[5] Feds Release Proposed Recovery Plan For Hood Canal Chum
Saying that Hood Canal chum have suffered mainly from overharvesting and habitat loss, NOAA Fisheries announced last week a plan to recover the chum, listed for protection under the ESA since 1999, that says the effort could take 50 to 100 years. Costs for the initial 10-year phase of the recovery effort are estimated at $136 million, mainly for improvements to chum habitat.
The proposed plan was mostly written by the Hood Canal Coordinating Council, with a supplement added by the federal fisheries agency. In its Federal Register notice, the agency said that some of the chum stocks in the ESU, like those that spawn in the Quilcene, have been subjected to harvest rates up to 90 percent.
The plan calls for improving habitat for the eight stocks left of the 16 that were thought to be historically present, and continuing a supplementation effort with a conservation hatchery strategy that the feds have OK'd.
The plan points out that the Hood Canal summer chum are at the southern end of the spawning limit of all summer stocks between Alaska and Puget Sound, and may be less productive than fall stocks, which could hinder their recovery from high harvest levels in the past. Stocks declined abruptly in 1989, the same year that Canadian effort peaked at 43 percent. Total exploitation rates in both Canadian and US fisheries were high through 1991, when nearly half were caught, and the rate on the Quilcene summer run hit nearly 90 percent. But harvest has declined considerably, with the total exploitation rate on most summer chum in the region now less than 2 percent, though the Quilcene fish still face an 18-percent rate.
During years of high harvest in the 1980s, winter rivers flows increased and whole summer spawning flows declined, which reduced productivity even more. But in recent years, escapement of the Hood Canal summer run has improved dramatically from around 4,000 fish in 1998 and 1999 to nearly 70,000 in 2004.
The agency will accept public comment on the proposed plan until Oct. 16. Send comments to Elizabeth Babcock, Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Coordinator, NOAA Fisheries Service, 7600 Sandpoint Way NE, Seattle WA 98115; or submit by e-mail to HCsalmonplan@noaa.gov. -B. R.
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