Fisheries managers have canceled the early season of ocean fishing for chinook salmon off the coast of Oregon and Northern California and are considering whether to close most of the Pacific salmon fishery because of a collapse of stocks in California rivers.
The best West Coast salmon fishermen can hope for is a “bare bones” sport and commercial fishing season this year, but the outlook remains bleak, officials say.
Federal fisheries managers meeting this week in Sacramento, Calif., canceled early spring salmon fishing in the Pacific off Northern California and Oregon to protect salmon that remain alive in the ocean.
On Friday, the Pacific Fishery Management Council is expected to choose three management options for the rest of the season, and will set final regulations when they meet in Seattle in April.
One possibility is shutting down the salmon fishery from the northern tip of Oregon south to the Mexican border — something fishermen are hoping to avoid. Washington may see some fishing, but even if fishing is allowed, many fishermen expect that catches will be poor.
“We had a pretty good idea they were going to cut it back,” said Mark Newell, a fisherman from Newport, Ore., and a member of the Oregon Salmon Commission. “We are trying to craft a very bare bones season which would give California some sport fishery, a very limited amount of commercial troll, and Oregon a somewhat limited sport fishery and very limited troll in Oregon also.”
California commercial trollers traditionally can’t start fishing until May 1, but sport charters have been allowed to fish out of Fort Bragg, Calif., since the middle of February. They were shut down, along with Oregon commercial trollers set to begin fishing Saturday in a season authorized last year to run through April.
Newell said the Sacramento River chinook run is so weak this year it will be hard to justify any ocean fishing in waters where they’re likely to be caught.
“We are hoping that the best we would be looking at is probably a July and August (commercial) fishery for chinook, and maybe some coho in the sport fishery,” Newell said.
In most years, about 90 percent of wild chinook or “king” salmon caught off the California coast originate in the Sacramento River and its tributaries, but the number of returning adults dropped dramatically last fall. Oregon catches also rely heavily on Sacramento chinook.
Only about 90,000 adult spawners returned to the Sacramento River and its tributaries last year, the second lowest number on record and well below the government’s conservation goals. That’s down from 277,000 in 2006 and a record high of 804,000 in 2002.
Biologists are predicting that 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.
Other West Coast rivers also have seen declines in their salmon runs, though not as steep as California’s Central Valley.
Some marine scientists say the salmon declines can be attributed in part to unusual weather patterns that have disrupted the marine food chain along the Pacific Coast in recent years.
But many fishermen believe the main culprit behind the Sacramento River’s collapse is increased pumping of freshwater from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to farmers and water districts in the Central Valley and Southern California.
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