| Summary: | Anon. 2022. Tana/Teno stock recovery and sustainable fisheries. Report from the Tana/Teno Monitoring and Research Group nr 1/2022. Since the early 2000s, the entire Tana/Teno salmon stock complex has had a negative development, recently culminating in a situation with no exploitable surplus left and a complete closure of the salmon fishery in 2021 and 2022. Concurrently, neighboring rivers have had the opposite trend, recovering from a precarious stock situation in the 1990s to reaching their respective management targets in combination with high catches. An attempt was made to rebuild the Tana/Teno salmon stocks with the new agreement in 2017. But while this agreement successfully reduced the overall exploitation rate of Tana/Teno salmon, it also coincided with a prolonged period of poor sea survival from 2019 and onwards. Results from the Utsjoki video monitoring indicates that the return rate of grilse (1SW salmon) 2019-2021 was 18-40 % of the previous average. Consequently, the reduction in exploitation rate from the 2017 agreement was not large enough to result in any increased spawning stocks. With the 2021 fishing closure, a clear effect was found in spawning stock sizes across the Tana/Teno river system, an increase that is also expected to be found in 2022. All evaluated stocks in Tana/Teno are currently found to be at a level that indicates the need for a stock recovery plan. In order to have a successful recovery, several key elements have to be in place. Firstly, an unambiguous set of criteria needs to be established concerning the relation between exploitation and the status assessment. A threshold for formal stock recovery should be established (corresponding to going from the yellow to the orange status category) and associated with lowered exploitation to counter what is a seriously depleted salmon status. The four largest salmon stocks of the Tana/Teno system (the main stem, Anárjohka, Kárášjohka, Iešjohka) are however in an even more precarious situation, having fallen from orange to the red ...
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