A way of life disappears with the fish

HOODSPORT -- Dave Herrera has been fishing the waters of Hood Canal since he was a kid, much like other members of the Skokomish Tribe. Although his gear changes seasonally -- gill nets to crab pots -- the work has been the same for his people for more than a millennium.

Jerry Plancich's pursuit is the same, even if his history isn't as deep. The fourth-generation fisherman began plying his trade in Puget Sound in 1945, netting pink and chum salmon.


	A five-part special report about the effects of pollution on the waters of Puget Sound. - Part 1: Polluted waters - Part 2: Extinction or bust - Part 3: Ruinous runoff - Part 4: Maritime mess - Part 5: Turning things around - Further developments - More stories - Join the forum Read the transcript of a live chat with reporters Robert McClure and Lisa Stiffler.

Both men depend on the fisheries: Herrera, 46, both as a fisherman and as his tribe's fisheries manager; Plancich, 77, to put a little more money away and continue working with his sons. They have tied their adult lives to the Sound and its bounty. But today's catch isn't what it once was. More regulations, fewer fish and fewer catchable species have reduced one of the world's most plentiful fish habitats to, in some places, a watery wasteland.

"Everyone talks about how much fish there used to be," Plancich said, fixing gill nets on his boat on Vashon Island. "I saw it. It's true." Plancich remembers when the catch was so large, the nets so laden, that it wasn't necessary to fish two boats -- one based in Seattle, one in Alaska -- as most local commercial fishermen now do.

"If you depend just on Puget Sound, you'll be going backwards, financially," he said. "You've got to go to Alaska and do both if you're going to make it."

A way of life on the Sound that predated European immigrants by thousands of years is changing. Certain species caught by the thousands of tons a decade ago now are found only in double digits. Twenty years ago, commercial fishermen caught 4 million pounds of Pacific cod and walleye pollock here, state records show. Last year, the catch weighed a scant 300,000 pounds.

Those aren't the only species in peril. Rockfish are on the brink of local extinction in some areas. Herring stocks are depleted. And the Northwest's prized salmon catch fluctuates wildly.

The number of local gill netters has plunged. At its peak, their organization was 2,700 members strong and politically potent. Today, they don't even have a Seattle office. Licenses for purse seining, in which fishing boats string out huge nets, have dropped from nearly 300 in the 1970s to 78.

The Lummi Indians caught 40,000 chinook last year -- fewer than half the 100,000 netted in 1985. And the chinook they catch today are smaller and sometimes less healthy.

"It's a concern," said Merle Jefferson, a tribal fisherman. He hears the stories from his 83-year-old father, who started fishing the Sound in the '30s. "He sees the difference," Jefferson said. "Anyone who has been doing this for a long time would. We're not sure what's happening."

Neither do numerous scientists who study the Sound. They say its fisheries have been hit on all fronts, from overfishing to increased pollution to lost habitat. The Tacoma Narrows area once had so much pollock, it was a mainstay of the industry. Now, there are virtually no pollock left there.

What can we do to replenish native fish stocks? The answer is debated.

One approach would restrict fishing. To protect vanishing rockfish, for example, the state has virtually banned fishing. You can catch one per day now, if you can find them. The limit a decade ago was 15.

"You can't catch any," said Mike Gilchrist of Seattle, who co-chairs the state's recreational fishing alliance. "You don't see many of them anymore."

Laws against overfishing and poaching are difficult to enforce, said Mike Censi of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, who has been patrolling the Sound for 13 years.

"People know there is a bunch of water and not many of us," he said from his office in Blaine. "We have to be in the right place at the right time."

In all, 22 full-time officers patrol the Sound's 2,700 square miles. It's the equivalent of Seattle having eight police officers. And while catches are tracked by the state, they are self-reported by commercial fishermen. In other words, the amount and location of a specific catch is hard to dispute.

"The fish tags are a problem," Censi said. "I can't say how many of them are falsified, but a bunch."

He is quick to add that most of the commercial boats he checks are legal. But it only takes a couple of bad boats to radically affect a fishery.

"Some of these guys you've waved and said hello to for years, always thinking they were obeying the rules. Then you catch them. And you realized they might have been hosing you all of these years."

Pete Knutson agrees. He has been fishing in the Sound, mostly gill netting, since the early '70s. It was his only choice for a job while growing up in Everett. "Well, that or the mill," he said. Knutson said it is tough to stay honest when your competitors aren't and there is little chance of his or her dishonesty being discovered.

"We all know what the game is," he said from his boat at Fishermen's Terminal in Seattle.

Add in the regulatory problems that came with the landmark 1974 Boldt decision. Upheld after appeal in 1979, the decision awarded half of the Sound's salmon catch to area fishing tribes. A subsequent ruling extended the award to shellfish.

While the years of vitriol from non-tribal commercial fishermen has been documented, the regulatory nightmare that followed has not been. Now, instead of one regulating body for the fisheries, there are more than 20. Some work well together. Some don't.

For Censi, if he sees an overfishing or poaching violation in tribal waters, he can't simply bust the suspect. He must ask the tribes to do so. Choosing his words carefully, he said that generally it isn't a problem and that with most tribes he has a cooperative agreement.

"But it makes it tough because there are, uh, competing jurisdictions," he said.

Skokomish tribal members don't think violations committed in their waters are the problem. The state did everything it could to eliminate tribal fishing until the tribes started winning in court. And data show that the tribes hardly are to blame for the historic decline in the fisheries.

So as the debate continues, people like Plancich and Herrera wait. They see the ebb in what once was a fishery so rich that its bounty seemed limitless. They see the smaller fish in the nets, the closed oyster beds and the rare rockfish, and they wonder how much longer their way of life will last.

"It's odd," Plancich said, preparing this fall for his 50th chum season, "that it can look so good from the surface and be so unhealthy inside."

And with that he sets out on his boat. He has fish to catch.

P-I reporter Mike Lewis can be reached at 206-448-8140 or mikelewis@seattlepi.com

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