A wide-ranging number of topics were discussed during a digital open house hosted by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Kelly Susewind and Region 6 Director Larry Phillips.
At the outset, Phillips outlined the vast geographic reach of Region 6, an eight-county area that includes the entire Pacific Coast — including Clallam and Jefferson counties.
“It’s a large, diverse area that includes 29 fish hatcheries, two national parks, 1.5 million people and some of the largest commercial fisheries (salmon) and commercial shellfish. Region 6 is where people look to go recreate.”
Phillips also pointed out one big regional positive — the razor clam fishery.
“We have had 90,000 digger days so far,” Phillips said.
He brought up one of the biggest challenges in the region — working to secure public access to privately held timberlands.
“There are multiple costs associated with hosting the public on private land,” Phillips said. “We want to utilize the little dollars we have, be supportive where we can in terms of enforcement and cleaning trash sites.”
Hunting concerns
Susewind, who grew up in the Grays Harbor area, said the hunting public asks him about this issue — a lot.
“Probably the No. 1 complaint I get from the hunting community is lack of access,” Susewind said. “It was all open [when he was growing up], we got used to that and it’s private land and now we don’t have that same level of access. It’s incumbent on us to work with private landowners to get public access.”
Coho counts
Phillips discussed the miscalculations made in preseason forecasts of returning coho.
“The tools we have used to predict return have worked in the past,” Phillips said mentioning NOAA’s Nearshore Assessment of Juvenile Abundance — a troll fishery that took place in spring of 2018, identify fish that not only contribute to 2019 return but also fish that survived in-river conditions.
“That’s a big deal for coho, as they spend about year and a half in the river environment. Those fish were occupying the near shore habitat, NOAA did the assessment and it came back with the second-highest abundance we have seen, the biggest seen since 2013 which resulted in a million-plus fish back to the coast.
“So, scientists are back to the drawing board, NOAA and UW are looking at the warm water that settled in off the coast in August and September as some sort of migration barrier along with the high abundance of non-typical fish that appeared off the coast.
Phillips said the region as a whole “might meet overall escapement objectives.”
A question about the North of Falcon process being closed to the public was answered by Susewind.
“A portion are closed, probably the ones you most want to be in,” Susewind said. “It’s a negotiation with treaty tribes and we are negotiating with 24-plus sovereign nations. We can’t demand they allow access. There’s no public meeting law that applies.
“We have had observers in the past but some tribes felt they didn’t accurately describe what happened in the room.”
This was a pretty telling quote about the imbalance of power in the relationship between the two resource co-managers.
“We will get as much access as they allow,” Susewind said.
Susewind also tackled the agency’s budget woes, labeling funding “a perennial problem.”
For the current budget biennium, the department asked the state legislature for $30 million and received $24 million, much of that front-loaded this year.
“The Legislature provides a partial fix on a one-time basis for the biennium,” Susewind said. “The biennium ends, the money goes away and a hole appears but the hole is bigger each time. We are looking at over a $50 million shortfall for the next biennium.
Next year, the second of the biennium, is considered a supplemental year.
“The normal supplemental ask is $2 million to $3 million and our ask will be about $26 million,” Susewind said. He cited mandated costs increases — such as an “increase in utilities at hatcheries, those types of costs” as part of that ask.
One area the current budget was solidly funded was in increasing hatchery production of chinook.
“There’s a tribal component and state component, but producing 20 million more hatchery chinook, a big increase,” Phillips said. “We are pitching a hard feasibility study of our capacity and our permitting capacity. We can’t willy-nilly increase production, we have to have permits. We are looking at our production facilities and finding out which one produced fish that occupy the habitat or the habitat we expect killer whales to occupy.”
Phillips also answered a question about the mark-rate of released hatchery fish. Anglers in both the saltwater and freshwater have remarked on the number of wild fish that must be released before landing a hatchery keeper — for both kings and coho.
Phillips estimated state-raised Puget Sound hatchery chinook are clipped at a 90 percent rate.
Razor digs
Razor clam digs continue through Saturday night.
• Thursday: 7:44 pm, -1.2 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis
• Friday: 8:29 pm, -0.7 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Mocrocks
• Saturday: 9:10 pm, -0.2 feet; Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-417-3525 or mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
