Saving Seafood

OREGON: Kitz for the kill: Ousted gov. back to fight gillnets

October 26, 2018 — Oregon’s former Gov. John Kitzhaber apparently loves to hate Columbia River commercial fishing.

In 2012, the Coastal Conservation Association successfully wooed Kitzhaber, convincing him propose that the state ban salmon gillnetters from the main stem of the Columbia River with the hopes that despite years of testing to the contrary, they would miraculously find seine nets to be more selective than gillnets in taking wild salmon (as opposed to hatchery salmon).

Before he resigned from office in 2015 (an investigation led to citations from the Oregon Ethics Commission for using his office for personal gain and failure to disclose potential conflicts of interest), Kitzhaber championed a ban and struck a deal in 2013 with the joint commission that has managed the river with Washington’s fisheries counterparts for 100 years.

In 2017, the Oregon Fish & Wildlife Commission threatened to withdraw from the joint agreement but ultimately compromised to bring the states back into co-management.

Five years after the 2013 agreement, the joint commission is conducting a comprehensive review, and Oregon officials are threatening again to make a (gasp!) data-based decision to allow the use of gillnets on the main stem of the Columbia River.

Enter Kitzhaber: drumming up support for his ill-advised and poorly implemented plan of old with PSAs on gillnetskill.com.

The flip side of the Kitzhaber deal — as is often the case with CCA plans — was to transition the commercial quota to the recreational fleet. The result was a high mortality rate among the fish they had hoped to conserve by reallocating those “protected” fish to the sport sector. Imagine that!

Data gathered over several years indicate that gillnets do not have the effect on fish that advocates of the Kitzhaber plan estimated, or that other types of gear were more selective.

Yet here we are again, dodging the mudslingers in another fish fight. Science is on our side, but the lobbying dollars may not be.

This story originally appeared on National Fisherman, it is republished herewith permission.

OREGON: State compensation for gillnetters trickles down

October 11, 2018 — Money local commercial salmon fishermen will soon receive as compensation after reform policies pushed them off the Columbia River is “not nothing.” But it’s not quite something, either.

“It means a little bit of a paycheck,” said David Quashnick, a gillnetter who has been fishing since he was a teenager and now has two sons who run their own boats. “It’s not enough. I would rather be fishing and not having to worry about free money.”

Clatsop County informed 129 commercial gillnetters in September that they were eligible for a cut of the $500,000 set aside in the state’s Columbia River Transition Fund to compensate them for direct economic losses and reimburse them for gear.

This month, county officials said 124 fishermen had responded and applied for around $460,000 worth of the pot as of last week.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will give final approval for how the county intends to distribute the funds, but Theresa Dursse, executive assistant and clerk for the Clatsop County Board of Commissioners, said the county hopes to start cutting checks to fishermen soon. Fishermen who applied for compensation for economic losses will receive checks ranging from a mere $56 to the maximum $8,750. Fishermen who applied for reimbursement for gear will receive up to $2,750.

Gillnets, which hang vertically in the water and catch fish by the gills, were phased off the Columbia River main stem after former Gov. John Kitzhaber introduced a harvest reform plan in 2012. The plan, commonly referred to as the Kitzhaber Plan or Columbia River Reform, was pitched as a way to protect wild salmon and steelhead runs by replacing gillnet gear with more selective types of equipment.

The remaining gillnet fishermen were shifted to off-river, or “select areas,” like Youngs Bay.

Read the full story at The Daily Astorian