Longview gillnetter Robert Sudar has taken me to task over the reporting, opinions, research, conclusions and information in last month’s Columbia River Region column. Specifically the segment detailing the back story of a push by Sudar and others to convince WDFW commissioners to open a mainstem gillnet fishery on an extremely weak run of summer Chinook. The gillnetting was proposed, considered and came within one vote of being approved by WDFW despite specific prohibitions in the 2013 Kitzhaber Salmon Reforms.
Fortunately, five of the nine commissioners stood fast and voted against the killnet fishery which, had it been approved, would have taken a serious toll on what turned out to be a depleted run of summer Chinook.
Mr. Sudar has a different perspective than me and as an industrialist has extremely different priorities. His letter is printed here in its entirety. I also sought and am including a fact check of Mr. Sudar’s allegations from Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) Executive Director Nello Picinich. Picinich’s major rebuttal points appear inside Mr. Sudar’s letter, framed in brackets, identified as CCA and credited to NP.
For clarification, I also encourage you to read the CCA rebuttal that follows this story.
Mr. Sudar is of course entitled to his opinions, interpretations of facts, and versions of truths. I’ll stand by mine, the information in that column, and the fact check findings of CCA.
And to clarify Mr. Sudar’s question about my position as a columnist and purpose of, the Columbia River Region column, it is written as a series of informational news reports peppered when necessary with my point of view. I strive to make the distinction clear.
My first obligation, as I see it, is to the conservation and wise management and use of our natural resources. When those resources are threatened by private interests, profiteers, government ineptitude, political paybacks or silly self-interests, I feel a responsibility to point it out, to shine a public light on shenanigans and shysters to inform you, the reader.
I will say I’m still very much alarmed and saddened that Mr. Sudar and the element of industry he represents believe they still have a right to continue killing a percentage of ESA-listed salmon and steelhead, and imperiled sturgeon just as they did 50 years ago. A lot has changed in 50 years and not for the better where anadromous fish are concerned. And while the law may still allow collateral killings to prop up an archaic industry, there is the question of ethics, salmon/steelhead recovery, and responsibility to our natural resources.
That era of historic entitlements, living off publicly-owned natural resources and consequences be hanged, should be over. The greater issue is saving what’s left. Sports-fishermen, their advocate groups, and tribal fish managers have shifted focus to invest in the future of anadromous fish. We’re waiting on non-tribal industrial harvesters to do the same.
Killnets are not entirely to blame for the plight of today’s anadromous fish but the industry is in a unique position to play major roles in recovery, a fact still lost on many gillnetters.
Salmon, steelhead, sturgeon etc. are on their lips for a lot of reasons, struggling below recovery and hatchery requirements; whales are starving, fisheries are collapsing, rivers are warming, governors are moaning and the age of gillnetters, like the age of buffalo hunters, is over. Interestingly, without buffalo shooters, there is still an abundance of buffalo steaks in the meat markets, and with a change in business plans the industrial harvesters could also continue to supply salmon to the non-fishing public.
Make no mistake, commercial net harvesting and marketing of fish is an industry—not fishing. Let’s treat it like an industry and require the industry owners to pay for what they use; operating overhead, harvest monitors, inventory replenishment, research, management, and equipment—like all other private, for-profit businesses.
The day that Big C industrial harvesters step up, design, construct, finance and operate hatcheries that put in more salmon and steelhead than they take out of the Columbia River, Willapa Bay, Grays Harbor and Puget Sound—as treaty tribes and sports have done—that will be the day I happily reconsider and applaud the industry’s role in recovering Washington fish. Until then, any fish they get from those of us who pay our way and theirs too—must be considered charitable donations to non-invested profiteers. Here’s hoping that day comes soon.
Despite Mr. Sudar’s perception, I’m not against gillnetters—some are fine folks. We are at cross-purposes, however. I am opposed to industrials who persist in pushing for non-selective killnets to continue straining the mainstem Columbia despite the sorry state of our anadromous runs, and the legally-binding Kitzhaber Salmon Reforms. Those reforms—agreed to by both Washington and Oregon—not only phased out non-selective mainstream kill netting to protect our anadromous fish and non-targeted, endangered fish but provides thousands of hatchery salmon in off-channel selective salmon areas specifically to offset any economic losses that displaced mainstem gillnetters might incur.
But like all reforms, this one is persistently attacked by those who profited from the old business-as-usual era and their political lackeys.
Sport fishermen in both states pay a Columbia River Endorsement Fee that pays for the hatchery fish that are keeping the killnet fleet afloat in off-channel select areas. Sport fishermen! It’s a small price to pay for keeping non-targeted, wasted bycatch out of Big C net mesh and still let the netters harvest fish for profit. Most of us don’t complain.
Mr. Sudar is right in one regard, I’m very much opposed to killnetters who believe they have a ‘right’ to take public resources, regardless of ESA or imperiled status for their private profits without putting anything of significance back into inventory. I also object to killnetters lobbying ODFW, WDFW and legislators to remove laws protecting our natural resources—in this case salmon, steelhead and sturgeon—and then tell the world that what they do is legal.
As far as the argument that killnetters provide fish for the public—they do, but that food can be provided without industrial killnets.
Everyone deserves to eat salmon whether they get their fish with a spinning herring or debit card. Same as those of us who eat ribeyes and burgers but don’t own cattle ranches. Supplying the non-fishing salmon market is exactly what selective off-channel gillnetting areas are intended to provide while eliminating mortality losses of imperiled and endangered fish.
There is ample evidence that commercial markets can be fulfilled without killnets and the collateral killing of endangered or imperiled non-targeted fish bycatch. The commercial industry already does exactly that with selective seines, and in ocean regions of eastern Europe and in Southeast Alaska.
The primary Northwest example is in Southeast Alaska where for more than four decades commercials have been making major contributions to salmon populations while continuing to supply commercial markets AND provide Chinook, coho and chum salmon for sportfishing.
It started 42 years ago in Southeast Alaska when commercial gillnetters, seiners and trollers formed The Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association (SSRAA). Their stated goal was, “Enhancing and Rehabilitating Salmon Production in Southern Southeast Alaska.”
SSRAA now operates six hatcheries and three remote net pen camps producing millions of chum, Chinook and coho salmon fry a year. The lion’s share of adult returns goes to the industrials, the rest, and it is considerable, to sportfishing to provide, as SSRAA states, “a greater abundance of salmon for the economic and social benefit of all—commercial, sport or subsistence.”
Last year, the SSRAA harvest of coho was divided: Gillnets, 5%, Seines 2%, Troll 51%, Sports 7%. For Chinook: Gillnets 12%, Seines 0%, Trolls 11%; Sports 12%.
Just one example: Last year SSRAA hatcheries produced an adult return in Southeast Alaska of 133 million salmon, including 40,000 Chinook, and 289,000 fall and summer coho plus 2.6 million chums. According to SSRAA figures about 32 million of those adult salmon are harvested a year. Those returns not only fueled the commercial industry in Southeast, but also boosted sport fisheries from Petersburg to Ketchikan. And even better, the commercial enhancements provided salmon that kept some of the most popular sportfishing areas in the state open for recreational salmon fishing; Wrangell, Whale Pass, Clarence Strait, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Craig and Klawock among others. The entire Klawock silver sport-fishery, famous and unbelievably popular, is built on a return of 187,313 adult SSRAA coho.
In European saltwater regions, commercial industries have built hatcheries and filled them with imprinted hatchery salmon smolts that are released to feed in the ocean and return as adults straight into sluiceways that feed directly into sorting pens, where bright fish are killed, dressed and sent to markets. No high sea gillnetting involved.
No nets. No scars. No incidental bycatch mortality.
No fishing salmon lovers and processors still get all of the fresh salmon they can afford, the salmon factory makes a good profit, and ample free-roaming salmon are left in the ocean for tribes, subsistence, sports, killer whales and natural reproduction.
Commercial salmon harvesting is an industry. Let’s treat it like one. Columbia River commercials should pay for their smolt ‘seed’ and hatchery equipment like other farmers, and drop the bleeding heart pretense of being fishermen to operate on an industrial level. When the nets are gone from Washington’s troubled waters there will be a corresponding end to incidental bycatch and non-selective mortality, and an increase in Chinook for hatchery production, wild escapement and killer whale food.
Will any of this solve all that is wrong with our salmon fisheries? No. Of course not. The issues are a lot bigger than harvests.
But it will bring an archaic broken harvesting system into the 21st century, reduce the incidental mortality of valuable salmon and steelhead that we are working so hard to save and hopefully one-day recover.
Sport fishermen are moving forward, making sacrifices paying our way.
Tribes are moving forward, making investments, building hatchery programs paying their way.
Now it’s the non-tribal net industries turn to step up and do what’s right. To give non-selective gillnets an honorable dry dock in a museum of history, embrace the new, and join the rest of the world in fighting—not for the last salmon or steelhead—but for conservation oriented management, anadromous recovery and rebounding runs of salmon and steelhead.
To be clear: This is my opinion. October’s news is reported in my Columbia River Region column. (See page 9.)
THE LETTER
Summer Chinook Article Off-Base
By Robert Suda, Longview Gillnetter
[Bracketed inserts by CCA Executive Director Neilo Picinich]
Your August edition had a story on the WDFW Commission vote on a summer Chinook gillnet season and closed by asking the question “why was it even proposed?” I’m the person who initially did propose the season. Since your article was off base on the facts in almost every aspect of the discussion, I thought I’d write so you could at least have the correct story if you wanted to print it.
I have been a commercial advisor to the Department of Fisheries (before the merger) and Fish and Wildlife since 1988. I have been involved with salmon management in all areas of the state, and have fished commercially and marketed local salmon from the San Juans to the Columbia River. I understand the biology and the processes used to plan and implement both recreational and commercial fisheries, and who ultimately pays for salmon production in Washington.
[CCA: Please tell us who pays for the salmon production. NP]
I have been especially involved in the Columbia River Policy because I was one of the commercial stakeholders in that 2012 working group, and have testified repeatedly to the Commissions in both states about the performance of the Policy and whether or not it is achieving its intended goals.
I proposed a summer commercial fishery for several reasons. We are allocated 20% of the non-Indian harvest below Priest Rapids Dam, but the Policy says we have to use selective methods other than gillnets. There is no “selective method other than gillnets” that works in that time frame for Chinook. And our gillnets are very selective in avoiding the ESA-listed species that are in the river at that time—steelhead and sockeye.
[CCA: My definition of “very selective” is different. It is also worth noting that the Washington Commission contemplated 0% on summer Chinook for the commercial sector. They did leave some allocation for the off channel areas. Even though there are no summer Chinook planted in these areas, the later spring Chinook off channel fisheries do have impacts on summer Chinook. NP]
Summer Chinook are not ESA-listed because they are meeting the escapement goals set by NMFS and the US v. Oregon treaty. The wild component often exceeds the hatchery component of the run. Having attended North of Falcon for many years, I know that the hatchery only sport season was promoted by trade groups in your industry to extend the fishing season, not because of a biological need. There are prominent members of your industry who still oppose that restriction.
[CCA: Selective fisheries are a common and effective management tool for recreational fisheries in this state, especially in Puget Sound. It is a shame that the commercial industry is unwilling to embrace selective gear types. NP].
The fact that the wild escapement in some tributaries is below the “goal” is misleading. The “goal” is actually a combination of wild and hatchery fish.
[CCA: So, that means we’re under escaping both wild and hatchery fish. That’s even more concerning. NP]
And the fact that there are many more wild fish in the run but less than are found in those tributaries suggests that they are spawning in the mainstem itself, which isn’t surprising because that’s where a lot of summer Chinook historically did spawn.
[CCA: I have yet to see strong evidence to support this claim of wild summer Chinook spawning in the mainstem in the post-dam era. NP]
And finally, Adaptive Management is included in the Policy to allow for adjustments when the Policy doesn’t fit the fishery. I felt the summer season was a good example of where it would be appropriate to apply Adaptive Management.
In terms of specific claims in that story: Our fishery was not “intended to target an exceptionally weak run of 44,000 summer Chinook.” My proposal was based on the pre-season prediction of 67,300 fish. I proposed waiting until July to hold our fishery precisely because that’s when the managers would have a good handle on run strength before we fished. As it turned out, we wouldn’t have fished anyway because the smaller return made our share too small to warrant a fishery. On the other hand, the recreational fishery exceeded their quota by over 50% by fishing before the run strength was determined.
[CCA: As far as it relates to “accuracy” in the article this is probably his only decent argument. From a policy perspective, using adaptive management, fisheries managers could use this to completely eliminate this non-selective commercial fishery because the recreational sector is capable of selectively fishing this run and using all available quota. Remember, one of the gillnetters biggest arguments for keeping a gillnet fishery is because the recreational sector is incapable of using all of the allocation. NP]
Idaho’s ESA-listed summer kings don’t move through in June and July. The Snake River spring and summer Chinook are a combined stock that is mostly through the lower river by mid-June. That’s the whole reason anyone has a lower river summer fishery at all. Until they were able to biologically separate the Snake summers from the upper Columbia summers, and show that they had different migration timing, no one could fish for summers below Priest Rapids. There was no need for us to pick July to avoid Snake River summers.
July isn’t the peak of summer steelhead migration in the lower Columbia River. Anyone familiar at all with salmon in the Columbia should know that, and yet I’ve heard it before from testifiers, including Harry Barber, who is quoted in the article and should know better. The summer steelhead peak is in mid-August. I can provide a graphic that shows migration peaks for salmon and steelhead if you still have any doubts.
[CCA: This shows a lack of understanding of the distinctive components that make up the entire summer steelhead run. The bulk of the July return of summer steelhead are mid-river bound fish headed for the Klickitat, Deschutes, John Day, Wind, etc., with a decent mix of upriver/Snake bound fish as well. While it may not be the peak of the entire run, it is the peak migration period for the mid-Columbia steelhead DPS which are, in fact, ESA-listed. NP]
I agree that steelhead returns are down, but our impacts on them are closely monitored and we stay within our share of the incidental kill of wild steelhead by both fisheries. Last year’s enhanced monitoring showed that our steelhead mortalities in large mesh nets are actually lower than previously thought.
[CCA: To be clear there was NO mortality study last year. Monitors simply recorded if the steelhead came over the roller dead or not dead. Last year’s monitoring was designed to track encounter rates. Despite dismal numbers of steelhead present last year and lower numbers of Chinook caught, the encounter rate of steelhead was nearly DOUBLE the expected ratio by WDFW. NP]
Mr. Barber’s claim that the steelhead to Chinook (gillnet catch) ratio would be “high” is unfounded. The 2010 monitoring he keeps referring to did not have a “high” steelhead to Chinook ratio, and there is no reason to think we would have had one this summer.
Most of his “bycatch” was sturgeon, which is not too surprising since the monitoring he references was all in zones 1 and 2, where the sturgeon are most prevalent in late June.
There is no evidence that releasing sturgeon from our nets causes significant mortalities. If you were to look at the recreational catch of sturgeon, roughly 90% of the sport catch in any given year has been “bycatch”, fish outside the legal range (I can provide data on that, too). So sturgeon bycatch could be considered “high” in both fisheries, but that doesn’t mean it is a detriment to the sturgeon resource.
We also couldn’t keep sockeye in 2010, which ended up having a record return that was well above forecast. But at the time we fished they weren’t legal to keep. Overall, Mr. Barber continually distorts that 2010 data.
[CCA: Released sport caught fish have a much higher survival rate than fish handled in gillnets.
This is not debatable! This comment about the recreational sturgeon fishery is probably the most telling statement about how the gillnet industry distorts facts. To suggest that sturgeon are bycatch in a directed sturgeon fishery is humorous. Yes, there is a slot limit and yes fish outside the slot limit are to be released as directed by fisheries managers.
It is the same management protocol for the gillnet fleet. As we have seen time and time again, the gillnet industry never wants to address the non-target species that are caught as bycatch. Harry is simply pointing this out from the prior monitor studies. NP]
The sport season this year below Priest Rapids was shortened by 3 days but the recreational fishery was already well over its allocation. The fishery above Priest Rapids was delayed but was eventually opened.
Unfortunately, this kind of reporting is typical of Mr. Sheely, the author of this article and your Columbia River reporter. He is certainly entitled to not like gillnets but his reporting should be based on facts, not opinion. He isn’t an editorialist, he is a reporter. Just about every time he reports on anything related to our fishery he fails to describe it accurately. That failing only leads to confusion for your readers if they attend a F&W meeting and the reports by the biologists don’t conform with what they read in publications like yours.
Salmon need advocates, not arguments between user groups who could do more working together to help the resource but instead spend their time in conflict. Ron Garner of Puget Sound Anglers has recently recognized this fact and has written about it. He has realized that recreational fishing was better 30 years ago, when there was still a viable commercial fishery in Puget Sound for all salmon, not just chum. Before Chinook, coho, sockeye and pinks were made “sport priority” species. And that was 10-15 years after the Boldt decision, so you can’t just blame it all on the tribes. Meanwhile, the salmon resource in many areas of Washington continues to decline.
I don’t expect you to advocate for commercial fishing. I don’t expect you to necessarily like gillnetting, even though it’s a good fit for many commercial fisheries in Washington, just like it is in some of the best salmon-producing regions of Alaska. But I would expect some level of accurate reporting, for the benefit of your readers who look to your publication not just for where, when and how to fish, but also for good information on salmon management.
Your constant vilifying of commercial harvesters does not inform—it simply foments animosity. And your story about summer Chinook was one of the worst examples of that. If you need a source for accurate information on commercial salmon fishing in Washington I would be happy to provide a name. Your readers deserve it.
CCA Response
By CCA Government Relations Committeeman
“The only fact that this letter gets right is: “the Policy says we have to use selective methods other than gillnets.”
“The foundation of the Columbia River Policy is to eliminate gillnets. To propose reintroducing gillnets in the summer is not “adaptive management“ it’s an attempt to erode the underpinnings of the Policy at its core. This Policy is the result of a significant compromise by the recreational and conservation community, and considers conservation, economic, socio-economic factors and cost of management in its formulation.
“Observer data is rare in gillnet fisheries (mostly because they can’t pay the cost to properly manage their fishery) but the data we do have shows that summer gillnets catch more non-target fish than the Chinook they are attempting to harvest, and that they are incapable of releasing wild Chinook alive.
“Now gillnet advocates can attempt to convince you that the non-target fish don’t matter, or that the gillnets don’t hurt them much, or (the favorite) that summer Chinook are healthy because they are not ESA-listed, but none of this changes the fact that gillnets are horrible tools for mixed stock fisheries and you can’t get more mixed stock than summer time in the Columbia River.”