West Coast Salmon Research Articles

Fishery participation and location choice model: the West Coast salmon troll commercial fishery

Random utility models have been widely used to model spatial choice within fisheries, but less attention has been paid to modeling participation and movement between fisheries. Fishers may switch fisheries in response to time closures or changes in profitability potentially creating management implications for those fisheries, as well as the fishery with the closure. We used a random utility maximization framework to model participation, fishery choice, and location choice for a large fleet of West Coast salmon trollers, many of which also participate in other fisheries. We used the model to demonstrate substitution effects across fisheries due to spatial policies implemented in the salmon fishery. Our work suggests that spatial management of a single fishery needs to take into consideration fishers’ full choice set to predict behavioral responses to spatial policies. Our analysis also provides insights into how fishers construct multifishery harvest strategies that enable them to more fully use capital or adjust to closures or changes in relative profitability.

Methods for assessing and responding to bias and uncertainty in U.S. West Coast salmon abundance forecasts

We quantified the bias and accuracy of U.S. West Coast Chinook and coho salmon abundance forecasts using lognormal distributions fitted to annual ratios between postseason abundance estimates and preseason forecasts, or constrained to assume unbiased forecasts. Accuracy was modest to low, with CVs exceeding 50% for 8/19 Chinook and 17/17 coho stocks. We evaluated the fitted median as a bias correction, and uncertainty buffers based on quantiles below the median. We tested whether retrospective application of bias corrections and/or buffers brought forecasts closer on average to postseason estimates; and performed retrospective and prospective analyses of consequences for stock status, harvest, and escapement for Sacramento River Fall Chinook (SRFC), a key fishery stock. Bias corrections and/or buffers improved most forecasts, with buffers providing improvement more often. For SRFC, bias correction alone could have led to one less year of overfished status, while buffers could have further shortened or avoided overfished status and reduced the frequency of under-escapement. Reductions in mean annual harvest resulting from applying bias corrections and/or moderate buffers were predicted to be smaller than the increases in harvest resulting from forecast and implementation error. Prospective simulations showed buffers could reduce risks of overfished status and under-escapement, at small costs to long-term mean harvests. However, this metric misses substantial harvest reductions in some years, since mean harvest is most sensitive to harvest at high abundance; though our analyses also neglected benefits of increased escapement for future production. Future work should incorporate observation error and nonstationarity, and the combined effects of forecast and implementation error on the probability of missing escapement goals.

Seasonal Turbidity Linked to Physical Dynamics in a Deep Lake Following the Catastrophic 2014 Mount Polley Mine Tailings Spill

AbstractThe catastrophic August 2014 Mount Polley tailings spill, the second largest ever documented, sent ~18 Mm3 of waste plunging to the bottom of the >100 m deep West Basin of Quesnel Lake, British Columbia, a critical West Coast salmon habitat. To understand the impact of the spill on the lake, including the fate of suspended solids, we examine changes in physical water properties over 11 years (2006–2017) using water column profiles, moored timeseries, and satellite imagery. Contaminated waters were initially largely confined to the hypolimnion; however, during autumn 2014 turnover, turbid waters were mixed to the surface, resulting in the clear blue lake turning bright green. Twelve months after the spill, the lake's temperature, conductivity, and turbidity temporarily returned to pre‐spill conditions; however, initiation of mine effluent discharge in late 2015 was associated with a subsequent 15 μS cm−1 conductivity increase above historic values. Importantly, a post‐spill 1–2.5 formazin turbidity unit hypolimnetic turbidity increase was observed during spring and fall turnovers of 2015–2017, which appeared to be due to resuspension of a thin layer of unconsolidated spill‐related material from the lake bed driven by large internal seiche motions. This process implies spill contaminants may be seasonally mobilized into the water column, with potentially detrimental impacts on aquatic ecology. Our findings underscore that basin‐scale physical processes, including seasonal turnover and internal seiches, must be accounted for, even in deep lakes, to understand the long‐term impact of the ever increasing number of tailings spills into aquatic ecosystems.

Implementing Ecosystem-Based Management Principles in the Design of a Salmon Ocean Ecology Program

Two decades have passed since the initiation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research program aimed at advancing the understanding of estuary and ocean ecology of U.S. West Coast Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.). In this review and prospectus, we summarize key findings from this program and describe a plan for transitioning it to better support Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM). While we focus on salmon research, our approach applies to research design generally. Our path forward involves increasing understanding of ecosystem processes to improve the dependability of scenario testing under novel conditions. Over the past two decades, we developed a conceptual model for how climate, predators, prey, fisheries, and human activities influence salmon. Knowledge gaps we identified from our conceptual model include limited understanding of salmon distributions, behavior, maturation dynamics, and population dynamics, and salmon interactions with predators, competitors, and prey during winter. We consider emerging risks and vulnerabilities facing salmon and propose analysis frameworks for evaluating them. Increased predator populations, coupled with climate change, pose increasing threats to West Coast salmon and will require new strategies and actions to mitigate their negative impacts. We propose research to support the development of decision-support tools to evaluate tradeoffs associated with alternative management strategies and to inform an adaptive ecosystem management system to improve the resilience of salmon populations and salmon-dependent fisheries.

Ecological thresholds in forecast performance for key United States West Coast Chinook salmon stocks

AbstractPreseason abundance forecasts drive management of US West Coast salmon fisheries, yet little is known about how environmental variability influences forecast performance. We compared forecasts of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) against returns for (i) key California-Oregon ocean fishery stocks and (ii) high priority prey stocks for endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) in Puget Sound, Washington. We explored how well environmental indices (at multiple locations and time lags) explained performance of forecasts based on different methods (i.e. sibling-based, production-based, environment-based, or recent averages), testing for nonlinear threshold dynamics. For the California stocks, no index tested explained >50% of the variation in forecast performance, but spring Pacific Decadal Oscillation and winter North Pacific Index during the year of return explained >40% of the variation for the sibling-based Sacramento Fall Chinook forecast, with nonlinearity and apparent thresholds. This suggests that oceanic conditions experienced by adults (after younger siblings returned) have the most impact on sibling-based forecasts. For Puget Sound stocks, we detected nonlinear/threshold relationships explaining >50% of the variation with multiple indices and lags. Environmental influences on preseason forecasts may create biases that render salmon fisheries management more or less conservative, and therefore could motivate the development of ecosystem-based risk assessments.

Predicting the economic impacts of the 2017 West Coast salmon troll ocean fishery closure

The ocean salmon fishery on the US West Coast has faced periodic closures of varying extents in order to protect vulnerable runs. These closures can have serious consequences for fishers and fishing communities, and have necessitated the release of millions of dollars of federal disaster aid. The 2017 ocean Chinook troll fishery (the major salmon ocean fishery) is closed between southern Oregon and northern California to protect the Klamath River fall Chinook, which is forecast to return in low numbers. A model of vessel fishing choices was used in combination with an established input-output model to estimate the potential economic impact of this closure on fishers and fishing communities. The analysis predicts that this closure of the ocean fishery will result in a loss of $5.8–$8.9 million in income, $12.8–$19.6 million in sales, and 200–330 jobs. These estimates are only a partial estimate of the economic impacts of the 2017 salmon regulations, as they do not fully account for the effects of the limited season outside of the closed ocean area or the effects on other salmon fisheries (e.g. the gillnet and recreational fisheries). The impacts are not distributed evenly in space, with the largest relative losses occurring in the Coos Bay, Brookings, and Eureka regions. This information may be useful as policymakers consider mitigating economic losses in the fishery and associated communities. Early estimates of economic impacts of fishery closures may also enable quicker determination of the need and extent of disaster assistance and a more timely response.

Quantifying and predicting responses to a US West Coast salmon fishery closure

AbstractAs anthropogenic changes interact with natural climate cycles, the variability of marine ecosystems is likely to increase. Changes in productivity of particular fisheries might be expected to lead not only to direct impacts within a fishery but to economic and ecological effects on other fisheries if there is substantial cross-participation by fishers. We use data from the US West Coast salmon troll fishery before, during, and after a large-scale closure to illustrate how altered resource availability influences the behaviour of fishing vessels in heterogeneous ways. We find that vessels were less likely to participate in fishing of any type during the closure, with >40% of vessels ceasing fishing temporarily and 17% exiting permanently. Vessels that were more dependent on salmon were more likely to cease fishing while more diversified vessels were more likely to continue. In spite of a high level of cross-participation, we find limited evidence that vessels increased their participation in other fisheries to offset lost salmon revenue. Ports that obtained more of their revenue from salmon troll vessels saw larger decreases in their revenue during the closure. Ocean conditions from 2013 to 2015 suggest the possibility of another highly restricted salmon fishing season in 2017. Our models predict that such restrictions would cause another economic disaster and lead to a large fraction of vessels exiting fishing but suggest that effects on fisheries linked by cross-participation are likely to be low.

Listeria monocytogenes Contamination Patterns for the Smoked Fish Processing Environment and for Raw Fish

Reliable data on the sources of Listeria monocytogenes contamination in cold-smoked fish processing are crucial in designing effective intervention strategies. Environmental samples (n = 512) and raw fish samples (n = 315) from two smoked fish processing facilities were screened for L. monocytogenes, and all isolates were subtyped by automated ribotyping to examine the relationship between L. monocytogenes contamination from raw materials and that from environmental sites. Samples were collected over two 8-week periods in early spring and summer. The five types of raw fish tested included lake whitefish, sablefish, farm-raised Norwegian salmon, farm-raised Chilean salmon, and feral (wild-caught) salmon from the U.S. West Coast. One hundred fifteen environmental samples and 46 raw fish samples tested positive for L. monocytogenes. Prevalence values for environmental samples varied significantly (P < 0.0001) between the two plants; plant A had a prevalence value of 43.8% (112 of 256 samples), and plant B had a value of 1.2% (3 of 256 samples). For plant A, 62.5% of drain samples tested positive for L. monocytogenes, compared with 32.3% of samples collected from other environmental sites and 3.1% of samples collected from food contact surfaces. Ribotyping identified 11 subtypes present in the plant environments. Multiple subtypes, including four subtypes not found on any raw fish, were found to persist in plant A throughout the study. Contamination prevalence values for raw fish varied from 3.6% (sablefish) to 29.5% (U.S. West Coast salmon), with an average overall prevalence of 14.6%. Sixteen separate L. monocytogenes subtypes were present on raw fish, including nine that were not found in the plant environment. Our results indicate a disparity between the subtypes found on raw fish and those found in the processing environment. We thus conclude that environmental contamination is largely separate from that of incoming raw materials and includes strains persisting, possibly for years, within the plant. Operational and sanitation procedures appear to have a significant impact on environmental contamination, with both plants having similar prevalence values for raw materials but disparate contamination prevalence values for the environmental sites. We also conclude that regular L. monocytogenes testing of drains, combined with molecular subtyping of the isolates obtained, allows for efficient monitoring of persistent L. monocytogenes contamination in a processing plant.

Aftermath: Systems Thinking, Sustainability and Terrorism

-the of this world that we can inspect and analyze is always finite. We always have to say the rest of the world does not influence this part, and it is never true. The world is totally connected. Jacob Bronowski (1978, p. 96) None of us will escape the after-effects of the terrorist acts of September 11th-those events have changed the world. Now- * Passenger planes can become bombs. * Steel buildings hundred stories high can fall. * An entire industry-Airlines-can come close to collapse, laying off over 100,000 workers, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, in just three days. * And thousands of families can lose loved ones without warning in time of peace. And these are only the most obvious effects. We don't yet know all the longterm effects on our psyches, our dreams, our visions of ourselves as individuals and as people. But is the structure of our well-being-emotional and economic-so fragile that it can be devastated by suicidal men with box knifes? Are freedom, individualism, and the free-market spirit that Americans hold so dear simply flimsy images on house of cards, or are they sustainable cultural values? Are the notions of sustainability and our strongly held desire to preserve the environment still useful to us in this new world? To answer these questions, we take short tour of systems thinking and the roots of sustainability that offer one framework for understanding our increasingly complex post-September 11th world. The United States is society of individuals from all races and cultures. We believe in protecting the rights of individuals acting in their own self-interests and we create institutions and free markets where people pay the price for, and can earn the benefits of, those actions. Our democratic society protects people's rights and imposes on them personal responsibility (and punishments) when they do wrong. We have come to this vision of culture after long struggle for independence and bloody internal strife during the Civil War when the North and the South fought for the right to create the dominant set of values of the United States of America. We are in similar struggle now, on global scale, as we move from grouping of nations to world community, the Global Village that Marshall McLuhan predicted. America, Afghanistan, Australia-all nations are more than mere collections of people; they represent cultures and dynamics that have qualities that go far beyond those of the individuals that reside there. Just as whole is more than the sum of its parts, societies are more than the sum of their individual citizens. These whole cultures arise from the organizing relationships of the parts. (In fact, though, quantum physics shows us that there really are no parts at all. What we call a part is merely pattern in an inseparable web of relationships.) When people or ideas or organisms or events are drawn together in unique combinations, something new is born with new qualities not present before; scientists call this synergy. The totality of this new bundle of combinations, this synergy, is system. Systems nest within other Even an individual cell is system with nucleus, fluid, proteins, DNA, RNA, membrane. Complete organisms themselves (with cells, bacteria, and other systems within them) are Many organisms together form larger systems-like the Olympic Rainforest, or the river and environmental ecosystems that support Pacific West Coast salmon. Some people even feel that memes-or symbols and ideas-can combine to form living systems. Systems overlap and influence one another. And systems are self-stabilizing; they all possess quality called autopoiesis- literally, the capacity of self-making. The capacity of autopoiesis brings system that has been jolted by some new force back into equilibrium. Just like individual humans, systems want to continue to exist. Systems thinking1 is the science of understanding how systems work. …

The Implementation Gap: Rhetoric and Reality in Canadian Natural Resource and Environmental Policy

Review Last Stand: A Journey Through North America's Vanishing Ancient Rain forest. Larry Pynn. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1999. Clearcutting the Pacific Rainforest.- Production, Science, and Regulation. Richard A. Rajala. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1998. Against the Grain: Foresters and Politics in Nova Scotia. L. Anders Sandberg and Peter Clancy. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000. Fishing Places, Fishing People: Traditions and Issues in Canadian Small-Scale Fisheries. Eds. Dianne Newell and Rosemary E. Omer. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Community, State and Market on the North Atlantic Rim: Challenges to Modernity in the Fisheries. Richard Apostle, Gene Barrett, Petter Holm, Svein Jentcroft, Leigh Mazany, Bonnie McCay and Knut Mikalsen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Voluntary Initiatives: The New Politics of Corporate Greening. Ed. Robert B. Gibson. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1999. Communities, Development and Sustainability Across Canada. Eds. John T. Pierce and Ann Dale. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999. Biodiversity in Canada: Ecology, Ideas and Action. Ed. Stephen Bocking. Peterborough: Broadview, 2000. Biodiversity and Democracy: Rethinking Society and Nature. Ed. Paul M. Wood. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000. Canada contains a large portion of the world's land mass and seacoast and, almost by definition, is home to a large portion of the world's wildlife and natural resources. Canadian natural resource and environmental policies, hence, are significant not only within Canada's boundaries, but outside them, and since the development of the conservation movement in the 1880s, Canada has been a major player on the stage of international resource and environmental policy making. In the 1970s and 1980s, Canada earned a good reputation because the government and citizens led and promoted events such as the 1972 Stockholm conference on the environment, the United Nations' Environmental Program (UNEP) and the 1992 Rio Conference. More shrewd observers question this reputation and Canada's resource and environmental record must be held up to the light of actual practices on the ground. It became apparent in the 1990s that there is a substantial implementation gap - a gap between government rhetoric and reality. In the Canadian resource and environmental policy this gap has increasingly come to characterize Canadian policy making. Against the positive record of Canadian federal governments in such areas as protection of the atmosphere from ozone pollution, for example, are the more recent embarrassments of the Hague, where Canada failed completely to live up its commitments on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions under the terms of the Kyoto protocol. Against the record Canadian provinces hold in creating new parks (and obtaining close to the Brundtland Commission's target of 12 per cent protected spaces) must be held the continuing difficulties associated with large-scale deforestation and clear cut logging. And against claims to embrace sustainability and biodiversity must be held the record of all levels of Canadian governments in contributing to the destruction of the east coast ground fish and West Coast salmon fisheries. Canadian governments have also continued to promote trapping and seal hunting associated with the fur industry, and they refuse to enact endangered species legislation to which they are committed by international conventions on biodiversity and endangered wildlife. The books reviewed here, while different in origin, perspective, method and content, provide insight into the characteristics of and reasons for this severe implementation gap. Some suggest ways the gap can be filled, and Canada's unenviable record of inaction on major environmental issues in recent years reversed. …

Methods of extinction risk assessment developed for US West Coast salmon

In assessing extinction risk for Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), a variety of interacting risk factors are considered, some of which can be quantified but many of which are qualitative. In addition to the common measures of population abundance and trends for individual populations, these factors include ecological and genetic effects of hatchery fish, changes in life history traits, selective effects of harvest, trends in freshwater habitat condition, and climate variation. Combining such information into an assessment of the overall degree of risk facing populations and species relies heavily on scientific judgement rather than explicit quantitative criteria. To organize multifactor information and ensure consistency, a risk-matrix method has been implemented in which individual risk factors are scored on a 5-point scale, and then combined into an overall assessment of extinction risk.

The Canada-United States West Coast Salmon Dispute: The Role of the Substate Units

The Canada-United States West Coast Salmon Dispute: The Role of the Substate Units

U.S. fishery negotiations with Canada and Mexico

Abstract In the last decade, the world has witnessed a fundamental reorientation of posture toward marine resources as evidenced by consensus in the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) and the near universal move toward fishery jurisdictions of 200 nautical miles (370 km). These and other non‐marine‐specific economic and political pressures impose a new constellation of constraints on North American fishery relations. This has resulted in disharmonies on two borders. This paper, then, addresses the form of binational fishery negotiations between the United States and her two neighbors. One section presents a general model of the binational negotiation process. The next section introduces the institutional and political context of U.S.‐Canada relations, and then applies the negotiation model to the evolution of West Coast salmon deliberations. In a parallel fashion, the following section focuses on U.S.‐Mexico relations and the tuna, shrimp, and anchovy fisheries. The last se...