Klamath fish council looks at harvest policies

Tam Moore
Oregon Staff Writer

Capital Press - October 21, 2005

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – It began with a massive fish kill in the late summer of 2002, and this week the Klamath Fish Management Council tried to propose public policy that can contend with more disasters that choke out annual fall chinook runs, still leaving a few fish to harvest.

To Dave Hillemeier, a fisheries biologist with the downriver Yurok Tribe of American Indians, these aren’t natural disasters. In a debate with other members of the council, a 10-member federal advisory commission, he said disease outbreaks in Klamath River fish populations seem related to human actions regulating water flow in the 10 million acre watershed shared by California and Oregon.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation diverts waters from the Trinity River – the Klamath’s largest tributary – to irrigators in California’s Central Valley, and from the upper Klamath in the vicinity of Klamath Falls, Ore., to about 1,500 Klamath Basin farms on both sides of the California-Oregon border.

“I question whether this is natural or (it comes) from changes people have done over years to the (Klamath River) system,” Hillemeier said of the probable cause of the fish diseases associated with warm waters and low stream flow.

The culprit in 2002 was an outbreak that killed at least 33,000 salmon returning to the Klamath to spawn. In more recent years, it’s a parasite that attacks juvenile salmon trying to make their way down the Klamath toward the ocean in low flow conditions.

At the urging of Dave Bitts, a commercial fisherman from Eureka and a veteran management council member, the council this week urged a policy change to the current floor that demands 35,000 adult fall Chinook salmon return to the Klamath every year, even if that means shutting down all fishing. This year, with the ocean salmon population short – probably as a result of the 2002 die-off – the Pacific Fisheries Council drastically cut ocean commercial and sports fishing from Point Sur in Central California to Cape Falcon on the Oregon Coast.

“I support what the (Pacific Fish Management) Council did this year as appropriate action, but it had a big economic impact,” said Bitts.

Working with tribal members of the Klamath Council, he negotiated wiggle room when future ocean salmon populations fall short of the Klamath goal. This year they apparently met the 35,000-fish goal, just barely. No one will know for sure until biologists complete their studies of the dismal 2005 season.

What the Klamath Council finally settled on, after three hours of discussion and debate that almost bogged down in details, is a recommendation that the Pacific Council amend the management plan for Pacific Coast fisheries to allow a minimal harvest even if return of Klamath spawners fall short of the 35,000-fish goal.

“No one’s going to get rich over this. This means a few ceremonial fish for the Tribes, and the most restrictive ocean fishery we’ve ever seen. This is a lifeline,” said Bitts.

It’s up to the Pacific Coast Fisheries Management Council at an upcoming fall meeting to decide if the Klamath lifeline should be invited, or if the arbitrary 35,000-fish floor set in 1986 should continue. If it does, that could mean when mathematical models predict 34,999 spawners returning to the mouth of the Klamath there will be no ocean fishing season, no tribal harvest on the massive river, and no sports fishing anywhere the Klamath salmon roam at sea or inland.

If the Klamath Council’s approach is taken and the minimum harvest is set at 10 percent of returning stocks the math for a return of 37,500 fish would work out this way: 3,750 split among tribal, ocean and sport for an upstream run of 33,750 spawners. Under the current cap, fishers would divvy up 2,500 fish and 35,000 would head upstream. A technical report in 1999 concluded that makes little impact on long-term survival of the salmon, if the run rebounds in future years.

What took most of the Klamath Council’s debate time was shaping safeguards so if a disaster came in a year after a short run, there wouldn’t be overfishing that could send sub-basin populations of fish into extinction.

Tam Moore is based in Medford, Ore. His e-mail address is tmoore@capitalpress.com.