TCCHINOOK (92)-3. October 23, 1992.

Joint Chinook Technical Committee. Long-Term Research Plans for Coastwide Pacific Chinook Stocks. TCCHINOOK (92)-3. October 23, 1992.

The purpose of this report is to: 1) summarize current monitoring and research activities dealing with coastwide chinook stocks of interest to the Pacific Salmon Commission (PSC); 2) identify missing or incomplete information needed for assessment of chinook stocks; and 3) recommend data collection and research programs that the Chinook Technical Committee (CTC) believes are most important in improving our ability to assess chinook stocks and harvest management. In some cases, entirely new programs will be required, while in others, further analysis of existing information may be sufficient. This report will provide the Commission with direction for data gathering and research on chinook stocks. The report should also provide information to assist the various government agencies in allocating research funds. The report is written at the request of the Standing Committee on Research and Statistics and will be used with similar reports from other technical committees to review the status of salmon knowledge and to recommend areas where new or additional information is needed.

Long-term goals established by the U.S./Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty (PST) include achieving optimum salmon production and providing each Party (Canada and the U.S.)benefits equivalent to the salmon production originating in its own waters while at the same time providing for security and long-term stability of the Parties' fisheries. In fulfilling these obligations, the Parties are requested to cooperate in management, research, and enhancement. In the first several years under the PST, the parties have cooperated in management efforts through exchange of management plans and through negotiating harvest sharing regimes. In order to manage stocks more effectively and to allow maximum harvest of surplus stocks while ensuring adequate spawning escapements, more knowledge is needed about the abundance, productivity, and distribution of individual stocks and their relationships with each other. This will require the Parties to expend more time, effort, and money on research into both natural and enhanced productivity. Without additional research, the Parties will be limited in how they can allocate and manage the resource.

One goal of the PST is to "attain by 1998 escapement goals established in order to restore production of naturally spawning chinook stocks." Chinook stocks and spawning escapements from the Oregon coast to Southeast Alaska declined from the 1950's through the years immediately prior to the PST and concern was expressed in the PST that chinook stocks were "substantially below goals set to achieve maximum sustainable yields". A rebuilding program on harvest restrictions was initiated in 1984. During the first six years after the start of this rebuilding program, 40% of the naturally spawning indicator stocks that were originally depressed have either reached goal or are increasing at a rate to allow reaching goal by 1998, 18% showed initial increases but later decreases in escapements, and 42% have either shown no response to the rebuilding program or such varied escapements that no assessment can be made. In order to understand what is happening to the 60% of the indicator stocks not responding to the rebuilding program, more information is needed on their stock-specific productivity and their distribution and exploitation in the different fisheries. Additionally, the interim escapement goals developed for most stocks at the beginning of the rebuilding program need to be evaluated and improved. For both short-term goals of achieving target escapements and long-term goals of maximum sustainable production and harvest, careful planning of programs designed to address them must be undertaken.

The PST recognizes the importance of collecting and sharing data on salmon stocks. With regard to all salmon stocks, the PST states (Article IV, paragraph 3) that "each year the State of origin shall submit preliminary information for the ensuing year to the other Party and to the Commission, including:

To provide this information, it is necessary to have forecasting abilities, knowledge of migration patterns and productivity of individual stocks, accurate measures of spawning escapement, and appropriate escapement goals. Currently, forecasts of chinook salmon returns are imprecise and such categories as above average, average, and below average are often used in predicting returns for the following year. Catch distributions are known for many hatchery stocks since many of these stocks are tagged; but, only limited knowledge exists about the distribution of wild stocks. Catch distributions for most wild stocks are inferred from associated hatchery stocks. Escapement goals have been established for most, but not all, of the regularly monitored stocks; however, in many cases the goals have been set based on past observations of escapement levels rather than on spawner-recruit analyses that would provide a maximum or sustainable harvest escapement goal. In Chapter 2, the data that are routinely collected by the various management agencies and research pertinent to PST management or stock assessment are summarized for chinook stocks.

1) evaluating management actions for their potential effectiveness in attaining objectives of rebuilding and maintaining stocks,

3) developing procedures to evaluate the progress being made in rebuilding these stocks,

5) recommending research required to implement the rebuilding program effectively, and

6) exchanging information necessary to analyze the effectiveness of management measures in satisfying conservation objectives.

2) exploitation rate analyses based on coded-wire-tag recoveries of indicator hatchery stocks in the various fisheries, and

3) a simulation model, referred to as the chinook model, designed to evaluate the effect of alternative management actions on rebuilding of chinook stocks.

Results from the analyses and the model are given in an annual report from the CTC each fall and in briefing papers as requested by the Commission during the annual negotiating meetings. The Commission also requires that the Parties provide interception estimates of all salmon species. As there is currently no stock identification program available for chinook salmon that could identify all stocks in a mixed stock fishery, these estimates are derived from the chinook model. Data that are needed to run these analyses and the chinook model are described in Chapter 3. In addition, data quality and the assumptions used are reviewed and areas where improvements could best be made are identified.

In Chapter 4, a summary is provided of the information and research needs based on PST requirements and on current analyses conducted by the CTC. Improvements to existing programs and new programs are identified that would improve current analyses and address important aspects of chinook production that are not now being addressed.

While each CTC annual report has made reference to poor quality data and has given recommendations for improvement, little attention has been paid to these comments by the PSC community. It is hoped that this report and the follow-up review to be conducted by the Standing Committee on Research and Statistics will receive more attention. The lack of reliable data in some areas and the complete lack of data in other areas, forcing the CTC to make simplifying assumptions for current analyses and modeling efforts, restricts the quality of CTC stock and fishery assessment.

To seriously address Treaty objectives and to provide annual assessments of chinook salmon, greater effort will be needed in the identification of necessary data and its collection, and greater commitment will be needed to long-term research projects. The biological data involved is complex and is collected against a background of natural variability and man-induced changes in the environment. Unfortunately, a legacy of past inadequacies results in a long list of information requirements for now and the future.

The CTC has attempted to develop a comprehensive list of information improvements and needs for existing and new programs. The list developed is presented in Table 10. Each member of the CTC was requested to rank these projects. Rankings were highly variable between respondents, but an overall ranking by project was determined based on the average of individual rankings. Then the CTC, at is October 1992 joint meeting, reviewed the top ranked projects, combined projects that were similar in nature, identified missing project areas, and constructed a list of 14 top priority projects (Table 11). Given that these projects agreed upon by the CTC would encompass a significant monitoring and research commitment, the CTC chose to limit their recommended list of information needs to these 14 projects but does not mean to imply that information from any of the remaining projects listed in Table 10 is not needed.

It is worth noting that ten of the top 14 projects identified by the CTC involve improvements to existing programs or data collection. In other words, before new programs are initiated, a stronger core program of accurate and comparable data is essential for coastwide management of chinook salmon. Many of these projects require dedicated time from CTC members, to examine existing programs and to recommend change, rather than large sums of additional moneys or continued analyses of the existing information. However, some new programs are clearly required, such as studies to improve our knowledge of chinook population dynamics and to directly examine equity issues. New programs will also strengthen existing information systems by examining basic assumptions of present analyses and by improving the coverage of catch/sampling data to all chinook fisheries and of exploitation rate indicator stocks to include other chinook production areas and stock types. From the large list of possible new projects, the CTC focused on: applying genetic stock identification (GSI) information to estimate the stock composition in fisheries; initiating a few well designed programs to examine the productivity of natural and enhanced populations; and establishing programs to study fishery dynamics. In the case of GSI, extensive resources have already been invested in collecting a coastwide baseline database and it should now provide a useful tool for examining PST chinook issues. To understand the biological productivity of chinook is inherently a long-term study, but achieving the objectives of the PST requires that the Parties recognize this and invest in developing this basic understanding. A major issue for funding agencies will be the need to maintain a long-term commitment to these new biological programs. Studies of fishery dynamics are essential for evaluations of alternative management strategies and expected impacts on chinook rebuilding. The types of studies envisioned include examining effort responses to changes in quotas or seasons, standardizing effort or estimating directed effort, evaluating size limits, relating harvest rates to days fishing, etc.

The CTC recognizes that new biological programs could involve large amounts of new funds but believes that a careful examination of opportunities for study site selection and an integration of project objectives and funding sources can significantly reduce the new funds required. The CTC stresses, however, that new programs can not simply replace the core information systems since our established assessment procedures and the new programs are premised on these programs continuing and being strengthened. Extensive amounts of information on chinook salmon have been collected, but we continue to have a great deal to learn, particularly against a background of climate change and man-induced changes in the environment. Management agencies should recognize and acknowledge the limitations of existing information and find ways to maximize what we learn from these new programs and future management actions.

1. Maintain a consistent set of Escapement Indicator streams which meet CTC quality standards.

2. Establish guidelines for identification of stock groupings for escapement indicator stocks.

3. Establish guidelines for the types and quality of escapement data to be collected.

5. Maintain a consistent set of Exploitation Rate Indicator stocks which meet CTC quality standards.

6. Establish guidelines for identification of stock groupings for exploitation rate indicator stocks.

7. Establish guidelines for the types and quality of exploitation rate data to be collected.

Institute catch estimation and sampling programs in fisheries lacking these programs:

17. investigate reliability of recovery programs (missed marks, mark incidence,...),

18. exchange catch/sample expansion factors for Alaskan sport fishery recoveries.

54. identification and quantification of habitat factors limiting chinook production,

55. quantification of habitat impacts/stresses hindering rebuilding of natural stocks,

65. effort standardization, response, and determination of directed effort in multiple species fisheries,

Table 11. The top priority information needs identified by the Chinook Technical Committee and required to meet the objectives of the Pacific Salmon Treaty including current annual assessments. The projects are not ordered in any way related to priority. Reference numbers refer to the project numbers in Table 10.

Ref. #	Project	Project Description
1-4	Escapement Data	Establish guidelines for types & quality of escapement data collected for PST escapement indicator stocks; develop & maintain a consistently monitored set of stocks to evaluate spawning escapement trends among years and stocks.
5-7,26	Exploitation Rate Data	Establish guidelines for types & quality of data collected for PST exploitation rate indicator stocks; develop & maintain a consistently monitored set of stocks to estimate exploitation rates by stock and brood year for evaluation of optimal production, equity, and fishery assessments.
8 & 10	Encounter Rates	Institute catch estimation, biological sampling, and tag recovery programs in fisheries lacking these programs, in particular; Native fisheries in Canada and sport fisheries (e.g., WCVI, freshwater fisheries, etc.)
11	Commercial CWT Sampling	Monitor chinook encounter rate in fisheries for the estimation of total fishing impacts (both incidental mortalities and reported catch); particularly in fisheries harvesting indicator stocks representing a depressed naturally spawning chinook population.
14	Other CWT Sampling	Maintain the essential CWT information base by establishing and maintaining minimum sampling standards for coded-wire tag recovery in commercial fisheries.
15	CWT Accuracy	Improve the CWT information basis by examining the feasibility of random sampling for CWT in sport fisheries to examine comparability of sport, native, and commercial recovery programs, and potential biases in voluntary recovery programs (implement if feasible).
9	CWT Distribution	Assess the accuracy of CWT data through the application of mass marking (otolith, elemental marks, etc.) of tagged stocks and recovery programs in terminal runs for examination of tag loss, differential mortalities of tagged and untagged fish, straying between stocks, etc.
27,28, 67	New CWT Stocks	Develop and apply analytical methods to compare spatial and temporal distributions of CWT groups for among year or stock comparisons and to predict abundance in fishery areas.
29-31, 38	Habitat	Establish additional exploitation indicator stocks to improve the geographic and stock type coverage of these indicators; the most important new indicators would be: the Harrison River falls, upper Fraser River springs & summers, North/Central B.C., springs & summers, and a transboundary river indicator.
55	Stock Composition	Investigate habitat factors influencing chinook production in escapement indicator stocks that are not rebuilding.
60	Stock Comparison	Monitor stock composition in fisheries using Genetic Stock Identification techniques to examine stock composition predicted by the Chinook Model, and therefore, to evaluate current interception estimates.
various	Sampling Errors	Examine sampling errors associated with catch and escapement estimation procedures to investigate the accuracy of CWT data, to evaluate how to improve these estimates, and for statistical evaluations of stocks stock-recruitment relations in productivity studies.
various	Population Dynamics	Establish a core group of rigorously designed experiments to study the population dynamics of chinook salmon; particularly addressing biological productivity of chinook life history types and evaluating escapement goals, effects of the environment on survival, long-term production of hatchery stocks, and the interaction of enhanced & wild chinook populations.
new	Fishery Dynamics	Identify information needs and design monitoring programs to examine the dynamics of salmon fisheries for consideration of alternative management strategies.