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Therre may be good reasons (like all-elctric cars) to use a ssystem like the one being proposed. But there is an aspect of the left hand of govt. not knowing what the right hand is doing. The gov. wnats to pay for roads, but he also wants to reduce our carbon footprint. This new system reduces the incentive to drive more fule efficient vehicles and hence the conflict between the two goals of paying for roads and reducing our carbon footprint.

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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We the people of the United States once again can have hope for a government that works for the good of the country instead for the good of a few.

Bill Lunch is right and there will be a cycle, the question is the length of time that the Democrats will be in power. That will depend on how they govern and what gets done, but a majority of people in the country have hope and will be willing to work and support Obama.

It is refreshing to think that our president will be a thoughtful, deliberative, and inspiring leader.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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Ocean conditions vary, sometimes considerably, from year to year. Chinook usually spend from 2 to 4 years in the ocean while I read that sockeye usually spend from 1 to 2 years in the ocean. So the large sockeye returns this year are the result of smolts that went into the ocean in a different year than the smollts for this years chinook run. If they went into the ocean in a different year, then they encountered different ocean conditions. That may be a singificant part of the answer to your question of what is going on with "salmon".

Your guest mentions that the hatchery production of sockeye has increased, I'm pretty sure the hatchery production in Oregon of chinook and coho has decreased from 20 some years ago when large numbers of salmon were being caught.
Ron Mason

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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Kroger has made his position on prosecuting envirnomental violations/crimes clear. Please ask Macpherson his position on who should prosecute environmental violations/crimes

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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Dave, only one of the posters so far is a commercial fisherman or at least only one has identified himself as such. I'm a sport fisherman and as much I really want to be able to fish for salmon this year, I want even more for the salmon populations to be in good health in future years. So I want the fisheries managers to do what is necessary for the salmon population.

The impact on the coast --and inland-- will likely be huge, for the commercial fisherman it will be a disaster. But other segments of the economy will also suffer. i and other sports fishermen won't make as many trips to the coast as in years that we can fish for salmon. That means less $ spent for motels, food, fishing gear, boat maintenance, boat gear, gas, diesel, and also less spent by familes of fishermen in shops and other tourist attractions while the fisher in the family is out fishing. And this will occur while the economy is in a recession which will compound the difficulties for the coastal economy.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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Questions for your guests:
1. I've heard work was done to collect tags from the island on which the terns nest. What is the number of tags collected and from that number, what are the estimates of the total number of salmon smolts eaten by the terns?(not all smolts have tags in them!) also, any idea how many tags were deposited elsewhere by the birds?

Do winter conditions such as heavy rainfall and floods make a difference in salmon populations 3, 4, 5, or 6 years later?

If ocean conditions are a major cause of the salmon decline, then
1. why are some of the springer runs doing reasonably well?
2. do springers spawn at a sigficantly different time than the fall run chinook?
3. do "springer" smolts enter the ocean at a different time than smolts from the fall fish? If so, could this make a significant difference in their survival rate?

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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Glad to see you lined up some fisheries folks as guests, thanks, it will elevate the discussion!

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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I hope TOL will have some ODFW or PFMC fisheries folks as guests on Monday. The salmon situation is difficult enough without having uninformed opinions being used to generate heated discussion. Everyone, most especially fishermen, want the salmon populations to recover and prosper.

No ocean fishing will be one of 3 alternatives, the other two options will pprobably have very limited (both number of fish and number of days) options for salmon fishing.

Be very creful comparing historical catches of salmon, both chinook and coho. There are not as many hatcheries now as a few years ago and they don't produce nearly as many smolts as they did in the fairly recent past. Also, looking at historical data shows the salmon populations are cyclical.

At the preseason salmon meeting in Newport on March 6, the fisheries folks attributed some of the salmon decline to poor ocean conditions the past few years, especially in 2005. The warmer water we've had is not good for salmon. According to the commercial fishermen in attendance, other factors contributing to the decline of the salmon population included: removal of water from rivers in California, especially the Sacramento River; smolt predation by terns and coromorants; adult predation by seals and sea lions in the oceans, bays, and rivers; predation by Humboldt squid; salmon by-catch by factory ships off Oregon; foreign fishing boats; by-catch by pollack trawlers in Alaskan waters (last year they had a salmon by-catch of 230,000 chinook, the historical high); removal of too many adult salmon from some rivers; and conditions in rivers and streams during and after spawning.

Check the PFMC and ODFW websites for the schedule for determing the salmon season. Whichever alternative is eventually adopted by the Fish and Wildlife Commission will be within the guidlines established by PFMC and ODFW fisheries scientists to ensure sufficient escapement.

While both sport and commercial fishermen will suffer because of the low salmon numbers, for the commercial fishermen this is a disaster.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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It is NOT a coincidence that Oregon spends the highest percentage of it's state budget on prisons and is among the lowest in percentage spent on education.

We have a choice of how our state's money is spent. We all want a safe society, but spending more on prisons will not help make our society safer in the long run. If we want a safer and more equitable society, then we must invest in education for the people of Oregon, not prisons.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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i don't know where to find the "state policy" referred to above. In the last 3 years or so that I have been following the process and attending about half of the OPAC meetings, the governor has gone through several revisions of his proposals on MRs. At one time he proposed the entire OR territorial sea as a MR and apparently hadn't researched the Magnason Stevens Act or other federal laws pertaining to MRs. After another revision or two it was legacy reserves and now a few months later it's research reserves. From my point of view the governor has not provided leadership on MRs and the changing of his proposals every few months has caused many problems for OPAC. It's no wonder the coastal folks don't trust him on this issue, it's impossible to tell where he'll go on it next. That was the one of the main messages Chip Terhune, his chief of staff, received during his meetings on the coast.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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Megan, thanks for the info on the article in Science, I'll get a copy. The previous info I've read agrees that the dead zones since 2000 are unprecedented in our scientific record. However, there is some debate about what that means. Some say the dead zones are occuring now in ways they never occured before and some say they have occured before but that the science was not there to record them and hence they do not show up in the scientific record. I don't know which is true. The presentation I saw on oxygen level included more data points in the last two ro three years than had been collected in all previous years. Those data points were oxygen readings at various depths, dates, and locations. The instrumentation has developed by huge amounts in the past few years.

Since when I looked for the article online (it was not available) I saw the names of the authors and at least some of them presented info at OSU last year(or the year before), I'll stick with my statement that MRs will not help prevent dead zones. There may be changes in the wind patterns and currents that have an effect on dead zones, but a MR won't affect the wind patterns or currents.

The two recent commissions on the oceans found many things that need to be corrected and/or improved with the world's oceans. But going from what is not well in the oceans of the world (the general) to saying that those same things are not well in the ocean off Oregon's coast (the specific) is not good reasoning. Because the oceans of the world have problems does not mean that those problems exist in all places. ODFW does much better at managing the ocean off Oegon than is done on the east coast or even in WA or CA.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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The "dead zones" in Oregon waters are completely natural events caused by plankton blooms which occur as a result of the upwelling and currents. A [b]MR will do absolutely nothing[/b] to impede a "dead zone" from occuring. And upwelling is the reason why the ocean off Oregon is so productive.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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I don't know the entire Oregon coast, but I'm pretty sure there are areas along the coast that are not fished very much if at all. Those would be the areas that are about half-way in between ports. Most of the fishing in Oregon's territorial waters(out to the 3 mile line) is for lingcod, rockfish, crab or salmon and the salmon just pass through, they aren't "resident". Most fishermen, at least sportsfishermen, will not make long trips to fish for rockfish. And the trawlers are prohibited from fishing over the rocky bottom in Oregon's territorial sea. So I'm pretty sure there are areas that while maybe not pristine in the sense you mean, are relatively unfished simply because fishermen consider those sites too far to go for rockfish and lingcod when those species are abundant close to port.

So, I'm not so sure MRs are needed in order to do comparative studies. I definitely agree that more research is needed. I believe that need is in many ways independent of the MR question. But the funding for theat research has not been appropriated, not for the many years it has been needed. I don't see how establishing MRs is suddenly going to get the legislature and the govenor to fund research on or in Oregon's territorial seas.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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You make some good points.

I think the convention to which you refer was in Seaside, not Ilwaco.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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Those of us that enjoy the ocean - and go out on it to enjoy it- want it protected as much as anyone does. Oregon has been exercising it's responsibility of stewardship through ODFW. They have been implementing many steps to protect the ocean bottom from destructive practices and regulate extraction of fish and crab.

I'm wondering what specific extractive or destructive practice you're referring to in your post.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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If only 8 of the 43 managed species are assessed, then doesn't it make sense to assess the other 35 species? Unfortunately stock assessments are not easy and the $ to implement new technologies to do stock assessments aren't being allocated to ODFW or to PFMC.

Also, the term "nearshore" is not clear, both of the "overfished" species, Yelloweye (YE) and Canary rockfish, are in deeper water. YE is almost never found inside OR territorial waters (the 3 mile line) and canaries are rarely found inside the 3 mile limit.

Historically the methods used to evaluate the population of fish (aka stock assessment) by the fisheries folks are no longer available for some species. YE and canary populations used to be evaluated from CPUE and bycatch data. CPUE is Catch Per Unit of Effort and since fishing for YE and canaries is no longer allowed, that method is not now available. The bycatch data is now inconclusive since trawling is no longer allowed in the rocky areas where these fish live and hence there is much less bycatch of these species than in the past. Retention of these two species is not legal for sportsfishermen and if the commercial fleet reach the very limited bycatch quota for these species, then commercial fishing that has bycatch of these species is shut down. Because of that and other reasons, commercial fishing techniques have become more sophisticated to reduce YE and canary bycatch.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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OPAC has had two meeting scheduled in Corvallis. Both meetings were cancelled (to my chagrin, those would have been easy for me to attend!). They were cancelled for reasons other than being in Corvallis. There has been one meeting of the MRWG/ STAC (Marine Reserve Working Group / Scientific Technical Advisory Committee) in Corvallis at OSU. It was open to the public. You can find the meeting schedule on the OPAC website.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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Your guest said that the Pacific Fisheries management Council regulates federal waters and that ODFW regulates state waters. While that is technically true, it is not the whole truth. ODFW also sets the fishing regulations for federal waters, but all of their regulations
and quotas are within the guidlines set by PFMC. To be clear about that, the PFMC sets the upper limits of quotas for fish caught in both state and federal waters off Oregon, ODFW can set the quota lower than the PFMC limits, but cannot set them higher.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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Actually that argument isn't very common. It hasn't been expressed at the OPAC meetings I've attended. The most common argument is "establish the need and we'll support them". Even with this last change in the proposals to make them "research reserves" the effort is perceived by many to simply be an effort to close access to Oregonians by simply closing areas without evidence of the need to do so. This perception is based on the approach, the lack of science or research to establish the need. Many of the folks that push reserves, including the film "Common Ground", do it as a way to manage fisheries. Yet many of those folks have no idea how well ODFW and PFMC manage our fisheries.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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Most people have no idea how much the ocean fisheries are already regulated or how much of the ocean off the OR coast is already closed much of the year. And unfortunately there are those for whom it makes no difference, they want access closed regardless of what regulations are already in place and regardless of the consequences to the coastal economy or to fishermen. I often wonder how many of the people that want Marine Reserves have been on the ocean in the past year - if ever.

An interesting note, many foks compare MRs to wilderness areas. Wilderness areas allow hunting, MRs will not allow fishing. Other folks compare MRs to the beach bill promoted by Tom McCall, but the beach bill is designed to guarantee access, not close access as MRs will.

The best area to fish for rockfish and lingcod out of Newport is on Stonewall Banks, aka the Rockpile. It is closed all year to all fishing except trolling for salmon. From April 1 through September 30, sportfishing is closed along the entire OR coast outside of the 40 fathom line except fishing for salmon, halibut (only open on a few selected days), and pelagic fish (which in Oregon means albacore tuna). There are very few days before April 1 or after September 30 when sportsfishing boats can be on the Pacific because of the weather.

The meetings refered to at the top are Outreach meetings to provide input to OPAC, Ocean Policy Advisory Council. OPAC was established by the legislature to examine issues such as Marine Reserves. The governor has been changing his position on MRs every few months, asking OPAC to examine different proposals. Some of his proposals were not well researched as evidenced by the changes in his proposals. His latest proposal is for research reserves. Research reserves may be useful, but the funding for research will be necessary for any research to be done. Funding is a serious issue and the state doesn't seem to have money to fund research.

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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