The following is some information passed along to me that I ask you to
consider when you go to the polls in November (or before if voting by
absentee ballot). While the initiative is not going to be a "magic
cure-all", I believe eliminating NON-SELECTIVE harvest by commercials is an
important step in helping to restore SALMON, BAITFISH, AND GROUNDFISH STOCKS
in Washington, especially in Puget Sound and small streams unimpacted by
Tribal fisheries.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this information, and please
vote YES ON I-696!!

PLEASE VOTE YES ON I-696 to BAN ALL NETS

WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE YES?

Over-harvest of salmon by commercial nets is the number 1 cause of the
decline in salmon runs.
The number of commercial fishing jobs lost will be negligible.
3. California's salmon have increased by 280 percent directly due to their
Net Ban.

4. Commercial nets indiscriminately kill endangered native salmon, sea
birds, seals, and otters.

5. Your Tax Dollars used to repair the environment are wasted if adult
salmon do not return.

WHAT ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT?

There is no doubt that dams and urban encroachment are a problem, but this
is clearly the number 2 problem.

Many rivers in Washington have undamaged waters in the North Cascade or
Olympic National Parks. Look at a state map. Why are their salmon runs so
far down? Why have the salmon runs continued their decline? Over-harvesting!

HOW DO YOU KNOW A NET BAN WILL HELP?

Commercial net bans have had tremendous success in Florida, Louisiana,
Texas, and California. The Sacramento river in California is seeing some of
the largest Chinook returns on the West Coast this year. How can a river in
the densely populated San Francisco area be doing so well? What do you
think? Did the California net ban help?

ISN'T THIS INITIATIVE BEING SPONSORED BY SPORTS FISHERMEN?

Yes! Sports fishermen want to protect this resource the same way that duck
hunters have contributed the most to rebuilding of fly ways and duck
populations in this country. Commercial market hunting was abolished in the
fight to save the ducks.

WHAT WILL THE COMMERCIAL FISHING OPPOSITION SAY?

They will claim that this is a fish grab by sports fishermen. Sportsmen do
want to catch salmon, but every sports fisherman I've ever met supports a
complete ban on salmon fishing (including sports) if it will bring the
numbers back up. What we don't want is to allow commercial fishermen to
destroy the runs as soon as they start to recover.

Commercial Fishing interests will claim that sportsmen took more salmon than
they did in 1997 and 1998. This is an outrageous distortion of the whole
truth. The sports harvest was a small fraction of the commercial salmon
harvest, for more than 20 years preceding this. Commercial fishing was
radically reduced only while Bern Shanks was Director of Washington State
Fisheries (WSF), a true anomaly in a WSF that has always been dominated by
Commercial Fishing interests. Shanks drastically reduced the sport fishing
openings, but nearly shut down commercial salmon harvesting because of the
damage they do. Some salmon runs have already seen improvement from his
efforts, but he is now out of the way and it will be business as usual for
commercial netters.... unless you vote to stop it.

WHAT ARE COMMERCIAL FISHERMEN DOING TO LESSEN THEIR IMPACT?

Mr. Brad Warren, a commercial fishing proponent, recently conceded:
"Proponents of I-696 raise a few legitimate concerns about fishing, such as
overfishing of some stocks, bycatch of vulnerable species that share the
same water with abundant food fish , and the potential that bottom dragging
may damage seabed habitat." What have commercial fishermen done to stop
bottom dragging? Are commercial fishermen working on a more selective method
of salmon harvesting? No way! They want this Net Ban defeated so they can go
back to business as usual with their nets.

WHAT ABOUT THE SUPPLY OF FISH TO STORES?

Well over 50% of the world fish supply now comes from farmed fish. Much of
this farmed fish includes salmon. The great majority of commercially caught
ocean salmon is from Alaska. If this Net Ban is passed you will not see the
difference in your local store.

WHAT ABOUT WASHINGTON COMMERCIAL FISHERMEN?

The majority of Washington State Commercial Salmon Fishermen make their
living fishing Alaskan waters. When California Commercial Fishermen
over-harvested their resource, they put themselves out of business and a Net
Ban passed easily. Our Commercial Fishermen can afford to continue
destroying the Washington State salmon resource because they are really
wintering Alaska State fishermen.

Most of the commercial salmon fishermen I've met or heard about in
Washington State work a different job during the "off-season". They will
have other work if this Net Ban passes.

Each Washington State salmon that they catch costs you in dollars spent for
hatcheries, environmental reparations, and other fisheries enhancements. You
are providing a form of welfare to a group of people that has other job
options and is wiping out our State's salmon resource.

WHAT ABOUT THE NATIVE AMERICANS?

This is a State Initiative and cannot directly effect the Native Americans,
who are federally regulated.

The Boldt decision allows them to take 50% of the harvestable fish and
shellfish. In my opinion, passage of this initiative will put increased
pressure on tribes to take only their half of the harvestable excess of
healthy salmon runs.

Some tribes are already examples of good fisheries management. The Quinaults
have two of the best run salmon hatcheries in the state and excellent
harvest management. The Suquamish have large runs of Coho, Chinook, and Chum
that they manage to perpetuate with only a few small streams as water
resources. There will always be a few rotten eggs, but most tribes will
learn as the benefits of properly managing the runs on their own river
become apparent.

DO YOU PAY TAXES ON A HOME? ARE YOU A BUILDER? ARE YOU A FARMER?

The amount that is spent for each salmon will increase dramatically due to
the endangered species act. Your tax dollars will help pay for this increase
and Commercial Fishermen will again over-harvest these fish as they always
have, making very small concessions. This should strike you as outrageously
unfair, because it is.

SUMMARY

It is absolutely staggering how many salmon can be harvested in even a few
hours by modern netters. They have repeatedly over-harvested small salmon
runs mixed in with healthier populations. There are not enough adult salmon
returning to available habitat now (under-escapement). Our environmental
reparations will do no good without returning adults. Will you continue to
pay an increasing bill for this folly? Please help us get the nets out.

PLEASE VOTE YES ON I-696 to BAN ALL NETS

and

Washington Trout's Review of Initiative 696

> Initiative 696 has been reviewed with respect to the following two issues:
(1) is overfishing currently a major problem; and (2) will this approach
solve the problem. The answer to both of these is a definite "yes", but not
for the reasons commonly assumed or promoted.

> It is important to realize that no specific fishing gear or "fishery" has
any intrinsic ability to cause overfishing, although the potential to do
this increases with the effectiveness or fishing power of the
fishery. Some long-term fisheries never caused overfishing simply because
they did not have the ability to capture enough fish.

> Overfishing can always be traced directly to the agencies that are legally
responsible for managing the resources. A common ruse employed by these same
agencies (to deflect criticism) is to blame the problem
on overcapitalization of the fishing fleets. This is merely an obtuse
admission that they were unable to handle their job.

> The failure of management agencies can be traced to two factors. The
technical staff is commonly populated by individuals who call themselves
"fisheries biologists" and "harvest managers" (as opposed to fish biologists
and escapement managers). They firmly believe that user groups are their
"clients", not the resource. Any uncertainties in the data are resolved in
terms of continued exploitation (putting the
burden of proof on the resource - the root cause of overfishing throughout
the world). People at the policy making level have these same perspectives.
In any agency, such as the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (or
Commission), it soon becomes impossible for any individual to remain in a
key fish management position for any length of time in the absence of this
basic philosophy. The pressures from user groups and legislators are too
great to resist. Thus, passage of the Initiative would prevent a great deal
of future overfishing simply because it would take away many of the options
that are currently available to managers. With the exceptions of leadership
from Don Moos (WDF late 1970's) and Bern Shanks, the management agency has
always been "captured" by the user groups, in the same manner that grazing
interests captured the Bureau of Land Management. The point is that user
groups cause overfishing by their collective political pressure, not their
fishing gear. This is the real reason that bans on net fishing in other
states have markedly curbed
overfishing.

> In Washington salmon fisheries, overfishing takes three forms. The first
is those cases of simple management failure. For example, prior to 1998,
state and Tribal managers failed to achieve their own agreed-to spawning
escapement goal for Snohomish chinook for 18 consecutive
years. You cannot set this type of record by accident - it takes definite
planning. The second type of overfishing occurs in the so-called hatchery
fish management zones where wild stocks are deliberately and consistently
overfished in order to fully harvest co-mingled hatchery fish. The third
type of overfishing is the long-term genetic impact from the continual
harvest selection of larger fish and, in the case of chinook, older fish.
The Initiative would partially address each of these types of overfishing.

> In order to examine specific effects, it is first necessary to look
briefly at fishing gear selectivity. Each gillnet mesh size has its own
particular bell-shaped selectivity curve for a certain size or shape of
fish. Thus, it is possible to selectively harvest small fish such as pink
salmon while minimizing the landed harvest of chinook salmon. What is not
commonly realized is that the two "shoulders" of this bell-shaped curve
represent areas with significant gillnet drop-out rates. Thus, if you fish a
Fraser River sockeye net for the somewhat smaller Lake Washington sockeye,
30 to 40 percent of the fish will drop-out of the gear and be lost. These
unseen and largely ignored losses occur throughout the state's gillnet
fisheries and are much more detrimental than the more publicized incidental
captures of marine mammals and birds. The Initiative would eliminate the
non-treaty part of the problem.

> The second important element of gear selectivity occurs with hook-and-line
gear. The gear itself continually selects the larger individuals within any
available fish population and this is further exacerbated by the widespread
use of minimum size limits.

> Significant mortalities occur when undetected small salmon are drug past
the point of total exhaustion (with commercial gear and sport downriggers).
However, when we proceed to look at individual geographic areas and
fisheries, it appears that the Initiative will have little practical effect
on solving these problems.

>Commercial troll salmon fishery - The Initiative would eliminate this gear
type within the three mile limit of state jurisdiction. However, nearly all
of the troll catch is normally made outside of three miles and the fishery
is managed by the federal government. The fishery would probably continue
with little change and it can be anticipated that federal law would force
the state to allow landings of troll catches at Washington ports.

> Columbia River gillnet fishery - This fishery is jointly managed with the
state of Oregon under the Columbia River Compact. The Initiative would ban
fishing in Washington waters but many of the same fish could still be
harvested in Oregon waters. However, this would be far from a complete shift
since the historical fisheries by Treaty and non-treaty fisherman have been
isolated above and below Bonneville Dam, respectively. This will be a
classic case where overfishing will be curtailed by taking away the
prerogatives of the managers. currently, hatchery fish management zones
exist for all lower river fall chinook, spring chinook and coho stocks (the
only other salmon present are ESA listed chum). In the absence of the
Initiative, it is not realistic to expect any change despite the Wild
Salmonid Policy. With the Initiative, the managers would have no choice.

>Willapa Bay gillnet fishery - This represents the "cleanest" case in the
entire state since there is no Treaty Indian fishery, no shared
responsibility with Oregon and all chinook and coho stocks are currently
managed for the full harvest of hatchery fish (only chum salmon are managed
for natural production). The Initiative would force managers to implement
the Wild Salmonid Policy. It will never happen otherwise.

>Grays Harbor gillnet fishery - All Grays Harbor salmon stocks are currently
managed for natural production and the primary impact of the Initiative
would be to shift the harvest of surplus production to the Treaty Indian
gillnet fishery and the on-treaty recreational fishery. There would be new
positive incentives for state managers to seek higher, more conservative
spawning ground escapement objectives. For example, it is much easier for
any inefficient fishery that is second in line (river recreational) to
achieve its share of the harvest if the available fish population is larger
and the numerical share is relatively small. This same incentive has always
existed with steelhead, but, for obvious reasons, was never publicized
(Tribal managers would never have agreed to anything that was clearly above
MSH). In developing the steelhead escapement methodology, conservative
values for biological parameters were deliberately incorporated. Thus,
steelhead are already being managed with "MSH plus" spawning escapement
objectives.

>Olympic Peninsula - There are no existing non-treaty fisheries that would
be eliminated by the Initiative. Status quo with or without.

>Puget Sound commercial net fisheries - The existing non-treaty purse seine
and gillnet fisheries would be eliminated by the Initiative but a small,
geographically restricted reef net fishery would be retained. This latter
fishery is relatively "clean" in terms of being able to release wild salmon
unharmed and could be expanded in the future by legislative action to
increase both the allowable fishing area and
number of participants. However, the main effect of the Initiative would be
to shift the harvest of surplus production from non-treaty purse seine and
gillnet fisheries to Treaty Indian purse seine, gillnet, and beach seine
fisheries and non-treaty recreational fisheries. As noted for Grays Harbor,
there would be a new positive incentive for state managers to seek higher,
more conservative spawning ground objectives. In addition, Puget Sound has
numerous existing hatchery fish management zone salmon stocks and there
would be a new push by state managers to implement the Wild Salmonid Policy
and convert these to natural production management. It is significant to
note that hatchery fish management zones never evolved in steelhead
management when the major sharing entities were limited to those intended by
the Initiative (Treaty Indian and non-treaty recreational).

> Non-salmonid fisheries - The Initiative would eliminate a number of
existing non-salmonid fisheries. The main effect would be on the northern
Puget Sound bottom trawl fishery, which has been severely restricted in
recent years. Their recent history has been one of taking WDFW to court to
force additional fishing time while using the former AD for marine fish as
their technical witness. The fishery is of
marginal economic value and presents a number of bycatch problems, would
also be eliminated. The two gear types that would be retained in Puget Sound
are both used to capture herring for sport bait. On the Washington coast,
trawl gear would be eliminated but most of the fishery is outside of the
three miles and is managed by the federal government. As was noted for troll
salmon, landings in Washington ports would probably have to be allowed.
Finally, the gear used to harvest Columbia River smelt would also be banned.
This is a positive change since a petition was filed in July to list this
resource under the Endangered Species Act.

Thanks, and please Vote YES on I-696