could have come from as far away as the Snake River.  It would be nice to have more data on how harvest cutbacks in one place impact another.

Tony Meyer, spokesman for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, said it was a state decision to close area 9 in July, and he also noted that while anglers lost two weeks there, they gained months of time on water in area 8, along with an expanded chinook season this summer in Elliott Bay.

"The state essentially traded two weeks of salmon fishing in area 9 for a new, expanded selective fishery in area 8," he said. "This was done essentially to protect weak stocks from Hood Canal and the Snohomish River. The tribes and the state are working hard to balance the needs of the resource and the obligations of the Endangered Species Act while allowing limited fisheries. You know how difficult that can be."

There were a couple bright spots for sport fishermen, but they won't make up for the reductions they'll experience to enable the Makah's increased allocation.  Why has this happened?  State officials didn't make themselves available for comment, and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission rep's comments certainly weren't enlightening. 

Let's at least hope this backroom dealing provided some sort of motivation for the Makah Tribe or others not to cheat more next year.  I sure can't see any from the disclosure thus far.