This bill amends RCW 77.70.180 to add a procedural reporting requirement and to authorize creation of a separate commercial fishery license, fee, or limited harvest program for emerging commercial fisheries. It requires the director to provide a report to the appropriate senate and house committees within five years after the director adopts rules governing the number and qualifications of participants in an emerging commercial fishery. For any fishery designated under RCW 77.50.030, the required report must describe the extent of the program (including use of mass marking and supplementation), the benefit to commercial fishers (including effectiveness of selective fishing gear in expanding opportunity within mixed salmon stocks), the effectiveness of selective gear in minimizing postrelease mortality and reducing gear damage to harvested fish and creating niche markets, and the department’s experimental efforts to operate hatcheries by managing wild and hatchery fish as a single run as an alternative to mass marking and selective gear. The department must consult commercial and recreational fishers, federally recognized treaty tribes with fishing rights, regional fisheries enhancement groups, and other affected parties when preparing the report. If the report recommends establishing a separate license, fee, or limited harvest program, that separate license/fee/program must be established according to the director’s recommendation; the director may permit conversion of an existing limited entry commercial salmon license to the newly designated fishery, and current holders of experimental licenses must be allowed to convert their experimental license to the described commercial fishery license. Establishing a separate license under this section does not increase the number of Puget Sound commercial licenses under RCW 77.70.090. This is a procedural and administrative change to existing law rather than a penalty change or creation of a criminal offense. The bill text provided does not identify which agency director or department is referenced, does not include the specific rules whose adoption triggers the five-year reporting deadline, and does not include the full text of the cited RCWs or the detailed process for converting licenses, so those specifics are uncertain from the extracted facts.

The bill creates a required review within five years after the agency adopts rules for participants in an emerging commercial fishery: the director must produce a report based on consultations with commercial and recreational fishers, treaty tribes, regional enhancement groups and others that assesses use of selective gear, mass marking/supplementation, hatchery management experiments, benefits to commercial fishers, and recommends whether to create a separate commercial fishery license, fee, or limited harvest program. If the report recommends it, the director must establish the separate license/fee/program as recommended, may allow conversion of existing limited-entry salmon licenses, and must let current experimental license holders convert to the new commercial fishery license; creating the separate license will not increase the number of Puget Sound commercial licenses. In practice, this gives the agency a clear process to evaluate and potentially convert experimental or limited-entry fishing arrangements into a formally licensed commercial fishery, which could change who pays fees and who is eligible to fish under the new designation and give experimental license holders a likely path to permanence. The agency gains added responsibilities to consult stakeholders and produce the analysis; commercial fishers, experimental license holders, and limited-entry licensees are most affected. The text provided does not say which specific director or department is responsible, what exact rule changes trigger the five-year clock, or the detailed mechanics of license conversions.