Last California salmon fishery may close

From OnEarth Magazine:

“Sometime soon, small-scale commercial fishermen in towns all along the West coast — from California up to the Canadian border — will find out whether their way of life is over.

Their fate rests on an analysis of last fall’s run of Chinook salmon in the central California Delta region. The number of salmon returning from the sea to spawn there has been dwindling since 2004, when the Bush administration increased water exports from the rivers and estuaries of the Sacramento Delta to growers in the Central Valley.

That decline forced the complete closure of the salmon fishery in 2008 and 2009, to allow the salmon population time to recover. The shutdowns came at a high cost: nearly 2,700 people lost their jobs and the California economy took a $279 million hit, says NRDC staff attorney Doug Obegi:

“Fishing businesses across the State, particularly along the Central and Northern California coasts, have been hammered by the closure, from mom and pop bait and tackle shops to recreational fishing guides, from commercial salmon fishermen to the hotels and restaurants that depend on recreational salmon fishermen for their livelihoods.”

Fishing communities have been hoping that after two years, the salmon population would show a strong recovery. That doesn’t appear to have happened. … “

Read more from OnEarth Magazine by clicking here.

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