FY 2019 Skokomish Salmon Harvest Management

This project provided support for the harvest manager to ensure harvest rates are in line with recovery strategies. Primary tasks included pre-season harvest planning and in-season catch monitoring and management for Chinook, coho, summer and fall chum, and steelhead fisheries. Pre-season activities included stock assessment, abundance forecasts, cohort analyses and modeling of regulations in development of an annual management plan for each species. Most of these activities occur in collaboration with other tribal and WDFW technical staff; however, coho and Chinook cohort analysis and run reconstruction is performed by the Skokomish Tribe and is used to develop forecasts and subsequent management actions. This position also was charged with developing the annual performance review for Chinook harvest management for the Puget Sound Salmon Management Plan, Hood Canal Salmon Management Plan and the Management Framework Plan and Salmon Runs’ Status for the Hood Canal Region.

This project addresses factors limiting the productivity of ESA-listed Pacific salmonids as specified in the Skokomish River Recovery Plan (2010). The Puget Sound Chinook Harvest Management Plan (2010) defines actions with an immediate focus on early-timed Chinook while considering options for the recovery of late-timed Chinook. To that end, the Skokomish River Recovery Plan defines a total exploitation rate ceiling (of 50 percent) on its natural component, with further constraints on fisheries if natural escapement is forecasted to be below 800. Future options for recovery of a late-timed population depend upon the success of efforts to recover early-timed Chinook. The pre-season planning step develops the fishing regime in Washington waters for the forthcoming season, referring to the forecasted abundance of all coastal Chinook stocks originating in California, Oregon, Washington, and B.C., and expected catch in Alaska and British Columbia. All fisheries-related mortality is accounted, including low levels of incidental Chinook mortality that occur in fisheries directed at sockeye, pink, coho, chum and hatchery Chinook salmon. Post-season harvest management performance assessment is prescribed by the PSCHMP (see Chapter 7 of that plan for details), and involves annual comparison of expected and observed catch and escapement for all stocks, and periodic, retrospective assessment of stock status trends and the effectiveness of management measures implemented by the co-managers. Related information about harvest and abundance of Skokomish early-timed Chinook will be incorporated in these reports as it becomes available. Until the habitat is recovered, hatcheries, specifically the proper management of salmonids produced by them, can provide harvest benefits while the rehabilitation of the ecosystem occurs. In this regard hatcheries are especially important in meeting tribal treaty obligations.



This position provides technical capability essential to executing the Tribe’s mandated role in co-management of salmon and steelhead fisheries. Technical analyses inform the policy decisions taken by Tribal Council and other policy-level representatives. Scientific expertise comprises the basis for sound and conservative harvest management. Management of three listed salmonids – Chinook, steelhead, and summer chum – has taken on additional complexity, to ensure that tribal members have continued opportunity to exercise their treaty-reserved fishery rights on hatchery Chinook, coho and fall chum.