August 13, 2021 — Washington salmon lost one of their best advocates this week with the death of Lorraine Loomis. She was 81.
Loomis was a Swinomish tribal elder, chairperson of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and manager of fisheries for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community.
April 22, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Lorraine Loomis and Kelly Susewind got it right. Their joint column called for collaboration as the state and tribal co-managers of Puget Sound salmon “struggle to share a shrinking resource.”
That commitment, along with collaboration, will be key to reaching an agreement for salmon fishing in Puget Sound. The agreement will fulfill tribal treaty rights, provide opportunity for recreational and non-tribal commercial fishing, and conserve salmon. The co-managers have reached agreement on plans to share the catch of available Puget Sound salmon in 33 of the last 34 years. I know it has never been easy.
The depressed status of many Puget Sound salmon stocks continue to make it even more challenging.
The answer is not about winning or losing, as the co-managers said. Rather, “it’s about working together to meet one another’s needs by carefully crafting conservative fisheries that protect the weakest salmon stocks while providing for harvest when possible.”
Everyone who depends on Puget Sound salmon knows just how restrictive the fisheries have become. Most Puget Sound Chinook migrate north as young fish and rear off the coasts of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. The Pacific Salmon Treaty has reshaped salmon fisheries across those boundaries. This has led to agreements with harvest cutbacks of 20 to 45 percent in Alaskan and Canadian fisheries since the early 2000s.