Salmon fishing banned for second season
Published: Wednesday, April 8, 2009 at 4:23 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 8, 2009 at 4:23 p.m.
MILLBRAE – In contrast to the stormy protests of earlier years, federal regulators heard no objections Wednesday when they banned salmon fishing off California for the second straight year.
The unanimous action by the federal Pacific Fishery Management Council means that both sport anglers and commercial trollers will be prohibited this season from catching salmon in the state’s ocean waters.
The one exception is for sports fishermen, who will be allowed to catch chinook salmon for 10 days in August and September between Eureka and Crescent City. Scientists expect that most of the fish caught there will be returning to spawn in the nearby Klamath River.
The regulators said the state ban is needed once more to save a dwindling number of chinook salmon from the Sacramento River, for years the main source of chinook along the West Coast. Some officials expressed hope that there will be enough salmon to allow a fishing season in 2010.
“I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this is not what we deal with next year,” said Marija Vojkovich, a council member who represents the state Department of Fish and Game.
The 14-member council, meeting in a hotel ballroom near the San Francisco International Airport, set the salmon season for the entire West Coast. Their action, expected to be approved this month by the U.S. Commerce Department, will allow for harvesting an estimated half million chinook and coho salmon, almost all of them to be caught by sports, tribal and commercial fishermen in Oregon and Washington.
The salmon fleet remains an iconic part of such North Coast communities as Bodega Bay, Fort Bragg and Eureka.
But the industry has gone through a painful shakedown over the last three decades. The state’s commercial fleet shrank to 601 vessels in 2007, the last year of fishing, from nearly 5,000 active vessels in 1978.
Fewer than 120 of those vessels landed about half the state’s overall catch in the April through October salmon season. The boats belong to the few fishermen left who have made their living by catching salmon in the spring and summer and Dungeness crab in the late fall and winter.
The commercial fishing grounds have been greatly reduced along the North Coast in the past 15 years since the federal government decided that half the Klamath River’s salmon must be set aside for Indian tribes there.
Tweny years ago the annual fishery council meetings often featured scores of sport and commercial fishermen railing against the council for its proposed fishing restrictions. Outside one meeing in 1990, fishermen demonstrated in the streets of Eureka, even carrying a casket to lament the downfall of the region’s fishery.
The numbers of angry fishermen seemed to grow whenever the restrictions grew especially strict.
But Wednesday only a few commercial fishermen watched the proceedings and no one spoke against the ban.
“We’re lucky to get three or four trollers here now,” explained Dave Bitts, a Eureka commercial fishermen and president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. Moreover, he said, a lot of fishermen probably would conclude that the council made “the right decision” because the few available salmon should be spared to protect the fishery.
State and federal scientists have estimated that only about 122,000 chinook salmon will return this fall to the Sacramento River, the minimum the council has said is needed to sustain the fishery. Those fish are the remnants of about 30 million fingerlings that were released by state and federal hatheries in the spring of 2007.
In response to last year’s ban, Congress provided $170 million in disaster aid to ease the pain of fishermen and related businesses. About $50 million of that aid remains available for this year.
Fishermen hope they will be able to catch salmon again in 2010. In the meantime, some plan to enter less-lucrative fisheries such as albacore or slime eel, or to take jobs in the more abundant fisheries in Alaska. Others plan to seek work ashore.
Federal regulators and fishermen in the past have debated whether the sharp decline in the Sacramento salmon population was due largely to poor ocean conditions or in-river water diversions.
Officials are pursuing what can be done to improve the salmon’s survival in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, said Donald McIsaac, the fishery council’s executive director.
On Wednesday, instead of salmon, the greatest debate at the meeting regarded whether the council should encourage “community fishing associations.” Such groups could provide coastal towns and cities with a more-stable fishing industry tied to specific quotas for a limited quantity of groundfish such as rockfish, perch and sole.
To fishermen like Bitts, the discussion was one more sign that the days of commercial fishing as a sort of “last frontier” are rapidly coming to an end. Nonetheless, his association strongly supported such cooperative efforts as ways to assure that coastal communities keep viable fishing industries.
“It’s probably the only way were going to save Bodega Bay,” said Zeke Grader, the association’s executive director.
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