Steelhead Impacts for season

This post may be too much for some to read without seriously affecting their blood pressure.......but it needs to be done.
Today we'll try to figure out roughly how many steelhead have been killed or impacted by the commercial fishery so far this year. These numbers are just for the gillnet fleet in Area 4. Dont forget, steelhead would be impacted by seine openings also and by openings in Area 3.

Steelhead Tally for the season:
..................................Approx. Stld Encountered/
Date.......Boat #'s..........Boat/Day................Total Stld Enct.
July 07: 91..........................2..............................182
July 11: 96..........................2..............................192
July 15: 282.........................3...............................846
July 17: 300.........................3...............................900
July 18: 300.........................4..............................1200
July 21: 296.........................5..............................1480
July 22: 314.........................8..............................2512
July 24: stats not n yet
July 27: stats not in yet
Just doing this rough exercise comes up with a possible impact on 7312 steelhead up to July 22.

From our investigations it appears alot of steelhead were impacted in these openings. The average catch per boat of steelhead appears to be around 3 per day.Now this doesnt sound like alot...but multiplied by 300 boats this equals 900 stld. per day.....times 3 days of openings of July 11,15,17= 2700 steelhead encountered and likely a high percentage of these succumbed to the experience of meeting a gillnet up close and personal.
Now weve heard that steelhead catch/encounter rates have increased over the last few openings with boats encountering up to and above 10 steelhead for this last opening on July 24th. If the same 300 or so boats took part and each average 5 stld or more we are looking at 1500 steelhead encountered....If you use a higher average such as the 10 one gillnetter had then the number of steelhead encountered jumps to 3000 for just this one opening!
We use the term encountered because to be fair to gillnetters not every steelhead will be dead on arrival and some are released alive. However, we do know gillnets inflict huge immediate mortality rates on steelhead and presume at least 5-7 out of 10 fish will be dead after encountering a gillnet. ** (see study results listed below). More will presumably die after being 'released' also.
So, as the season progresses and we tally up the potential steelhead impact we are looking at rough estimates of;
-9 gillnet openings so far up to July 27
-early season stld encounters of approx 3 per boat per day
-mid season encounters of approx 7-10 per boat per day
-being rough estimates there would be a range of impacts both lower and higher than our estimates...so from our 7300 estimate the range could be from a low of 5000... to the 7312 of our estimate....to a high of 10,000+
-and they are not finished yet...we still have more openings to come
Bottom line is: for every gillnet and seine opening they have hundreds of steelhead will die...and in peak run timing openings possibly thousands of steelhead will die. What an absolute criminal waste of a valuable resource.

**Studies done in 1992 on the Observer Program noted steelhead mortalities of 73% (45/62) in gillnet caught fish
-weedline studies done in 1991 found 67% 162/243
-weedline studies in 1992 found 74% 233/315