1994 Fish and Wildlife Program

	1994 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program
	Council document 94-55

Fish and wildlife Fish and Wildlife Program

< Section 8 table of contents

8.2 Adopt Exploitation Rates and Regimes

While there is need to reduce harvest to facilitate rebuilding in the short term, there is also an urgency to move forward with salmon marking programs and to develop selective fishing gear and terminal harvest opportunities to increase harvest over the long term while protecting weak stocks of salmon. Fishery managers should look for ways of providing incentives to further reduce harvest and accelerate the shift to selective fisheries. This section provides managers with targets, but does not prescribe means to achieve them. The management agencies should have maximum flexibility to be creative and work with various fishing interests to come up with workable harvest strategies that will meet not only escapement objectives, but also existing and future Indian treaty requirements and non-treaty allocation, economic and social objectives.

Fishery managers should adopt more conservative and adaptive approaches in developing harvest management strategies recognizing the statistical quality of the data and variability of the environment, the fish populations and the seasonal distribution of fishing effort.

8.2A Harvest Management

Management of harvest depends heavily on the ability to forecast the number of fish available to each fishery for a given season. Managers have developed various methods for making these forecasts. However, because of the number of complex factors that determine the population size of any geographic point and the amount of available information, the accuracy of these forecasts is relatively poor. The amount of information, and consequently the accuracy of the forecast, improves as fish approach the spawning ground. Fisheries in the Columbia River are managed with more reliable information on population size than are fisheries in the ocean, for example.

Conversely, the first opportunity to harvest fish occurs furthest away from the spawning ground. The first fisheries, in the ocean, are managed with the least information on fish abundance, while the later fisheries are managed with greater precision. Managers rely on the ability to successively restrict later fisheries to correct for errors in the management of early fisheries.

If the errors in the forecasts are such that the early fisheries harvest at too high a rate for the actual population size, then the in-river fisheries are more heavily restricted. If the errors in the forecast are large enough, it also happens that the spawning escapement suffers and insufficient fish return after harvest to meet spawning goals.

An example of this in the Columbia River is fall chinook. Columbia River fall chinook are harvested in ocean fisheries off the coasts from Alaska to Oregon. Regulations for these fisheries are usually set in the spring prior to the summer harvest season. These regulations are based in part on abundance predictions for various key populations in the areas of the fisheries. The predictions are based on historical information and expectations of year class strength. The fish that remain after harvest enter the Columbia River in August. At this time, managers have an idea of the abundance based on the success of the ocean fisheries. As a result, the Columbia River Indian and non-Indian harvest is set. If the ocean harvest success was not as expected the previous spring, then in river seasons are necessarily restricted. The lower-river, non-Indian fishery occurs first. Prior to the Indian fishery in zone 6, managers have a relatively precise idea of the population size based on dam counts at Bonneville and the success of the ocean and lower river fisheries. If necessary, the Indian fishery might have to be further restricted. The result is that the fishery where managers have the best information on acceptable exploitation rates, the tribal fishery in zone 6, is the most restricted, while the fishery for which managers have the least information, the ocean fishery, is the least restricted. Especially in recent years, managers have overestimated the population size early in the year. The result is either conflict over the management of inside fisheries or the reduction of escapement.

The Council urges that an alternative is to apportion the degree of restriction of harvest based on the amount of information available to manage each fishery. In this case, the ocean fishery would be managed more conservatively to allow for likely error in the forecasts. As the information on abundance improves closer to the spawning grounds, the exploitation rates could be set with increasing precision. Most importantly, the burden of management error is shifted from the resource and its escapement needs, to the mangers and harvesters. The result should be more accurate management and a greater probability of meeting escapement needs.

8.2A.1 Adopt a management approach that more adequately spreads the risk of imprecision and error in predicted run size. Enact more conservative harvest limits on fisheries furthest from the spawning grounds for which information is less adequate.

8.2A.2 Implement harvest regimes that protect critical brood stock as part of a comprehensive effort to rebuild specific weak runs. Harvest reductions are of particular importance to protect weak stocks currently in the ocean. Manage harvest as outlined here to help meet escapement and management objectives.

8.2A.3 Document how exploitation rates were calculated and develop a standard for expressing exploitation rates that can be used for assessing impacts on future fisheries. Select an appropriate base period for the calculation of historical exploitation rates as a standard to which future exploitation rates can be compared. This information should be made available as part of the unified report called for in this section.

8.2B Sockeye

8.2B.1 Manage the fisheries to allow only limited tribal ceremonial and subsistence sockeye harvest below the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers to facilitate ongoing emergency efforts to rebuild the Snake River population. Commercial fisheries should not be allowed below the confluence until the Snake River sockeye run is rebuilt to a level where the population could support some incidental harvest without jeopardizing rebuilding efforts. The Council also understands that the U.S. v. Oregon parties are committed to rebuilding these runs and, when appropriate, will use the U.S. v. Oregon Management plan's emergency modification provisions to assist rebuilding. Relevant parties should consult on the potential to target commercial sockeye fisheries in the Columbia River above the confluence of the Snake River, while respecting tribal treaty rights.

8.2C Fall Chinook

8.2C.1 Snake River fall chinook have been harvested in numbers too high to allow rebuilding even with a reduction of human-induced mortality at other life stages. In the base period 1984-1990, exploitation rates ranged from 62 percent to 74 percent (averaging 69 percent). Fisheries affecting Snake River fall chinook should be managed to provide harvest at an exploitation rate no greater than 50 percent. These fisheries include those falling under the jurisdiction of the Pacific Salmon Commission and Pacific Fishery Management Council, as well as fisheries within the Columbia River Basin.

8.2C.2 The Council strongly urges that fisheries affecting Snake River fall chinook be further reduced below the specified 50 -percent exploitation rate using the measures described below and calls upon fishery managers to aggressively implement these actions. The Council will closely monitor rebuilding of the fall chinook runs and harvest constraints to ensure that harvest constraints are contributing their appropriate share to rebuilding.

8.2C.3 Establish annually an exploitation rate schedule lower than 50 percent in the near term, over all fisheries affecting Snake River fall chinook. The allowable exploitation rate in any given year should be directly linked to measures of recent productivity and recent and projected escapement. The schedule should aim to restore runs consistent with the Council goal to levels that can sustain spawning escapement objectives and healthy fisheries.

8.2C.4 The Council urges the appropriate state and federal entities to seek significant and immediate reductions in Canadian exploitation rates for Snake River fall chinook through the Pacific Salmon Commission process. Fishery managers will need to work closely with the Pacific Salmon Commission and the Pacific Fishery Management Council to achieve the needed adjustments in ocean harvest of stocks of concern.

8.2C.5 Continue closure of ocean salmon fisheries, which began in 1994, in Pacific Fishery Management Council's area of jurisdiction, as needed to protect severely depressed Snake River fall chinook. Call on Canada and Alaska to implement similar closures in fisheries intercepting Snake River fall chinook.

8.2D Spring Chinook

8.2D.1 The Council recognizes the efforts of the fishery managers and harvesters to reduce the catch of upriver spring chinook that began in 1976. Relevant parties should continue to manage the Columbia River harvest of spring chinook according to U.S. v. Oregon, after it is appropriately modified as detailed in 8.1A.2. Keep impacts of the non-treaty inriver fisheries at about 4 percent of the upriver run, the 1987-1991 average.

8.2D.2 Intensify monitoring of ocean fisheries to ensure that exploitation rates are as low as believed and that incidental harvest remains low, about 2 percent or less of the upriver run. Include information on spring chinook exploitation rates in the unified report detailed below.

8.2E Summer Chinook

8.2E.1 The Council recognizes that there have been no commercial target fisheries for summer chinook since 1964, and that the tribal ceremonial and subsistence and non-treaty incidental catches of summer chinook have been fewer than 1,000 and 100 fish each year, respectively, since the mid-1980s. Continue to manage for this level of impact until the populations rebuild sufficiently to allow a higher incidental exploitation rate. Subsequently, manage the Columbia River harvest of summer chinook according to U.S. v. Oregon.

8.2F Voluntary Harvest Reduction For All Fisheries

8.2F.1 Design and implement a ?fish bank? program (similar to a farm bank where farmers are paid not to farm) to temporarily reduce harvest by leasing available fishing permits and/or licenses.

8.2F.2 Develop and fund a voluntary commercial fishing permit buy-back program for non-treaty Columbia River commercial fisheries. The program should be limited to two to four years. The goals of the program are generally to: 1) reduce fishing capacity on the river; 2) respond to dislocations resulting from more restrictive harvest regulation; 3) encourage shifting to selective and/or terminal harvest practices using improved marking and selective harvest technologies as they are identified and become available; and 4) promote sound management, conservation and protection of the resource. Oregon and Washington should retire any permits bought out under this program, and no substitute permits should be issued in their stead.

8.2F.3 Reduce harvest level proportionately from that achieved under Sections 8.2B through 8.2E, above. To determine the level of reduction, use historical catch over a specific time or other criteria as the managers deem effective, feasible and fair (for example, use the average documented landings for the previous five-year period).

8.2F.4 Develop a compensation plan including criteria for qualifying for and continuing in the program. Continue the program through 1995. Review its effectiveness annually with the Council.

8.2F.5 Fund the planning and implementation of the program upon Council approval.

8.2F.6 Using the U.S. v. Oregon or other appropriate harvest management forum, design and implement by January 1, 1996 harvest strategies that will allow weak stocks saved specifically through reductions in fishing capacity or intensity to ?pass through? inriver fisheries to the spawning grounds.

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