Evaluating Impacts of Mark-Selective Chinook Salmon Fisheries in Puget Sound, Washington

Large-scale hatchery salmon fin-clipping programs coupled with mark-selective (i.e., adipose fin clip-selective) harvest regulations provide Puget Sound/Strait of Juan de Fuca anglers opportunities to exploit abundant hatchery stocks while minimizing impacts on weakened wild salmon populations such as Puget Sound Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. Due to their wild salmon capture-and-release component, mark-selective fisheries (MSFs) also pose sampling and impact-estimation challenges that do not exist for equivalent non-selective fisheries. Understanding and meeting these challenges is critical given the growth in interest in MSF implementation elsewhere and the need for reliable fishery-impact assessments under state–tribal and international co-management arrangements. In our presentation, we review the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife-Puget Sound Sampling Unit’s Chinook salmon MSF monitoring framework, relate practical lessons learned through intensive MSF monitoring, and identify issues affecting the reliability of past and future MSF assessments. We developed a comprehensive monitoring program that has enabled us to collect the data needed to characterize the impacts of MSFs occurring in Puget Sound/Strait of Juan de Fuca waters. Our program includes both angler-interview and catch-sampling components (at access sites); instantaneous effort counts (aerial and boat based) and origin-of-trip surveys; WDFW-administered test fisheries; and a voluntary angler-reporting component. Encompassing a diversity of fishery (e.g., quota- vs. season-managed fisheries) and sampling circumstances (e.g., areas with many vs. few access sites), we have adapted and employed this general approach in nine separate marine areas since 2003. The success of our efforts to date—assessed in terms of reliability (i.e., accurate, precise, and timely reporting of fishery parameters) and transparency—can be attributed to the cooperation of anglers participating in MSFs, the coordination of Puget Sound Sampling Unit staff at all levels, and an agency-level commitment to the future use of MSFs as a management tool.