News release due out on Friday, says Steve King

[Jennie@ifish]

I was speaking with Steve King on the phone today. He was informing me about the new 'tooth entanglement' fishery coming up April 23rd to May 18th.
He also told me there would be a news release out on Friday to re evaluate the catch to date and run size estimates. He said that it would take a sizable run upgrade to open up the lower Columbia again. He did state, however, that the run size MAY be larger than predicted. Let's cross our fingers and toes.
Now, for the controversial commercial netting season.
1st off, some facts.
We all are affected by the Federal cap term of impact on the .2 upriver wild fish.
Sportsfishermen have been allowed .09
Commercials will get .08
The remaining .03 is used for miscelaneous fish impacts.
Each boat on the experiemental tooth entanglement fishery will have a biologist on board. They will release all wild fish.
They are allowed to sell their own ad clipped fish.
Bonneville Power Administration funded the program, they provided the nets for this experimental fishery.
Twenty gillnet boats were chosen, by lottery to participate.
Each boat will fish one tide per week for four weeks for a total of 80 boat days, April 23 to May 18.
The biologists will test the gear with the netters experience.
That is all I know, and if you have further questions, please call Steve, or wait for the news release on Friday.
Thanks,
Jen

[Rippenlips]

images/icons/mad.gif Gillnet boaters releasing fish! I think they will be floaters! images/icons/mad.gif

[Nanook]

I don't even think the retired guys and girls out there got "80 boats days" of sport fishing in, while it was open, do you? Man, even with one rod we could wack em' HUH? images/icons/grin.gif

http://w1.511.telia.com/~u51102888/anims/3d1/arrw_anm.gif http://w1.511.telia.com/~u51102888/anims/misc1/cont_anm.gif

[ 04-16-2001: Message edited by: ****** ]

[WheresMyBobber]

So much for the % of keepers on the Willamette going up after the sportfishing closure. images/icons/rolleyes.gif

[Pete]

I do not like gill net or tangle nets. That said, if tangle nets are safer for wild fish maybe they should be pursued. The only way to know if they are safer is to evaluate them through controlled studies. If we are going to sacrifice some fish to a study I think it's better to do it during a time of relative excess. Some preliminary evaluation studies have been conducted. While the report is somewhat interesting, I found it pretty weak for reasons I communicated to the director of WDFW. My letter and the WDFW reply follow. At the bottom of the page is a link to the report.

My letter:
Sir,
I am an Oregon resident and a sport fisher. I reviewed the recently released report, "Evaluate Tangle Nets for Selective Fishing: Semi-Annual Progress Report, February 1, 2001" by: Geraldine Vander Haegen, Larry LeClair, Erik White. I am troubled by the report.
It is an interesting preliminary report. However, it suffers a lack of
statistical analysis. When a sample population is examined it is important
to do basic sample statistics before one can generalize to a population as a whole. Without disclosing or discussing the assumptions of the study or
conducting basic statistical analysis on the test sample it is wrong to draw any conclusions. However, the report does draw conclusions.
The study netted fish by gill or tangle nets and compared condition at capture and "final" condition. The individual cohorts within each test group range from 0 to 137. There is no confidence interval analysis to allow a reader to understand the likelihood that the sample truly reflects
the larger population. Typically it requires cohort samples of 400 or more cases to achieve a +/- interval of 5%. In this study the netting was done at a variety of locations on a series of days, introducing uncontrolled uncertainty. Without conducting a regression analysis to control for the
assumptions of the study (i.e. that all things are equal) the small sample size does not support any credible conclusion. One just can't tell whether gill nets are less or more effective or harmful than tangle nets.
I believe the data collection was done carefully and represents an important attempt to find methods to mitigate harm to ESA designated fish stocks while preserving economic and values. However, until more data is collected and properly analyzed, no one's interests are served by publishing data which is easily misinterpreted. I encourage you to further pursue this important research and publish final results which will help commercial and sport fishers protect our valuable, endangered fisheries.

WDFW response:
Dear Mr. Morris:
Thank you for your e-mail correspondence to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) regarding comments on the report "Evaluate Tangle Nets for Selective Fishing."
This was a progress report, and the data analysis is still being finished. As you pointed out, this is very important to the completion of the study. Our intention was not to draw final conclusions, but rather to provide information about what we had done, and our initial observations. We will revise our web site to make sure this is clear, and will continue our research in this area. We greatly appreciate your careful consideration of this project, and agree with you that this type of research is valuable.
If you have further questions, please email again or call (360) 902-2700. Our Customer Service hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Sincerely,
Fish Program

Washington State evaluation of the tangle net fishery: http://www.wa.gov/wdfw/fish/commercial/selective/tangleprogress1.htm

[boater]

i hate nets images/icons/mad.gif

[bajaspecial]

http://www.kgw.com/kgwnews/top_story.html?StoryID=17952

[Hoosier Daddy]

Nice post Pete. I checked out the link and read through the report. First thing that annoys me is that all their study site results are reported in different formats, which is just irritating to the reader. Overall, I think the authors did a pretty good job of reporting inconclusive results, and I don't really get the feeling that the were reaching to far. However, on most of your points I totally agree. One that you didn't mention that I can see as a problem is the lack of catch-per-effort data reported, probably because of the difficulty they had in measuring time the nets were in. However, this is going to be the first point commercial fishers bring up when asked to switch. Also, a low catch-per-effort means the fishers are going to leave the nets in longer to catch the same number of fish. And at some point, this will become a problem, possibly even overshadowing any benefits gained by the different gear. Another thing that is worrisome about the report is the preponderance of males in the catch, which I think they kind of glossed over. Yes, it makes sense that male chinook would be easier to entangle due to the kype, but they made no mention of possible ways to reduce this bias. Point is, even though us harvesters have been trained to pick on the males whenever possible (ie bucks and bulls, release the hens, whack the bucks, etc.), we do need both male and female, in about equal proportions, to keep things right. I suppose that even if all the gillnetters go to toothnets that select male fish, they don't take that high a proportion of the population that it might be noticeable, but why risk it. Anyways, my 10 cents worth.