It’s harvest! It’s harvest! It’s harvest!

By Jim Pearson

I’m kind of welching on last week’s promise. I told you this week I would talk about Gary Loomis’ message and CCA (Coastal Conservation Association). 

I say “kind of” because I sat there like a dummy as he talked to me and I didn’t take notes. Some reporter, huh? 

I’ll write what I remember from Gary’s talk, but I’ll fill in the holes with stuff I know. We’re told the problem with salmon and steelhead recovery is fourfold – Hatcheries, Hydro, Harvest and Habitat – but Gary says it’s harvest, it’s harvest, it’s harvest. 

I believe that and that’s why I worked so hard for passage of two different initiatives that would have curbed commercial harvest here in Washington state. They were both defeated. That’s because, in my opinion, the average voter looks on commercial fishermen as one of the last great adventurers. He’s the cowboy of yesteryear and at least one popular TV series bolsters that image. 

It makes me wonder if market hunters of yesteryear were also looked on with such romance. And even though we stopped market hunting because the resource couldn’t stand the pressure, we seem to think fish can. We ignore the numbers and keep right on netting. It’s all about harvest. Gary explained to me why the survival rate for hatchery salmon and steelhead is small as compared to wild fish. In a nutshell, it’s this: Wild smolts know how to forage and they hit the salt water on their out migration full of vigor. Hatchery fish hit the salt weakened because on their trip downriver, they don’t find pellets being sprinkled on top of the water and they don’t know how to forage. 

That, Gary says, explains why, even though millions of hatchery fry are released, about half the fish returning to spawn are wild. They’re stronger fish and we need to preserve and enhance wild fish stocks. That’s why sports fishermen must release wild fish unharmed, but a gill net can’t tell the difference. It’s all about harvest. It’s loss of habitat, we’re told. That explains low salmon and steelhead returns. But for the last 50 years, habitat has gotten better while fish returns got worse. 

Loggers can no longer cut to the stream bank and that’s good for fish returning to spawn. Streams are no longer channeled and that’s good. Logs and rocks are left in rivers to offer shade and protection for fish and that’s good, but the returns keep getting smaller. 

More than a dozen runs of fish are classed as endangered, but those runs are fished commercially and you can buy them at the grocery store. Can you name one other endangered species we can legally eat? It’s all about harvest. Hydro? Hydro is dams. We’re told dams are causing fish to disappear. Gary answers that charge with a question and then he gives the answer: “What do dammed and undammed rivers have in common? No fish.” 

It’s all about harvest. That’s the message Gary took to Washington, D.C., when he got a half-hour appointment to speak with a high-ranking official in the Bush administration. 

He flew back, talked with the official for 55 minutes and left him saying, “I think you’re right, Gary. It’s harvest.” 

When I was a kid growing up in Oroville, a run of sockeye salmon came up the Okanogan River. We called them bluebacks, the smallest of the salmon family. And they’re still coming. They leave the ocean and swim at least 700 miles, cross nine (count ‘em!) major dams on the Columbia River, cross another small one at Oroville, swim the length (eight miles) of Lake Osoyoos and spawn in Canada. 

So, don’t tell me dams are the cause of ever-decreasing runs of salmon and steelhead. 

It’s all about harvest and gill nets are unforgiving harvesters. There is virtually no such thing as releasing a fish alive once he’s in a gill net and those nets don’t care if they kill targeted fish or not. 

It’s euphemistically called “by catch,” this string of dead fish the nets trail behind them. Many countries, including Russia, have banned them and they’re banned in many areas in the U.S. They killed almost all the codfish before commercial harvest was curbed. 

The redfish were about gone along our southern coast until the nets were banned. 

Now, the fish are making a strong comeback. 

A century and a half ago, Atlantic salmon was fished almost to extinction, so the commercials, along with their canneries, moved to the west coast and began attacking our salmon. And, about the time of Custer’s last stand, when runs went to almost nothing in some Oregon rivers, they began building hatcheries. 

Today, hatcheries subsidize the nets and commercial fisheries sell fish for much less than it costs taxpayers and electrical rate payers to produce them. Gary is right when he says “It’s harvest! It’s harvest! It’s harvest!” He’s the chief spokesman for the Coastal Conservation Association here in the northwest and I believe him when he says that organization is our last chance to save the salmon. 

For more information, go to www.ccapnw.org.

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