Salmon In Crisis

By Nate Grader

Chinook Salmon. Photo: NOAA

Last fall, we waited for the "missing" run of Chinook salmon on the Sacramento River.  Fishermen knew that returns of Chinook to the Sacramento River were going to be dismal after enduring one of the worst fishing seasons in recent memory. The fish were simply not there.

For a fishery that was nearly shutdown the previous year to limit impacts on the low numbers of fish from the Klamath River, the dearth of fish from the strong Sacramento stock was especially disappointing and confounding. Fisheries managers too were surprised at the unusually low numbers of salmon returning to the Sacramento River to spawn.  But no one predicted it would be this bad.

On one of the West Coast's most important salmon rivers, only 88,000 fish returned. For a river that has seen over 800,000 fish return in recent years, and a river whose fish make up 90% of a $150 million industry in California and Oregon, this is truly a disaster.

Federal fisheries managers at the Pacific Fisheries Mangers Council had the unfortunate task of informing the commercial and recreational fishing industry in California and Oregon that due to the Sacramento River stock collapse, there will not be any fishing this year.  On April 10th, 2008, the Council voted to close the fishing season off the coast of Oregon and California.

“This is something that has not happened since the salmon fishing industry was founded in 1848 in the Bay Area,“ says Zeke Grader, Executive Director of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

Federal agencies responsible for the recovery and preservation of salmon have pointed to aberrant "ocean conditions" in the past years, which they say could have been responsible for the low returns in 2007 and anticipated low returns in 2008.  Fishing groups and conservationists have, while not entirely discounting ocean conditions, pointed to the increasing amount of water that is being pumped out of the Sacramento delta, in addition to the cumulative insults to in-river salmon habitat from pollution, unscreened water diversions, and a host of other problems.

At a press conference following a March fisheries regulatory meeting in Sacramento, a group of recreational, commercial, tribal, and conservation groups laid out solutions to the salmon crisis in California. A representative of the Winnemem Wintu tribe, whose ancestral lands on the McCloud River were cut off from migrating salmon by the Shasta Dam, issued a stern warning, "If you don't change your practices, you will lose your salmon too."  With that in mind, the representatives from the various groups offered solutions with the paramount solution being a reduction in water exports from the Delta.

Fishermen from California and Oregon have been hitting the halls of Congress looking for disaster relief legislation from local politicians. The crisis enveloping the West Coast salmon fishing industry has not been limited to California and Oregon. In Washington State, poor returns of salmon on the Snake River, the main tributary of the Columbia River, were too low to enable a significant fishery for Washington trollers.

In Seattle, Save Our Wild Salmon, a coalition of fishing and salmon advocates, is launching a road show complete with a giant 25-foot salmon in tow that will travel across the country, in an effort to bring attention to the salmon crisis on the Snake River and the West Coast and to build congressional support for solutions (in this case the removal of the lower four Snake River dams). For more information on the road show which will be in the Bay Area on April 19-23, please click here:

Also, to bring attention to the plight of the salmon and the people who depend on them,  a group of concerned commercial and sport fishermen, tribes, and conservation groups are putting on a benefit concert - called SalmonAid - on May 31 and June 1 in Jack London Square in Oakland. SalmonAid'08 will be two full days of music, education, action and fun. The  proceeds  will benefit salmon restoration projects throughout the West Coast. For more information please click here:

The crisis affecting the salmon returns on the West Coast has been a long time in the making.  There are solutions to these seemingly intractable problems, and fishermen and conservationists are committed to seeing them through.

 

Click here for 10 ways people can help to restore the Central Valley.

 

For more information on what you can do, contact the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, P.O. Box 29370, San Francisco, CA 94129-0370, Tel: (415) 561-5080, www.pcffa.org

 

Photo Credits: McCloud River: DFG. Troller: IFR