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response. Provisions for coho management, including the ceiling on west coast of 

 Vancouver Island catches, were also considered as initial steps toward a more responsive, 

 conservation based regime. 



With the basic approaches to Fraser River management in place for the first eight years, 

 the focus of southern U.S. efforts was on following through on the development and 

 implementation of the chinook rebuilding program and on establishing improved coho 

 management regimes. 



Early on, our efforts to make progress on improved coho and chinook management 

 regimes ran into three major roadblocks. We have made slow but significant progress on 

 two of those hurdles to progress - differences in opinion on the need for basic 

 conservation measures to protect and rebuild stocks and the lack of agreed-upon 

 information on the distribution of fish stocks in various mixed stock fisheries. The third 

 hurdle turned out to be the biggest of all; the lack of an agreed-upon mechanism for 

 assessing equity status. 



It rapidly became clear following the implementation of the treaty that Canada still 

 considered its coho and chinook fisheries on southern U.S.stocks as essential to 

 maintaining its equity position and as a basic leverage point on U.S. fisheries taking 

 Canadian stocks off of Southeast Alaska. Canada consistently responded to southern 

 U.S. initiatives to improve the responsiveness of west coast Vancouver Island fishing 

 regimes by raising its need for coastwide consistency or by citing concerns for what they 

 viewed as an eroding equity situation. 



The lack of progress on the coastwide chinook rebuilding initiative, a major element in 

 the 1985 treaty, is especially disappointing. The 1985 treaty established a basic approach 

 to the management of fisheries in response to the Parties' stated objective of rebuilding 

 natural chinook stocks by 1998. The fisheries management approach included ceilings on 

 southeast Alaskan and Canadian marine mixed stock fisheries and provisions limiting the 

 harvest impacts in other areas. 



Annex IV of the Treaty established a bilateral Chinook Technical Committee charged 

 with the task of monitoring progress toward rebuilding objectives. Beginning in 1986, the 

 Chinook Technical Committee has issued an annual review of coastwide chinook 

 rebuilding status. From the onset, the Committee expressed concerns about the impact 

 of increased incidental mortalities on rebuilding and recommended steps be taken to 

 address this problem. In 1987, the bilateral Technical Committee recommended 

 reductions in exploitation rates in order to begin rebuilding of lower Georgia Strait and 

 west coast of Vancouver Island chinook stocks. 



Very little action was taken to respond to these concerns. The Technical Committee 

 recommendations have been basically repeated each year since, with stocks being added 



Robert Turner 



