Fraser River sockeye salmon: data synthesis and cumulative impacts

Christensen: We keep hearing about over-escapement and that stocks are doing well when thereis lower escapement. What are the economic consequences of over-escapement is areasonable question to askBlewett: We would need to do that analysis: in years when there is very high escapement andforegone harvests, is that as serious as not meeting escapement targets.Hinch: How do you get NSERC information specific to Fraser sockeye?Blewett: We asked NSERC but have not received an answer.Hinch: Other groups are picking up the ball that DFO is dropping, with significant costs foruniversity research. How do you bring that into the picture?Routledge: Maybe instead of looking at costs or just tracking published DFO papers, you canalso compare that to how many other papers are published.Peterman: What is the purpose of this part of the assessment? Collectively we aren’t spendingenough on Fraser sockeye – is that the purpose?Blewett: In part. It’s to describe the state of science and research – is there enough of it.Peterman: You also need to ask the managers. It’s one thing to do a lot of research and another tosee if it’s informing management. The number of studies won’t measure the latter. We needthat input as well or it’s missing the point.Blewett: The evaluation is focused on management, not science. The third project gets atresearch capacity.Peterman: That’s a different question than what is needed to make management decisions. Thebenefits of that research can’t be measured by dollars spent.Blewett: That’s a massive piece of work.Staley: The bulk of expenditures are on management (e.g. spawning ground enumerations). Mostare directly management-related.English: Our report may help a bit. We will document what information there is to supportescapement monitoring, in-season abundance estimates and catch monitoring. You will seeclearly that the amount of documentation supporting each of these components is strikinglylittle. Most recent effort has been focused on defining the CUs and now the benchmarks. Theother piece done regularly is the pre-season forecast. Outside of that there are not manydocuments that describe other efforts. The PSC is now drafting a document that describes thein-season assessment systems. The fact that was not documented before is a concern.Marmorek: Given the difference in performance for Bristol Bay, it would be interesting to lookat how much they spend on science as a reference point.Wieckowski: Beyond how much is spent in the US, there is a structural difference regarding USmanagers and their powers, so just looking at spending doesn’t do it justice.Blewett: We are looking at the East Coast and what is comparable.Cox: The Columbia River would be comparableMcKinnell: The difference between Canadian and US research expenditure is in orders ofmagnitude.40