'Major collapse' of salmon stocks

<p>California fishermen are so frustrated by the precipitous decline of Sacramento River salmon that some suggested Wednesday there may be too few fish to fight over this year.</p><p>"It's going to be a real tossup whether it's worth having a season," Duncan MacLean, a commercial fisherman from Half Moon Bay, said at a public meeting in Santa Rosa.</p><p>Roger Thomas, president of a charter boat skippers association, said he might support canceling the season if the situation is as bad as federal reports suggest and if that would help restore the salmon.</p><p>"If you don't get 'em back, the future of salmon is gone," Thomas said.</p><p>He said he was not speaking on behalf of his group, the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association.</p><p>A standing-room crowd of more than 120 fishermen met Wednesday with state and federal salmon regulators as they began a two-month process to set the West Coast fishing season. In April, the Pacific Fishery Management Council will recommend season rules to the U.S. Commerce Department, which oversees the salmon fishery.</p><p>State and federal biologists are predicting an all-time low this year of salmon returning to the Sacramento River, the state's most productive river system.</p><p>Don Hansen, chairman of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, called the situation "a major, major collapse of the fishery." He said the council probably didn't have 100,000 chinook salmon to divide between the state's sport fishermen and commercial trollers in California and Oregon.</p><p>In contrast, last year California commercial fishermen caught 113,000 chinook salmon and the state's anglers caught nearly 48,000 in the ocean. That was the lowest sports catch on record and a relatively low commercial harvest.</p><p>The reasons for the poor salmon runs remain in dispute.</p><p>Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week declared that warmer ocean water and lack of food in 2005 appear to be the "likely culprit" for the lack of chinook salmon last year. Those fish would have recently entered the ocean as juvenile salmon that year.</p><p>The scientists point out that coho salmon from streams all along the West Coast also were much reduced last year.</p><p>Fishermen have suggested the problem is related to poor conditions in rivers across the West Coast.</p><p>"I would be more inclined to believe that those fish are not making it to the ocean," MacLean said.</p><p>Wednesday's meeting included sport and commercial fishermen, river guides and charter boat skippers.</p><p>Dave Bitts, a commercial fishermen from Eureka, said the various groups should try to help fashion a season by working together and not trying to "take the last fish away from the other guy."</p><p>Many speakers called for restoring salmon. They urged regulators to fight water diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and to find new methods to get more of the 32 million juvenile hatchery salmon safely to the ocean.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com.</p>