PD Editorial: North Coast fishers need help

The bad news keeps piling up for the North Coast’s beleaguered fishing industry.

Crab season was delayed yet again this winter, and now salmon season may be canceled entirely for the second consecutive year.

Even a hopeful development — the ongoing removal of four obsolete hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River — turned sour when as many as 830,000 hatchery fish died within days after being released in the Klamath, apparently because of high water pressure inside a bypass tunnel at Iron Gate Dam.

Commercial and sport fishing have supported families in Bodega Bay, Fort Bragg and other North Coast towns for generations.

“The identity of Bodega Bay is fishing,” Dick Ogg, a local skipper and president of the Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Marketing Association, told the editorial board. “The town itself, that is what we are, fishermen.”

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people can make a living on the water.

California’s commercial fishing fleet numbered nearly 5,000 in the early 1980s, according to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council. That number fell to 464 by 2022, and it’s likely to keep sinking, especially if salmon season, which traditionally runs from May until about October, is canceled again this year.

Regulators may not have any alternative. Facing another disastrous forecast for fall-run Chinook salmon populations, the fisheries management council released several options for scaled-back ocean fishing in 2024. They include strict catch limits for commercial and sport fishermen, a shortened season or no salmon season at all.

A decision is expected in April.

Chinook salmon and Dungeness crab are staples of California’s $200 million fishing industry. But salmon populations are a small fraction of their historic abundance. Dams, like those on the Klamath River, block spawning habitat, while droughts and diversions have reduced stream flows and raised water temperatures, killing large numbers of young salmon.

At times, crab season has been delayed by elevated levels of domoic acid, a potentially fatal neurotoxin. More recently, crabbers have been kept in port so migrating whales won’t get tangled in lines that tether crab pots on the ocean floor to buoys on the surface.

Salmon have a life cycle of three to five years, and consecutive wet winters are reason to hope that more fish will be returning from the ocean to spawn in future years. Moreover, the Klamath dams should be gone by the end of this year, with hatcheries prepared to repopulate the river.

But the fishing industry needs help now.

Healthy fisheries sustain local families, including Native American tribes, attract tourists to the region and contribute to a healthy environment.

Purchasing locally caught fish when it’s available is one way everyone can help. Sonoma County is waiving berthing fees to help. But fishers harmed by last year’s salmon season cancellation are still waiting for federal disaster aid. And now they may be looking at another lost season.

Sonoma County, meanwhile, is seeking $1 million from Washington toward replacing the aging icehouse in Bodega Bay, which sounds obscure but is critical infrastructure for fishers from Half Moon Bay to Fort Bragg. “We can’t operate without it,” Ogg said.

Preserving this legacy industry should be a priority this year for Rep. Jared Huffman, who understands the economic and environmental importance of healthy fisheries, and California Sens. LaPhonza Butler and Alex Padilla.

“Bodega has that identity of being a fishing village,” Ogg told us, “and we don’t want lose that.” No, we don’t.

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.