EDITORIAL: Making a muddle of saving salmon
Apr. 15—Local experts connected in various ways with salmon fishing and conservation must be ready to blow a gasket over the Washington Legislature's latest clumsy efforts to "help."
In legislators' defense, saving salmon is a supremely messy business, with more murky crosscurrents and furious undertows than a dangerous outer coast beach. Pulled this way and that by those who genuinely know what they're talking about and many others who don't know a chum from a Chinook, policymakers find themselves in a hard-to-win situation.
Intentional confusion is added by outsiders whose only interest is in grabbing salmon for themselves or using the issue merely as a means to generate financial donations from well-wishing urbanites.
And as if all that wasn't enough, salmon management is also bound up with the need to help Washington's endangered resident orcas, and with the obligation to coordinate some policies with Oregon and Canada.
Although this may sound about as fun as getting lost in an undersea kelp forest, the legislative and regulatory issues of immediate local concern aren't that complicated.
For one, a plan is rattling around to ramp up the use of pound nets to commercially harvest hatchery-bred salmon. Banned about 90 years ago, this technique — otherwise known as fish traps — in theory catches migrating salmon without harm. The catch can then be sorted, with nonhatchery fish released to continue upstream.
Although this has obvious appeal, it comes with a variety of technical and pragmatic obstacles. The Wild Fish Conservancy has been experimenting with a pound net to catch tule fall Chinook and fin-clipped coho in the Cathlamet area. A proposal now on the table would advance this trial fishery to the next stage. This would be premature.
Astoria-based nonprofit Salmon For All — embedded in gill and tangle net technology — can't be considered objective, but certainly possesses deep and direct experience in commercial salmon fishing. The nonprofit makes convincing arguments:
"Our research shows that the capital investment needed to set up a pound net operation ranges from $156,000 to $258,000. Annual gross income produced by the current experimental gear from 2018-2020 averaged $24,146.92, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife," Jim Wells, the president of Salmon For All, said in a February letter. "We do not think that current numbers and lack of profitability or even potential profitability, qualifies the trap as a 'commercial' fishery or 'emerging commercial fishery' as yet."
Advancing to a next regulatory stage with modern pound nets risks splitting a fishery with thin profit margins into yet smaller slices, while undercutting private investment in the proven technology of tangle nets. These nets provide for live capture of salmon, achieving the goal of letting nonhatchery fish get on with their business.
The Washington Senate has made a muddle of a separate proposal to buy down the number of commercial fishing licenses on Washington's southern estuaries and the Columbia River. Such licenses are considered private property and in some cases have been owned by the same family for generations. Some aren't actively used, but represent additional potential harvest pressure on salmon.
An advisory committee convened by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended buying and eliminating 100 Columbia River/Willapa Bay and Columbia River/Grays Harbor licenses at a cost of $10,000 each.
Senate Democrats, who are otherwise splashing money around with enthusiasm, fiddled with this plan in such a way as to drastically reduce compensation, while at the same time forcing unpaid surrender of some licenses. This is neither fair nor wise, and risks scuttling an otherwise smart effort to winnow the fishing fleet down to a profitable and sustainable size. This initiative would enhance the coastal economy while improving income prospects for the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
It remains an imponderable political mystery why a majority of 19th Legislative District voters chose to unseat state Sen. Dean Takko and state Rep. Brian Blake, experienced leaders who would have guided these issues to a correct resolution. However, we hope legislators and the Department of Fish and Wildlife will listen to the people most affected by these matters. The license buyback should be fully funded and the concept of bringing back pound nets should be held in abeyance, pending much additional study and consideration.
