Port Gamble FY 2020 Harvest Management and Hatchery Planning

This project supported the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s (PGST) harvest management program. The natural resource director and finfish manager collaborated with other co-managers of fisheries in Hood Canal to provide sustainable harvest opportunities for PGST tribal members while protecting listed populations of Puget Sound Chinook, Hood Canal summer chum, and Puget Sound steelhead. The director oversaw harvest management to ensure consistency with the conservation objectives in plans guiding harvest of Chinook, coho, and chum salmon. The finfish manager participated in pre-season fisheries planning forums (i.e. North of Falcon, and Pacific Fisheries Management Council meetings) to exercise the Tribe’s co-management mandate. The finfish manager also participated in pre-season and in-season management of Fraser River sockeye and pink salmon fisheries. The harvest management project scope also included the development of annual fisheries agreements, updating recovery plans, and issuing both annual and in-season regulations. This included annual fishery planning with WDFW, NOAA, NWIFC, and Hood Canal Coordinating Council (HCCC) and associated technical and policy committees and groups. This project contributed to the ongoing development of a climate change vulnerability assessment which includes impacts to harvest, hatchery, and habitat management. The results of this assessment developed recommendations that were incorporated into the harvest, hatchery, and habitat programs.





*Puget Sound Steelhead project finished in 2023

The goal in Harvest management is to protect, restore and enhance the productivity, production, and diversity of Port Gamble targeted fishery species with special attention to summer Chum, Chinook salmon and winter Steelhead and their ecosystems. We hope to provide surplus production sufficient to allow future directed and incidental harvests of summer chum salmon. Harvest management is vital for all tribes and states to participate in. The process currently in place puts checks and balances on tribal and state commercial fisheries to ensure that fishing rights are preserved while meeting escapement and recovery goals. The tribal harvest management program is critical to protect, sustain, and recover salmon and steelhead fisheries. Without this program in place, harvest rates would be exploited to a rate where recovery may be unattainable.