Fraser River sockeye salmon: data synthesis and cumulative impacts

considered a good surrogate of temperature issues. Nursery lake area strongly correlated withtotal juvenile production.The idea was to see if it was possible to link those CUs that were doing well with a habitat index.However, the results showed no consistent pattern in how the CUs were doing from aconservation perspective and how they were doing from a habitat perspective.DiscussionPeterman: Were the terms of reference for this project to assess the status of Fraser stocks?Wieckowski: Initially, but it was not possible to do that in the permitted time frame, so wereviewed others’ assessments. The Grant paper was just out, so we looked at whether weagreed with their assessment. From a preliminary walk-through, Grant agrees fairly well withPestal.Routledge: Nothing stands out in terms of mistakes in conservation status?Wieckowski: One of the things in benchmark setting is to decide whether it is conservation- ormanagement-oriented, and then to consider how to weight the criteria accordingly. If you’redoing precautionary management, the trend in abundance would be weighted more heavilythan simple abundance because you don’t have full time series (i.e. the data peak may not bethe real historical peak). DFO is still deliberating over benchmarks and metrics, so it’s hardto say. The method is very scientifically robust, but they haven’t rolled it out completely, soit’s hard to say right now where they’re at.Hinch: The habitat indicators suggest the stocks with shorter migration routes should be doingwell, but that’s not happening – and many are in fact doing worse. It’s not so much distancebut migration timing that seems to be important.Wieckowski: Yes, we can look at that, though I’m not sure how available those data are.McKinnell: Why is Chilko experiencing such high lake productivity?Peterman: It’s been suggested that this is linked to changes in the lake due to lower outflows ofglacial till into the lake, thereby clearing it up and allowing more light in for primaryproductivity.Staley: I have trouble seeing the relevance of these indicators, since you can’t move a lake, forexample. The Grant paper…? set up abundance trends, fishing mortality and distribution.?…ruling out where the stocks have no data. The distribution one…? still alive, especially forthe bigger CUs.Wieckowski: I agree on the distribution question. The concern with Grant/Holt is what happenswhere there is no data. Pestal can come up with a better uncertainty score with less data, ifdistribution is important for assessing statusMartin: You could also look at fishing mortality as a surrogate productivity indicator over time.Fisheries & Fisheries Management (Fraser & Bristol Bay)Karl English, LGLTo assess whether or not the Fraser sockeye management framework was solid, a number offactors were examined, including catch monitoring, pre-season forecasting, in-season abundance35