Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RalphH]

Well that's your opinion. Which with $2... as the saying goes. The 'total accounted' for is the total catch plus the Mission escapement. They were at about 50% over 2 weeks ago. I guess the catch numbers could be found if you scratched around. It also matters how close the escapement is to the target escapement. The red line would be are they under the minimum escapement? Do you know what those numbers are? Good things to know before deciding the sky is falling.

[marshal]

The final estimate of the sockeye return in 2010 was 28 million.
In 2014, it was 20.1 million (approx 70% of the 2010 return).
In 2018, the return estimate is 13.9 million (70% of the 2014 return). 
Not liking this trend.

It looks like DFO is targeting a 50-60% TAC in each of the last 2 big return years, so I would imagine the same for this year..... but the numbers above appear to indicate that its too much to be able to sustain the species.

If I understand what the opening info is saying, Area B (seine) and H (troll) in areas 18 and 29 combined have a limit of moving the total Cdn commercial TAC up to 4.3M fish.  The last weekly report shows it at 2.5M, so they are authorized to bring in another 1.8M fish total....?

If the above assumptions are accurate and Commercial met their TAC limit, then total TAC would have been approx. 6.6M sockeye.  With an escapement to date past Mission of 4.5M (5.3M less the 800k caught upstream), that puts the total estimated return at 11.1M, the harvest from that being 60%....

So much for 2018's return being 70% of 2014's.... more like 55%... back to my opinion that DFO could do alot more to protect this anomaly cycle to maximize returns and help with a species that in 2009 had an investigation commissioned to determine what could be done to bring back a species at risk.

[RalphH]

per the Fraser Panel Annual reports and the last weekly report for this year. Exploitation rates in % are:

               
Year          06    10     14     18

E Stuart   14    6   11     1
E Summer   44   41   45   36
Summer   51   41   56   49
Late           39   51   58
total          42   48   55

A final number for the late component is not yet available for this year.

I have graphed these which makes it a bit easier to see trends and the exploitation rates for early Stuart and Early Summer are definitely down. The summer component is more or less the same.

Don't have a reliable late component number and am guessing this year will come in around 50% even though it is over 25% lower than 2006. So it's up but OTOH this is bound to be skewed by the record returns of '10 and '14.

Looking at one cycle in isolation may introduce a bias. Exploitation rates have been significantly lower in other years; 19% in 2015 & 2016, 30% in 2012, 8% in 2009. I am not cherry picking low numbers as not every year is available on the PSC website.

The 06 escapement was about 3 million and that returned a record 28 million plus. A big escapement isn't necessarily needed for a big return.

I have the table and graphs in a pdf. Send me a message if interested.

[marshal]

From the latest PSC update, seems like the numbers are trending in the right direction (IMO)....
Escapement past Mission:
- 2018 YTD: 4.8 million (50% of all* accounted, as of Sept. 21/18) (*all=quantity past Mission + total marine TAC)

Total all TAC:
- 2018 YTD: 5.3 million (57% of all^ accounted, as of Sept. 07/18) (^all=total all TAC + quantity past Mission (less 867k upstream catch))

As of Sept. 7th, the total TAC for 2018 (exploitation the term you use Ralph?) was approx. 57%.  Based on the light numbers past Mission since then and the fleet of seine nets, I can't see how that number could come down for the final for the year.  While a huge spawning escapement may not be needed to create a healthy return in 4 years' time:
- this year certainly looks to have been over harvested (in comparison to other years)... lets face it, DFO really screwed up (or they decided to over-harvest... especially the late run, or worse yet - they don't think they over-harvested); and,
- again, IMO take advantage of a naturally-occurring oddity (the '10/'14/'18 cycle) and let nature take its course to help with re-building the species

[BBarley]

The 06 escapement was about 3 million and that returned a record 28 million plus. A big escapement isn't necessarily needed for a big return.

Citing that anomaly to further any argument is a bit of a stretch don’t you think?

[RalphH]

Citing that anomaly to further any argument is a bit of a stretch don’t you think?

What anomaly? The 2006 escapement was in line with  the usual target. It was  quite capable of producing a larger return. For whatever reason not the least of which was the 2009 collapse many factors lined up to produce a large return in 2010. There's little or no real evidence that the 2014 return was directly due to the 2010 return.  Very large spawning escapements often produce less than stellar returns in the next cycle. The reverse is also true. Some of this was discussed above. In my view It's the major flaw in the argument marshal and others have been making. It is also the major flaw in the claim made above that some of these runs were over harvested, be it in 2010 or 2014. The exploitation rate (PSC term) in those years is fairly consistent with previous years in the cycle.

TAC is a planning number based on estimated return. Exploitation rate describes the actual harvest as a %of the total calculated return.

As far as 'rebuilding stocks'. The return evidence is the stocks are pretty healthy. The most troubled component, the Early Stuart was subject to very little harvest. Early summer and summer came back in healthy numbers and while the late component came back in lower #s than forecast it certainly isn't  in trouble.

I'd also note that at least based on the last in season forecast (Sept 21st) this years run is above the median return for all the returns for this cycle since 1930 - and that excludes a number of poor cycles returns before that

[wildmanyeah]

I agree with Ralph sockeye is really well managed but because people seem to only be able to remember the 1980's to 2000 where all the cycles were experience extremely high survival rates and fishing was open every year for retention that is all people remember.  No one here remembers 1920 to 1960 where there was similar abundance to what we are seeing today.

Its clear that all 4 years migrate out to the same ocean and compete with each other in the same areas.  Some runs  like chillko migrate all the way up to the Bering sea where they share the same areas with Alaska sockeye.  Bistal Bay sockeye is currently seeing some of the biggest returns ever.  I Think next year because the ocean conditions have been getting better the 2019 return of sockeye will probably be better then the 2015 return.  I may have to eat my words next year lol

[RalphH]

from 1914 and many decades on what you see if the effect of the 1913 railway slide that blocked the river. That year is believed to have been the one of the biggest returns on record bigger than 2010. That year was the dominant cycle. After that it switched to the current 2018 cycle. Problems with fish passage continued until after WW2 when the modern fish ways were built and in at least 1941 conditions seriously hampered fish passage throughout the season.

some history: https://www.psc.org/about-us/history-purpose/our-history/

[BBarley]

I understand your reasoning Ralph and it makes a lot of sense, there is no reason to believe that simply dropping the exploitation rate/TAC (whatever fancy word you want to use) that it would yield more spawners in a linear sense of spawners to offspring. The Fraser is a little bit of a different animal than I'm accustomed to (Skeena/Nass) with so many different runs and spawning times that all encounter different conditions enroute so while I may comment on it, I'm not as knowledgable as many of the vets on here.

That being said, I can also understand the logic of the others on here that argue why should we micromanage every substock right down to the last fish needed to spawn instead of letting nature take care of itself with regards to overspawning and carry capacity. Which lakes on the Fraser have spawning channels? Why aren't more spawning channels created on the bigger inland lakes like the Chilko and Quesnel?

[RalphH]

Not many spawning channels and nothing to compare to the babine. There are details on the PSC website.Can't answer why there aren't more. Don't forget the problems Fulton River etc caused for steelehad and other fish on the Skeena.

[wildmanyeah]

1 good set yesterday in the whonnock test.

[Easywater]

If I recall correctly, there is a fair amount of over-spawning in Fraser Sockeye - fertilized eggs get kicked out and killed by later fish arriving and taking over the nest. I always thought that over-spawning was a waste of resources and controlling spawning numbers through harvesting was not a bad thing.

However, I was wondering today if we have been losing some amount of genetic diversity by reducing the amount over-spawning and that has reduced survival rates somehow.

[CohoJake]

If I recall correctly, there is a fair amount of over-spawning in Fraser Sockeye - fertilized eggs get kicked out and killed by later fish arriving and taking over the nest. I always thought that over-spawning was a waste of resources and controlling spawning numbers through harvesting was not a bad thing.

However, I was wondering today if we have been losing some amount of genetic diversity by reducing the amount over-spawning and that has reduced survival rates somehow.

I would think over-spawning would favor the late returning fish in a particular stock, since they would be digging up the first spawned redds. It would also favor fish that live long after the spawn and continue to guard their redds.

[BBarley]

Not many spawning channels and nothing to compare to the babine. There are details on the PSC website.Can't answer why there aren't more. Don't forget the problems Fulton River etc caused for steelehad and other fish on the Skeena.

The enhanced runs to Pinkut and Fulton definitely had a major impact on summer run steelhead as they comigrate back together at the same time and I know many anglers (including myself) who love poor sockeye years simply for the fall steelhead fishery. To my knowledge the IFS (what's left of them) seem to migrate more at this time of year and so are more susceptible to the chum commercial fishery than the sockeye.

The spawning channels listed for the Fraser are the Nadina-20k capacity, Horsefly-20k capacity, Gates-20k capacity and Weaver-45k capacity. Seems rather odd to me that ONE spawning channel on the Babine has more capacity than all the Fraser channels combined. Granted Babine is a huge lake and has proven that it can handle rearing that amount of fry but surely the Quesnel or the Chilko would be comparable.

[wildmanyeah]

Looks like we can probably stick a fork in this one she seems to be done for the season.  Looks like the majority have now headed up, with the marine area 29 troll numbers drastically down.

With just over 5.6 million escapement past mission.

https://www.psc.org/download/130/frp-data/4553/fraser-river-sockeye-escapement-summary.pdf

Overall given the poor marine condition these smolts were tossed into they seem to have had a pretty decent return.