Study finds Chinook salmon are returning to rivers younger than before, resparking debate on fish management

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By Marissa Heffernan, The Daily News, Longview, Wash.
Published: April 18, 2021, 2:33pm
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An environmental group has released a new paper calling for non-tribal trolling fisheries to be shut down and other fisheries reduced to help Chinook salmon recover from nearly 50 years of decline.
The Coastal Conservation Association’s study pointed to an ongoing reduction in the average age of Chinook salmon found returning to rivers to spawn.
Local commercial fishermen countered the recovery problem is not with the harvest, but with salmon habitat loss, and solutions are not as simple as only catching hatchery salmon or shutting down fisheries.
Co-author of the paper Jack Tipping, Coastal Conservation Association member and retired Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fish biologist, said the average age of Chinook salmon returning to rivers to spawn has declined since the 1970s, which could mean less reproductively fit fish and certainly means smaller fish.

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