2011 Summer Mark-Selective Recreational Chinook Fisheries In Marine Areas 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 13 (Revised Draft Post-season Report; November 13, 2011)

In recent years, abundant runs of hatchery Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) have been mixed with depressed runs of wild Chinook salmon in the marine environments of the Puget Sound and Strait of Juan de Fuca. Providing recreational anglers with opportunities to harvest abundant hatchery stocks while simultaneously protecting weaker, wild stocks has proven to be a significant conservation and management challenge. The combination of large-scale hatchery marking (i.e., fin clipping) programs and mark-selective harvest regulations makes it possible for anglers to pursue and harvest hatchery Chinook salmon while minimally impacting wild salmon populations. In such "mark-selective fisheries" (MSFs), anglers are generally allowed to retain adipose-fin clipped ("marked") hatchery fish and are required to release unharmed any unclipped ("unmarked", predominantly wild) salmon encountered¹.

Since the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) implemented the first marine mark-selective Chinook fishery in Marine Catch Areas 5 and 6 (Strait of Juan de Fuca) in 2003 based on state-tribal agreements (Thiesfeld and Hagen-Breaux 2005a ,WDFW 2008a), mark-selective Chinook salmon fishing regulations have been implemented on a pilot basis in multiple Puget Sound Marine Catch Areas during both the summer and winter seasons. As of the close of the summer 2011 fishing season, pilot summer selective Chinook seasons have occurred in Areas 5 and 6 for nine years (2003-2011; Thiesfeld and Hagen-Breaux 2005a, Thiesfeld and Hagen-Breaux 2005b, WDFW 2008a, WDFW 2009a, WDFW 2010g, WDFW 2011a) and in Areas 9, 10, 11, and 13 for five years (2007-2011; WDFW 2007a and 2007b, WDFW 2009b and 2009c, WDFW 2010e and 2010f, WDFW 2011a). Additionally, pilot winter selective Chinook fisheries have occurred in Areas 8-1 and 8-2 for six complete seasons (2005-06, 2006-07, 2007-08, 2009, 2009-10, and 2010-11; WDFW 2008b, WDFW 2009d, WDFW 2010b, WDFW 2011b), Areas 9 and 10 for four winter seasons (2008, 2008-09, 2009-10, and 2010-11; WDFW 2010c, WDFW 2010d, WDFW 2011b), Area 7 for four winter seasons (2008, 2009, 2009-10, 2010-11; WDFW 2009e, WDFW 2010a, WDFW 2011b), and in Areas 11 and 12 for two winter seasons (February 1 - April 30, 2010 and February 1 - April 30, 2011; WDFW 2011b).

WDFW implemented six pilot mark-selective Chinook fisheries during the 2011 summer season (i.e., May through September 2011 period) in Puget Sound, in Areas 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 13. The 2011 summer Chinook MSF seasons in each of the areas were as follows:

• Areas 5 and 6 from July 1 through August 15, 2011;
• Areas 9 and 10 from July 16 through August 31, 2011;
• Area 11 from June 1 through September 30, 2011; and
• Area 13 from May 1 through September 30, 2011.

Consistent with the 2004 (and 2010 update) Puget Sound Chinook Harvest Management Plan (Puget Sound Indian Tribes and WDFW 2004 and 2010), a key goal of implementing each of these mark-selective Chinook fisheries has been to provide meaningful opportunity to the recreational angling public while minimally impacting ESA-listed Puget Sound Chinook salmon.

Comprehensive Sampling and Monitoring Program

Given the pilot nature of the mark-selective Chinook fisheries in Areas 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 13, WDFW’s Puget Sound Sampling Unit (PSSU) was tasked with implementing a comprehensive sampling and monitoring program to collect the data needed to evaluate each pilot mark-selective Chinook fishery and its impact on unmarked salmon. As per state-tribal agreement (e.g., WDFW and NWIFC 2011), we developed area-specific sampling plans consisting of several comprehensive and complementary sampling components, including dockside creel sampling, test fishing, on-the-water effort surveys, and angler-completed voluntary trip reports (VTRs). We tailored area-specific sampling plans so that we could reliably estimate the following critical parameters needed for evaluating mark-selective fisheries: i) the mark rate of the targeted Chinook population, ii) the total number of Chinook salmon harvested (by size [legal or sublegal] and mark-status [marked or unmarked] group), iii) the total number of Chinook salmon released (by size and mark-status group), iv) the coded-wire tag- (CWT) and/or DNA-based stock composition of marked and unmarked Chinook mortalities², and v) the total mortality of marked and unmarked double index tag (DIT) CWT stocks. In addition, we acquired and analyzed relevant data characterizing other aspects of the pilot fisheries, including descriptors of fishing effort, fishing success (catch [landed Chinook] per unit effort), the length and age composition of encountered Chinook, and the overall intensity of our sampling efforts.

Reporting Efficiencies

In July 2010, technical staffs from the WDFW Puget Sound Sampling Unit, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC), and Puget Sound Treaty Tribes met to discuss potential reporting efficiencies in WDFW’s mark-selective Chinook fishery post-season reports. NWIFC and tribal representatives had initiated the idea for such a meeting, considering that we at WDFW had been submitting a separate post-season report for each area and season (since 2003) to the co-managers, resulting in redundancies between individual reports, particularly in the Methods section. Also, over the years we kept adding sections to the selective fishery annual reports, in response to individual tribal co-manager requests, and sustained those additions in each future report, resulting in ever-lengthening post-season reports. From both the WDFW and tribal technical perspectives, we needed to prioritize the most essential reporting elements and achieve efficiencies to streamline the selective fishery reporting work load.

Thus, at the July 2010 meeting the WDFW and tribal staffs worked on prioritizing the most essential elements (i.e., tables, figures, and appendices) needed in WDFW’s annual post-season selective fishery reports in an effort to define reporting efficiencies. Based on these decisions (details available in a WDFW memo dated August 16, 2010 summarizing the July 2010 meeting), we began implementing reporting efficiencies starting with the 2009-10 winter mark-selective Chinook fisheries post-season report and continuing thereafter.

At the July 2010 meeting we also agreed that a key efficiency in the annual reporting process would be for WDFW staff to produce a centralized Methods Report. The Methods Report would be a stand-alone document that includes the details of each area’s Chinook MSF study design (for both winter and summer fisheries), sampling procedures, data analysis methods, and all equations used to generate estimates and variances. Thus, we refer the reader to our Methods Report (WDFW 2012) for detailed descriptions of the diverse study designs and protocols used to monitor and evaluate the selective Chinook fisheries in Areas 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 13 during summer 2011.

In the following pages, we report the results generated through our monitoring activities during the summer 2011 Areas 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 13 mark-selective Chinook fisheries. We report results based on our new, more efficient reporting format agreed-to recently between state and tribal technical representatives, in which we focus on presenting data tables and figures rather than interpretive text (unless text is needed to specify noteworthy in-season adjustments or other circumstances unique to the particular season). We present 2011 summer Chinook MSF results in separate chapters (1 through 5) by area, and within each chapter the data are presented in a series of tables and figures generally according to the following sequence: i) estimates of fishery characteristics obtained from the dockside creel survey data, including catch and effort estimates, Chinook length-frequency data, and CWT recovery results; ii) results from our recreational test fishery (where applicable); iii) results from our VTR collection efforts; iv) total mortality estimates of marked and unmarked DIT CWT stocks by hatchery and brood year; v) total fishery Chinook encounters and impactsâ€"estimated based on creel survey and test fishery or VTR dataâ€"which we compare with pre-season expectations (i.e., based on Fishery Regulation Assessment Model [FRAM] predictions); vi) sample rate information based on dockside sampling of harvested Chinook; and vii) historical Chinook encounters estimates for each area’s summer mark-selective Chinook fishery.

Notes

¹ The regulations specific to winter mark-selective fisheries in Puget Sound Marine Catch Areas allowed for the retention of up to two legal-sized (>22 inches [56 cm]) marked Chinook salmon per day and required the immediate release of all unmarked or sublegal Chinook. Additionally, anglers were: i) required to use single-point, barbless hooks while fishing for salmon, ii) held to a combined (all salmon species) two-fish daily limit, and iii) held to a handling rule that prevented them from bringing unmarked and/or sublegal Chinook aboard their vessels.

² Though the necessary tissue samples have been collected, DNA-based estimates of stock composition are presently unavailable for Puget Sound/Strait of Juan de Fuca mark-selective fisheries. In the present report, methods for producing CWT-based (unexpanded) estimates of the stock composition of marked Chinook harvest are provided.