Salmon

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SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The stunning collapse of one of the West Coast's biggest wild salmon runs has prompted even cash-strapped fishermen to call for an unprecedented shutdown of salmon fishing off the coasts of California and Oregon.

"There's likely no fish, so what are you going to be fishing for?" asked Duncan MacLean, a fisherman from Half Moon Bay. "I have no problem sitting out to rebuild this resource if that's what's necessary."
The Pacific Fishery Management Council meets in Seattle this week and will likely vote to impose the most severe restrictions ever on West Coast salmon fishing to protect California's dwindling chinook stocks.
The Sacramento River chinook run is usually one of the most productive on the Pacific Coast, providing the bulk of the salmon caught by sport and commercial trollers off California and Oregon.
But only about 90,000 adult chinook returned to the Central Valley last fall -- the second lowest number on record and well below the number needed to maintain a healthy fishery. That number is projected to fall to a record low of 58,000 this year. By contrast, 775,000 adults were counted in the Sacramento River and its tributaries as recently as 2002.
"This stock got off-the-charts bad very suddenly," said Donald McIsaac, the council's executive director. "It's a very, very severe situation."
The council, which regulates Pacific Coast fisheries, will choose between three management options: a total ban on salmon fishing off the coast of California and Oregon; extremely limited fishing in select areas; or catch-and-release fishing for scientific research.
The council's final decision is expected Thursday. The National Marine Fisheries Service will then decide whether to implement the regulations by May 1.
The Central Valley collapse is a blow to fishermen, tackle shops, charter boat operators and other businesses that depend on commercial and recreational salmon fishing.
For consumers, it will be hard to find any chinook, also known as king salmon, which are prized by anglers, seafood connoisseurs and upscale restaurants. There should still be abundant supplies of farm-raised salmon and wild sockeye from Alaska, but prices could be higher.
"It's going to be devastating to the marketplace to have no California king salmon at all," said David Goldenberg, CEO of the California Salmon Council. "For people who want high-quality salmon, they're not going to have that choice."
Biologists and others are trying to figure out what caused the salmon collapse so they can make sure California's chinook populations rebound.
There are many potential factors, because wild salmon are born in streams and rivers, migrate to the ocean when they're juveniles and spend two to four years there before returning to spawn in the areas where they were born. In between they have to navigate the often treacherous waters of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay.
The council has asked state and federal scientists to research 46 possible causes, including water diversions, habitat destruction, dam operations, agricultural pollution, marine predators and ocean conditions.
Many scientists point to unusual weather patterns that disrupted the marine food chain along the Pacific Coast in 2005, when thousands of seabirds washed up dead or starving because they couldn't find enough to eat.
Researchers believe those poor ocean conditions also devastated the juvenile salmon that would have returned to the Central Valley last year. Young chinook couldn't find the tiny shrimp and fish they depend on to survive.
"The fish went to the ocean in 2005 and found nothing to eat when they got there. They either starved to death or got so weak from not eating enough that they got eaten by predators," said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Peterson said ocean conditions have improved since then, which could help revive West Coast salmon populations.
Many fishermen and environmentalists believe the main problem lies in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. They say too much water is being diverted to farms and water districts in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
They want the state and federal government to limit pumping from the delta, which disorients migrating salmon and kills young fish that get sucked into the powerful pumps. They're also calling for a reduction in agricultural runoff and the restoration of salmon habitat in the rivers.
"We did have some poor ocean conditions, but that doesn't explain why the Central Valley stocks took such a severe hit," said Zeke Grader, who heads the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.
But state water officials believe the ocean is the chief culprit. The water pumps continue to meet stringent operating standards, and while more water has been diverted in recent years, there's also been more water available to export, said Jerry Johns, deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources.
"Ocean conditions are the most likely cause here," Johns said. "The requirements that we have to abide by to protect these fish haven't changed in the last several years."

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Salmon ban called 'devastating'

Officials predict more than 2,000 jobs will be lost because of the ban on commercial and recreational fishing.

By DAVE STREGE
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency in California as a result of the historic ban on salmon fishing off California by the federal government.
The complete closure to recreational and commercial fishing off our coast because of the unprecedented collapse of the Sacramento River Chinook salmon run means a negative economic impact of $255 million and the loss of 2,263 jobs, according to the Department of Fish and Game.
Schwarzenegger asked President Bush for federal disaster assistance "to help the fishing industry cope with the devastating economic impacts."
Craig Stone of Emeryville Sportfishing said 40 to 50 percent of his yearly business comes from salmon fishing.
We're not going to be able to make up what we'll lose, but we'll be doing other things to pay the bills, hopefully," Stone said.
His landing will concentrate on targeting halibut, striped bass, rockfish and lingcod, and perhaps albacore.
"We're all hoping for a miracle in the Sacramento River and hoping their numbers are all wrong," Stone said. "Even the people that make the numbers hope they're wrong."
The Pacific Fishery Management Council on Thursday adopted the fishing ban, the most restrictive measure in history for the West Coast. The closure included most of Oregon, which will have a small coho salmon season.
"There are some different regulations in the state of Washington, but it is basically closed, also," PFMC chairman Don Hansen said.
The Sacramento River fall Chinook salmon stock is typically one of the healthiest and most abundant on the West Coast.
In 2002, 775,000 adult Chinook salmon returned to spawn. But last year, only 88,000 returned and this year the number expected back is 54,000, far lower than the annual goal of 122,000 to 180,000.
"It's probably the worst disaster I've ever seen in my 30 years of sitting in the council process," Hansen said. "We're just hoping we can find everything that went wrong and turn it around and get it back to where it should be."
Causes for the collapse are unknown, but suspected reasons range from poor ocean conditions to pollution to the amount of water diverted south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.