New ways of fishing could better protect endangered salmon

Higher standards of “sustainability” for salmon — recently developed by the Wild Fish Conservancy — are designed to put salmon on people’s tables with virtually no impact on depleted salmon runs.

The new standards, which could become part of a certification program, are built upon the concept that fishing should take place closer to streams with abundant runs of salmon. The standards call for fishing methods that can take a portion of the fish from the abundant runs while allowing fish from depleted runs to pass on by and spawn naturally.

“We want to get away from open fisheries, where you are capturing multiple populations all at once,” said Nick Gayeski, a scientist with Wild Fish Conservancy whose studies have raised the bar for sustainable fisheries.

“If you fish much closer to the estuaries, the fish will sort themselves out,” Nick told me, “and you can fish with much more confidence about taking fish from a specific population.”

This idea of “placed-based fishing,” as described by Wild Fish Conservancy, would surely be good for the wild salmon, including Puget Sound chinook and steelhead, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. It would also be good for a dozen listed species in the Columbia River system. But, if carried out to its full extent, the idea would just as surely create an upheaval for fishermen and fishing communities from Alaska to California.

Much of the chinook salmon caught in the ocean off Southeast Alaska come from the Columbia River, Oregon Coast, Washington Coast and Vancouver Island, according to a draft of the Comprehensive Management Plan for Puget Sound Chinook.

“Most Puget Sound Chinook stocks are subjected to very low or zero mortality in Southeast Alaska,” the report says, “but there are notable exceptions. On average since 1999, 48 percent of the fishery-related mortality of Hoko, 7 percent of Stillaguamish, and 23 percent of Skagit summer Chinook occurred in Alaska.”

Those last numbers are significant for the listed Puget Sound chinook, considering the distance that these fish are from home. Although salmon managers have taken significant steps to reduce the take of listed chinook, the fish are still caught in significant numbers along the coast and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Despite the ongoing harvest of threatened and endangered species, many of the fisheries taking these fish are certified as “sustainable” by the Marine Stewardship Council, an international group. Most are also listed as “good alternatives” by Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program.

Nick acknowledges that the “placed-based fishery” he is promoting cannot be accomplished overnight. Much of the salmon in Puget Sound are caught in fairly long gillnets, which ultimately kill the mixture of salmon caught in open waters.

Key criteria for place-based fishing include an assurance that essentially no fish are killed except for the target stock. If fishing close to the stream cannot offer that assurance, then the fishing gear must allow the non-target fish to be released without harm, according to an article by Nick along with Misty MacDuffee of Raincoast Conservation Foundation and Jack A. Stanford of the University of Montana. The paper, titled “Criteria for a good catch: A conceptual framework to guide sourcing of sustainable salmon fisheries,” was published this week in the scientific journal “Facets.”

Carefully managed set nets, which are gillnets usually attached to the shore, may allow for survival if the fish are removed within an hour or so, Nick told me. The big purse seines also are able to save the non-target fish from harm if the net and the fish remain in the water while the crew removes and releases the non-target fish. Obviously, these aren’t the most efficient methods from a fisherman’s perspective.

Fixed gear that catches fish with little handling, such as reef nets, work well to protect the non-target fish, Nick said. Reef nets harken back to a time when fixed gear along the shore was more common.

Wild Fish Conservancy has been working with Patagonia, the sustainable clothing manufacturer, to find fishing operations that meet strict standards of protecting non-target fish. Because of the huge impact that food production has on the environment, Patagonia decided to go into the business five years ago with a line of food products called Patagonia Provisions.

The first product sold was sockeye salmon caught with a set net in the Situk River estuary in the Gulf of Alaska, where nearly all of the sockeye are associated with the river. Other species are released unharmed.

More recently, Patagonia Provisions began buying pink salmon from a company called Lummi Island Wild, which operates a reef net on Lummi Island in northern Puget Sound. The reef net allows fish to be lifted gently out of the water. Any chinook or sockeye caught during the process are returned to the water unharmed.

The pink salmon taken in the operation are bled out immediately and placed on ice to produce the freshest fish possible.

“We think this is a good place to begin the educational process,” Nick said. “The fishers are handling the fish less and getting more money. We hope that restaurants and other retailers will see the value.”

Other fishing operations are under review by Wild Fish Conservancy to see if they can meet the stricter criteria.

Even if the fishing industry does not change overnight, when enough people purchase fish caught in place-based fisheries, it could reduce the pressure on endangered salmon trying to make it home to spawn while also providing some chinook to feed Puget Sound’s endangered killer whales.

“This is part of a transition,” Nick said. “It’s not only a down-the-road reconfiguration of West Coast salmon fishing but it involves long-term recovery of the wild runs.”

This item originally appeared on Watching Our Water Ways, a blog at kitsapsun.com. To comment or read more, visit https://pugetsoundblogs.com/waterways/.