The principal focus of this comparative-historical study is the fundamental differences in the perspectives of the Indian, commercial, and sportfishing user groups. A second focus is the differences in outlook of the professions involved in the management of the fisheries, and how their management paradigms have developed over time. Evidence is presented on the social history of the fisheries, including their regulatory history and the manager-user relationship. Using the rich material presented by the participants in the Pearse Commission as a primary source, the perspectives of user and manager are outlined. In particular, the views users expressed on the emotional policy issue of TURFs are defined. A comparison of these views clarifies the major interests within the fisheries. Observation of the interactions between the user groups and regulatory authorities, both during and after the Commission, reveals the ability of these interest groups to lobby very effectively within the Canadian democratic system. The major social conflicts within the fisheries that are representative of the importantly different perspectives are: culture conflict, sportfishing/commercial fishing conflict, political ideological conflict, and conflict between profession frames. The most serious conflict is between Indians and other resource users. Indians have sought legal recognition of existing aboriginal rights in fishing, involving increased allocations to Indian users; other users greatly fear displacement as the resources are reallocated. As independent "co-management" planning procedures are being carried on simultaneously between Indian bands and government, and between commercial and sport groups and government, the objectives of the two often conflict. The result is a management and allocation process that remains extremely volatile and subject to such intensive lobbying that rational planning is difficult. The fisheries management and planning process could benefit from the greater inclusion of the social sciences, a move which would help describe with greater accuracy the complex human components of the fisheries. Such an approach would also seek to develop the potential of mediation and negotiation as a means of integrating a number of rational, professional frameworks with user group perspectives, and would imply a continuance in the recent shift from centralist to intermediary planning. It is suggested that crucial management decisions relating to "endangered" stocks of salmon be delegated to councils of professional biologists, for in such cases it is important that lobbying processes not be allowed to compromise conservation principles. Also, economists should assume management roles that can better accommodate, in the processes of policy making, the heavy overlay of politically-important social policies inherent in the fisheries. To date, intense negotiation and bargaining processes, involving both user groups and the management professions, have been effectively conducted on both a public and private level. These processes have promoted ongoing social learning which has had a positive effect within the B.C. salmon fisheries (examples are the Pearse Commission, MAC, CFIC, PARK, and the Canada/U.S. Treaty). These types of processes appear to lend themselves to the establishment of lasting bio-anthropological contracts, and the subsequent realization of more rational salmon fisheries management. A planning process focused upon reducing social conflict, through the development of ongoing negotiation processes between the many participants in the fisheries, is considered the most likely to succeed. Not only will this better maintain the generally good record of biological sustainability of the B.C. salmon fisheries, but also it will gradually enable the full development of their considerable economic and social potential. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Data were collected from participating grow-out salmon farmers, processors, and the B.C. Salmon Farmers' Association, through interviews, and utilized to define a base farm. A microcomputer based spreadsheet model was constructed to capture the important biological and economic variables. The model details the operating costs and returns of a farm for five years, and assumes operating costs are consistent with the fifth year to provide cash flows for a total of 20 years. The financial analysis includes an examination of the net present values, the net farm income, and the internal rate of return. Results indicate that the base farm is a viable investment at a 6.9% discount rate. A sensitivity analysis is utilized to determine the critical variables in the operation of a grow-out salmon farm. The most sensitive variable turned out to be the growth rate of salmon. The base farm was found to be vulnerable to economic variables such as the product price, and the feed price. Other important biological variables are the feed conversion ratio and the mortality rate, both of which have a significant effect on the viability of the base farm. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

A procedure for applying the concepts of Bayesian decision theory to salmon management is presented and illustrated with an application to the Babine system sockeye salmon fishery in British Columbia. The particular decision considered is the recommended escapement to aim for in a given year. The Babine fishery is described and the decision theory concepts are outlined. The procedure involves defining the relationship between the recommended spawning escapement and the number of adults returning in the cycle year in probabilistic terms; defining the utility, that is the relative desirability of various sizes of catch; and computing the total expected utility of both the catch in the current year and the spawning returns associated with alternative values of the recommended escapement. The escapement with the maximum expected utility should be chosen and recommended. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate

The question to which this study is addressed is: can the Eraser River sockeye salmon fishery be managed in such a way as to maximize its present worth? A review of the existing biological and economics literature would suggest that such optimal management is indeed possible. Putting numbers into the theoretical equations and solving for an optimal solution has been based on a three part approach. First, a Ricker form of recruitment function was used to model the basic interseasonal relationship between spawning escapement and subsequent future recruitment. Second, nonlinear production functions were used to model the harvesting process in a highly cyclical fishery spread out over a fairly extensive fishing gauntlet. And third, it is assumed that the manager is faced with two inter-related problems which must be solved simultaneously: he must decide the optimal escapement which has future revenue consequences in terms of size of catch and future cost consequences in terms of size of the subsequent recruitment (the larger the recruitment, the lower the harvesting costs), and he must decide the least cost spatial combination of harvesting gear to take the specified catch. The major finding of this study is that it is possible to manage the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery in an optimal manner and to do so would increase its present worth substantially. The use of cycle dummy variables to allow for the marked four year cycles in both recruitment and harvesting patterns plays a major role in improving parameter estimation. Nonlinear programming techniques can be developed to allow the simultaneous determination of the optimal intertemporal spawning escapement and the least cost spatial allocation of effort to harvest the optimal catch. The original contribution of this dissertation lies in its use of deterministic models to empirically solve the problem of optimal management of a fishery. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

This dissertation argues that the significance and extent of American animal “acclimatization”—the nineteenth-century term for the purposeful introduction of non-native wild animals—has been drastically underestimated in previous historiography. Far from a negligible “fad” that only briefly interested a small number of hunters and wildlife enthusiasts, American acclimatization was in fact a large-scale and enduring exercise in bioengineering that introduced dozens of new species to the nation over the course of more than a century. At first led by private individuals and organizations, American acclimatizers introduced several new birds and fish into the country from the mid-nineteenth century, including modern-day mainstays like the English sparrow, ring-necked pheasant, and German carp. While private organizations devoted to animal acclimatization mostly dissipated by the late nineteenth century, the federal government’s biologist-bureaucrats made the acclimatization of new animals a central component of vast efforts to supply America’s hunters and fishers deep into the twentieth century, a persistence that has been heretofore overlooked. In composing the first dedicated study of American animal acclimatization, I visited a dozen different archives and have brought hundreds of previously unexamined sources to bear. These revealed the enduring popularity of animal acclimatization and its persistence as a wildlife rejuvenation tool. These sources also laid bare the ideological motivations for animal acclimatization. Far from salving a nostalgic yearning for the fauna of Europe, Euro-Americans often saw animal acclimatization projects as progressive techniques of environmental management instead. Animal acclimatization projects, moreover, were intertwined with the Euro-American colonization of the American West. Settler-colonial ideology, that fusion of Euro-American racial supremacy with grandiose notions of national identity and expansion, runs through the rhetoric of many acclimatizers. More concretely, the United States Fish Commission effected the violent dispossession and subordination of the Winnemem Wintu People on California’s McCloud River in order to set up the nation’s first chinook salmon hatchery. The USFC used the hatchery to artificially spawn tens of millions of salmon to replenish American waters as well as establish chinook salmon in American and international watersheds where the fish had never existed before. Finally, I argue that the story of American acclimatization—what I call the American “acclimatization exchange”—offers important nuance and modification to the two most famous paradigms in environmental history: the conservation movement and Alfred Crosby’s “Columbian Exchange.” Massive parallel efforts in animal acclimatization indicate that the conservation era featured far more interventionist environmental management than usually appreciated. The early adoption of “fish culture” in 1860s American also suggests that the conservation era’s periodization should be significantly backdated. Furthermore, the sheer popularity and endurance of foreign species acclimatization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, plus the fact that Americans often obtained and exchanged species from Asia, India, and the broader Pacific World, temporally and geographically expands on Crosby’s notion of an Atlantic World “Columbian Exchange” in the wake of initial European discovery and colonization.

This study explores the politics of regulating the British Columbia and Washington commercial salmon fisheries between 1937 and 1984. The principal focus of this comparative-historical study is upon one particularly striking exception to the tendency of regulators to tighten commercial salmon fishing restrictions over time - the persistence of liberal offshore trolling regulations. The dissertation argues that the anomalous treatment of the offshore troll fishery during this period may be ascribed to the competition between states for the right to harvest salmon - a common property resource. In making this claim, the study questions the adequacy of the interest-group driven explanations of policy which figure prominently in the literature on regulation. Two pillars of interest group theory, the tendencies to explain national policy only through reference to domestic politics and to reduce state behaviour to little more than the product of the demands of private sector interests, are challenged in this comparative case study. The challenge to the first tendency of interest group theory is sustained by examining the relations between national regulatory preferences and the foreign fishery policy goals of Canada and the United States. The pursuit of two goals - Asian exclusion and North American equity - in bilateral and multilateral negotiations demanded the adoption of particular regulatory profiles. Liberal offshore troll regulations may be explained according to the legitimacy and bargaining advantages they lent to Canadian and American efforts to incorporate these two goals into modifications to the traditional fishery regime. The study also suggests that, in a setting characterized by intergovernmental competition, regulatory policies may not always be equated with the preferences of interested private parties. In this setting the state's ability or willingness to respond to even the most influential private sector interests may be limited by the state's evaluation of its bargaining resources and requirements. State competition created a context where government attitudes towards offshore salmon fishing could be understood in terms of state preferences, preferences derived from officials' perceptions of the legitimacy of various national regulatory policies in the context of valued international institutions. While state competition is the centrepiece of the explanation of national fishery policy developed in this study its explanatory power is mediated by two intervening institutional variables - the capacities of states to formulate and implement policies and the structure of the international regime itself. The level of knowledge regarding the salmon resource played an instrumental role in the formulation of regime goals and of pertinent national policies. The extent to which state management in offshore waters was fragmented between different bureaus affected the ability of officials to adopt national policies which suited their international purposes. The redistribution of the American state's fishery management capacity in the 1970s was a catalyst for the severe restrictions visited upon Washington trailers at that time. A second institutional factor, the structure of the international fishery regime, also mediated the competition between states. The series of reciprocal fishing privileges agreements between Canada and the United States was particularly important in maintaining established offshore regulatory preferences during the 1970s when the clash between American and Canadian salmon fishery perspectives was intensifying. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

An approach to understanding and managing anadromous salmon, steelhead, and sea-run cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus spp.) based on life history and evolutionary adaptive capacities of species and stocks is presented. Species, stocks, and local populations are viewed as systems that are continuously adapting to changing environmental conditions. They have the potential capacity to evolve in different ways in different environments through both life history and evolutionary adaptation. Habitat organization forms a template for genus, species, stock, and local population life history organization. Harvesting, habitat alteration resulting from land use practices and other human activities can alter the organization and adaptive capacities of species and stocks, and thus their long term persistence. The adaptive capacity of Oncorhynchus relative to its habitat and management environment is examined at the species, stock, and local population levels. Life history characteristics of representative stocks and local populations are analyzed using Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DECORANA). Fresh water migration distance and latitude are used to "explain" ordination patterns of Oncorhynchus species in the North Pacific Basin. Fresh water migration difficulty and mean annual runoff are used to interpret life history patterns of Columbia Basin chinook salmon stocks. Upstream migration difficulty and fall water temperatures are used to explain the ordination patterns of local populations of Willamette spring chinook salmon. Fishery management practices are examined in terms of their impacts on the organization and adaptive capacity of species, stocks, and local populations of Oncorhynchus. Management generalizations and guidelines derived from the life history theory are applied to management of Willamette spring chinook salmon. Maintaining habitat changes in the Willamette Basin within the historic range of fluctuations will tend to maximize co-organization of local populations. Management activities should provide relatively constant habitat and fishery conditions for natural selection processes to "organize" life history traits over a period of at least a few generations. Fisheries should selectively harvest local populations that show a high degree of realization of their adaptive capacity. By focusing instead on maximizing the co-organization of stocks, their habitat and fishery environments, and protecting the adaptive capacities of stocks, we will go a long way toward providing long-term sustainability for social communities dependent on fisheries. / Graduation date: 1994

The average size and age of chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) caught in commercial fisheries along the Pacific Coast of North America have decreased substantially in this century. These declines might be caused in part by changes in size and age at maturity within the stocks contributing to those fisheries. Upriver Brights (Brights), a stock of fall chinook salmon in the Columbia River, are one of those stocks. The purposes of this study were to (1) determine if average size and age at maturity of Brights have declined, (2) gain a better understanding of the factors that may contribute to such declines, and (3) describe potential consequences of these changes. Data from in-river fisheries suggest that the average weight of mature Brights returning to the Columbia River has decreased approximately 2.7 kg since the 1910s, an average rate of about 0.1 lb·yr⁻¹ (45 g·yr⁻¹ ). Most of the potential biases in these data tend to make this estimate conservative. Insufficient data were available to describe changes in average age at maturity. There are many potential causes for the decline in average size of mature Brights, including factors that affect very early life stages. Other researchers have determined that size at maturity appears to be highly influenced by inheritance, gender, and growth rate. I describe how maternal size can influence -- through time of spawning, choice of spawning site, and egg size -- the viability of the young, which carry the dam's genes for size. The size-related ability to produce viable offspring may have been changed by modifications in the environment. Very little is known about how changes in the natural environment for spawning, incubation, and rearing may have contributed to a decline in average size at maturity. Artificial propagation and rearing, such as at Priest Rapids Hatchery, seems to produce adult Brights that are smaller, younger, and more likely to be male than their natural counterparts. The net result is that the average hatchery fish may have only about 0.80 of the reproductive potential of the average natural fish. Changes in growth conditions in the ocean probably did not contribute to the change in size, although the ocean fisheries of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia appear to select, in the genetic sense, against large size and old age in Brights. Since 1978, in-river commercial fisheries have caught larger Brights and a higher proportion of females than are found in the escapement of the Priest Rapids Hatchery component of the stock, but the fisheries impact the two sexes differently by taking the larger males and the smaller females. The effect on the natural component may differ because of their apparently larger average size. I found no evidence that larger fish or more females were caught when 8-in. minimum restrictions were in effect on gillnet mesh size relative to periods when mesh size was not restricted. Impounding the mainstem during the last 50+ yr may have removed obstacles to migration (e.g., Celilo Falls) that selected for large size in Brights, but that hypothesis could not be tested. The perserverance of larger and older phenotypes in the Bright stock suggests that countervailing selection -- perhaps during spawning, incubation, and/or early rearing -- may have resisted the effects of a century of size- and age-selective fisheries. That resistance, however, may reduce the productivity of the stock. Declines in average size and age at maturity can have undesireable consequences. Lower average size means less biomass landed and lower commercial value. Lower average fecundity and a diminished ability to reproduce in some environments are also expected. Loss of size and age classes may reduce the ability of the stock to adapt to environmental variations. These results are relevant to several management practices. A holistic approach to fishery management issues is necessary to avoid erroneous conclusions based on narrow perspectives. Measuring reproductive potential of the catch and escapement would be superior to the conventional practice of simply counting numbers of fish. Many aspects of artificial propagation can be improved, including broodstock aquisition, mating regimes, and rearing practices. Stock abundance is a major factor in determining the effect of many management practices on the stock. In general, fisheries managers must be mindful that they manage very complex natural systems. / Graduation date: 1992

Fishermen's and managers' perceptions of fishery issues are an important factor to consider when studying conflicts between the two groups. According to theories of conflict management, differences in perceptions may cause situations to be characterized by misunderstanding and mistrust, and may add to the difficulties in managing the conflict. A questionnaire was developed to determine whether there were differences in perceptions between fishermen and managers. Both groups responded to the same questions. Questions were included to determine each individual's involvement in the decision making process and to test the hypothesis that fishermen and managers who are involved in the decision-making process have perceptions that are less polarized. A total of 47 commercial salmon fishermen, who fish primarily out of Oregon ports were interviewed. A total of 36 managers, who were either members of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, Salmon Technical Team, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, or non-agency managers, responded to the questionnaire. Most fishermen were interviewed in person and most managers were interviewed over the telephone. Chi-square analyses were used to measure the differences in the responses of fishermen and managers, as well as the responses of decision-makers and non-decision-makers. The results support the hypothesis that fishermen and managers have different perceptions on certain issues. However, the hypothesis that decision-makers have more similar perceptions than non-decision makers was not strongly supported. / Graduation date: 1994

Thesis (M.E.S.)--The Evergreen State College, 2008. / Title from title screen (viewed 2/25/2010). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-101).