Developing & Promoting Responsible Fisheries

Our Approach

While our region has made significant strides over the past 30 years to restore lost habitat and reduce human impacts that harm wild fish recovery, little to no progress has been made to address unsustainable salmon harvest practices that have persisted throughout the Pacific Northwest for over a century.

Through research, legal advocacy, and public education, we're working to advance an alternative, science-based framework that rethinks how, when, and where we fish for salmon in order to promote responsible and sustainable fisheries management.

We Need Your Help!

Speak Up to Protect the Public's $14.4 Million Investment in Wild Salmon Conservation

Call on the the WA Fish and Wildlife Commission to fully implement the Columbia River nontribal gill net buyback passed by the Legislature and Governor that will provide one of the most significant gains for wild salmon conservation in decades.

Take Action

Overfishing Mixed-stock Fisheries

In mixed-stock fisheries, healthy, harvestable salmon swim side by side with stocks threatened with extinction, making it impossible to protect those populations in the greatest need of recovery and leading to the failure of many populations to rebuild or recover from their currently depleted state.

Mixed-stock fisheries in the open ocean indiscriminately harvest fish from rivers throughout the coast, regardless of their status under the Endangered Species Act, causing coast-wide loss of wild salmon abundance, diversity, and size with devastating consequences for endangered Southern Resident orcas and local indigenous and fishing communities whose fish never return home.

Further compounding the problems created by mixed-stock fisheries are the limitations of conventional fishing gear that cannot effectively avoid or release threatened and endangered stocks unharmed.

A Shift to Place-based Fisheries

Recovering the diversity and abundance of the Northwest's wild salmon and steelhead requires a complete rethinking of how, when, and where commercial salmon fisheries occur.

Guided by science, Wild Fish Conservancy is advocating for a place-based approach to salmon harvest. Instead of chasing salmon into the ocean where immature and imperiled populations are too often incidentally killed, a place-based approach harvests salmon as they return to their home rivers fully mature ensuring enough fish remain to regenerate the population and maintain life history diversity.

Along with transitioning where we fish, a vital component of place-based fisheries is transitioning toward alternative fishing techniques capable of selectively harvesting targeted healthy or hatchery stocks, while protecting those that need to recover.

Learn more about placed-based fisheries and the conceptual framework guiding this approach in a published paper by WFC's Dr. Nick Gayeski.

Learn More

"The biggest obstacle to salmon recovery is not a lack of science or a lack of scientists; rather, it is persuading management agencies to adopt a conceptual foundation that is consistent with current science and incorporates the precautionary dictates inherent to a place-based management approach."

The Failure of Wild Salmon Management: Need for a Place-Based Conceptual Foundation

The Original Place-based Fisheries

Historically, indigenous people of the northeastern Pacific fished for salmon when the fish returned to their natal rivers. Since they fished in or near the river, the impact of the fishery was confined to the river.

European colonists arrived and brought new technologies that helped fishermen expand how and where they could fish. Sail power, then gas and diesel engines and factory canneries forever changed the ability to exploit this rich new resource. Fishers were no longer confined to fishing the rivers near their communities. In the rich, new, ocean fishing grounds, fishers caught salmon that originated from many distant rivers. This shift to an ocean fishery represents the start of the mixed-stock fishery and the dilemma it poses for our region and the international managers that are now in charge of the fishery.

A new study published in BioScience suggests returning to historical indigenous fishing practices and systems of salmon management are key to restoring culturally and ecologically resilient Pacific salmon.

Learn More

Our Initiatives

Wild Fish Conservancy's research and education campaigns are working to better inform the public, policy makers, and resource managers of the harmful role mixed-stock ocean fisheries and conventional fishing methods play in reducing the diversity, abundance, and size of wild salmon and steelhead.

Through our responsible fisheries initiatives, we are working to advance and advocate for solutions to these problems that are based on science, not politics, and that can benefit wild salmon, steelhead, orcas, and coastal communities into the future.

The Fish Trap Project

Far too often, threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead are harvested or die needlessly as a result of the limitations of today’s conventional fishing methods— impeding salmon and steelhead recovery, further reducing available prey for starving Southern Resident orcas, and forcing indigenous and other coastal communities to constrain or close fisheries entirely.

Searching for a solution, Wild Fish Conservancy began evaluating fish traps in 2016 to determine if this ancient fishing technique could be revitalized as an alternative commercial fishing method capable of aiding in the recovery of wild salmon and steelhead and providing new opportunities for coastal communities and their economies.

Learn more about this research project that is finally providing a solution to a century-old problem for the benefit of wild fish, orcas, fishers, and coastal communities alike.

Learn More

Age Overfishing is Shrinking Chinook

Historically, Pacific Chinook salmon commonly weighed over 50 pounds and occasionally exceeded100 pounds. Why then, is the average size of a Chinook today shrunk to only 10 pounds?

To better understand this alarming trend, Wild Fish Conservancy's Dr. Nick Gayeski and Devin Swanson are working to develop an individual-based eco-genetic model of Chinook salmon to analyze and demonstrate how harvesting in mixed-stock ocean fisheries is impacting the abundance, diversity, and size of wild Chinook that Southern Resident killer whales, coastal communities, and our ecosystems depend on.

Learn More

Raising the Bar on Salmon Certifications

Researchers from Wild Fish Conservancy, Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and the University of Montana are proposing an alternative framework for certifying wild salmon that recognizes the ecological inter-dependance between wild salmon and the natal watersheds where they spawn, rear and to which they are locally adapted.

Learn more about this framework published in Facets journal that is now being adopted by progressive companies like Patagonia Provisions that are committed to providing their consumers with products that meet this high standard.

Read the Paper

Major Legal Victory for Southern Resident Killer Whales & Wild Chinook

Learn more about Wild Fish Conservancy's historic legal effort working to stop the overharvest of wild Chinook in Southeast Alaska that is pushing Southern Resident killer whales and wild Chinook closer to extinction.

After a landmark ruling, this effort is on track to set new precedence that will finally require resource managers to consider the needs of threatened and endangered species when managing commercial salmon fisheries throughout the Pacific coast.

Read the Latest