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Coverage from around the state: Salmon fishing likely banned for this year, and likely next year, too

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 15, 2008 at 10:28 am

From the Los Angeles Times:

Government fishery managers took steps Friday toward an unprecedented total ban on salmon fishing this year off the California and Oregon coasts, a move that would hammer beleaguered harbors and deprive the West of a culinary and cultural prize. A ban would cut deeply into a $150-million industry already suffering hard times, hitting not just commercial fishing but also the state’s recreational angling industry.

The move by the Pacific Fishery Management Council came amid historically low returns of chinook salmon to the Sacramento River, considered the backbone of the West Coast fishing industry. Fewer than 60,000 chinook, known in fish markets and on menus of swank restaurants as king salmon, are expected to spawn this fall in the river, less than half what regulators say is needed to justify a nominal fishing season and just a fraction of the 800,000 that arrived from the sea during the bumper crop of 2002.

Federal scientists blame the anemic returns on a variety of factors, but have focused on poor ocean conditions, potentially linked to global warming, that have caused the chinook’s food sources to plummet. But anglers also blame troubles in the environmentally fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where fish populations have plummeted because of pollution, predators and increased water exports to the south.

“There’s no smoking gun here, but there’s a lot of spent shell casings and people who created problems in the delta,” said Duncan MacLean, a Half Moon Bay commercial fisherman. “What started out as trouble for little fish like the delta smelt has blossomed into a problem for salmon and the whole state.”

To read the full text of the story from the Los Angeles Times, click here.

From the Sacramento Bee:

California salmon fishermen, at best, will be allowed to chase a tiny number of treasured chinook on just a few days this year.

Under one of three preliminary options adopted Friday by fisheries managers meeting in Sacramento, commercial fishermen would be allotted just 9,000 fish to catch in one month, and only north of Pigeon Point, near San Francisco. South of there, no commercial catch is allowed under any scenario. With about 565 salmon boats working in California last year, that’s just 15 fish per boat. Oregon would fare slightly better.

The other two options are worse in both states. One closes commercial fishing entirely. The other creates a government-subsidized program that allows fishermen to catch salmon for a genetic study, but the fish would have to be released alive.

Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations said some fishermen could survive by catching other species, such as crab. Others won’t survive. “It’s going to have a big effect on our coastal communities,” he said. “Our economies in places like Fort Bragg were built upon salmon, not slime eels. They were built upon working, not handouts.”

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council will choose one of the three options to set rules for the 2008 salmon season when it meets next month in Seattle.

To read the rest of this story from the Sacramento Bee, click here.

From the San Jose Mercury News:

Representatives of several fishing groups resigned themselves to the likelihood of an unprecedented closure of salmon fishing this year along the entire California coast and most of Oregon. A final decision on salmon fishing will be made early next month, but with near-record low returns last year and early indications that 2008 will be much worse, many anglers said Friday that a yearlong fishing closure is the best and perhaps only option.

“I see no choice. We had to stop the salmon season. I congratulate them,” said Dick Pool, a Concord resident and fishing equipment manufacturer who is trying to organize anglers into a statewide grass-roots political force. The 2008 and 2009 seasons “are toast as far as we’re concerned,” Pool added. “If we can do something now, maybe we can have a season in 2010.”

To read the full text of the story from the San Jose Mercury News, click here.

From the Associated Press:

The council’s action on Friday prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the governors of Oregon and Washington to urge the federal government to declare a resource disaster if the fisheries are closed or severely restricted. Such a declaration would make communities eligible for federal aid.

Closing fisheries in California and most of Oregon also could lead to higher salmon prices for restaurants and consumers who would be forced to buy Alaska-caught salmon instead of locally caught fish.

In most years, about 90 percent of wild chinook salmon caught off the California coast originate in the Sacramento River and its tributaries. Only about 90,000 adult salmon returned to the Sacramento River and its tributaries to spawn last year, the second lowest number on record and well below the government’s conservation goals, according to federal fishery regulators. That’s down from 277,000 in 2006 and a record high of 804,000 in 2002.

Biologists predict this year’s salmon returns could be even lower because the number of returning young male fish, known as “jacks,” hit an all-time low last year. Only about 2,000 of them were recorded, which is far below the 40,000 counted in a typical year.

Other West Coast rivers also have seen declines in their salmon runs, though not as steep as California’s Central Valley.

Read the full text of the article from the Associated Press by clicking here.

From Dan Bacher at IndyBay.org:

The PFMC claims that the reasons for the sudden collapse of the Sacramento fall Chinook stock is “not readily apparent.” “Ocean conditions have been poor, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong for salmon in freshwater, “ said David Artmann, Vice-Chairman of the PFMC.

However, fishermen point to massive increases in water exports from the California Delta in recent years as the key factor in the decline, accompanied by dams, increasing water pollution, poaching, unscreened diversions, habitat loss and other problems. “There are many factors that went into our salmon decline, but none as significant as the loss of freshwater flows to the Delta and San Francisco Bay which are essential for maintaining the biological function of this estuary and sustaining native salmon and other fish populations,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, in a press conference held by a coalition of fishing, tribal and environmental groups at the Double Tree Hotel in Sacramento where the PFMC was meeting today. “Our task now will be keeping our commercial and recreational salmon fishermen and business solvent while we focus on fixing the Bay and Delta, restoring flows and with them the fish,” Grader stated.

In my testimony today at the Council meeting, I said it was clear that the collapse of Central Valley fall chinooks wouldn’t have occurred if the federal, state and regional governments had done their job of protecting salmon and their habitat. Although ocean conditions certainly played a role in the decline, I agreed with Grader that the most significant significant factor in the collapse is the lack of adequate freshwater flows into the Delta and San Francisco Bay. The massive increases in water exports in recent years coincide with the collapse of Sacramento River salmon and the collapse of the California Delta food chain. Many of the salmon never made it from the river into the ocean.

I urged the PFMC to exert all of the pressure they could to make the state and federal governments fix the problems, led by increases in water exports, causing the collapse. A good start would be for the Council to review the relationship between the Pelagic Organism Decline on the Delta and the salmon collapse, as well as the relationship between Bay-Delta Estuary water and forage conditions and ocean conditions. I believe that you can’t separate ocean from Delta conditions if you want to restore Central Valley chinooks and other California Delta fish.

Meanwhile, the PFMC has requested a multi-agency task force led by the National Marine Fisheries Service’s West-Coast Science Centers to research about “50 potential causative areas” and report back to the Council at the September meeting in Boise, Idaho, according to a press release from the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Get the rest of the fishermen’s point of view from Dan Bacher at IndyBay.org by clicking here.

Things don’t look so good for next year, either, according to this San Francisco Chronicle article:

Most fishing industry representatives and anglers have already written off next year based on the projections. Pool said that this year and 2009 “are toast as far as we are concerned. We’re targeting 2010 and 2011.”

Fisheries managers have already canceled early-season ocean fishing for chinook off Oregon, where commercial trolling had been set to open today up to the Oregon-California border.

While some think farther ahead to the future:

“This is a battle for the whole coast,” Grader said, “and I think it is time that we began taking action.”

One certainty is that consumers can kiss fresh West Coast wild salmon goodbye for now and expect to pay astronomical prices for the Alaska equivalent. Paul Johnson, president of the Monterey Fish Market, a high-end seafood wholesaler at San Francisco’s Pier 33, said this week that people can expect to see salmon in fancy restaurants for around $40 a portion, about twice the normal price.

The price fishermen get for their catch has gone up from about $1.75 a pound three years ago to about $5.50 a pound, but to most anglers, the situation isn’t about money anymore. It’s about survival of a species.

“I, for one, am more interested in making sure my grandchildren will be able to experience these wonderful natural resources than I am in making a living at it,” said Duncan MacLean, who has represented commercial fishermen before the council this past week. “It’s the responsibility of our government to ensure the future of those resources and they are falling flat on their faces.”

“There’s no smoking gun here,” he said, “but there are a lot of empty weapons and spent shell casings.”

Read the rest of the article from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.

March 15, 2008 · Filed Under Salmon, Water & Wildlife

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