And in the kitchen of Barbara's Fish Trap, in Princeton-by-the-Sea, chefs must resort to serving defrosted salmon fillets these days.

Fishermen aren't the only ones feeling the pinch as regulators sharply restrict the salmon season off California's and Oregon's coast. Restaurateurs, suppliers, party boat captains are all scrambling to adjust.

But the consumer - they note with some irony - may never notice a thing.

Salmon will be available this summer in supermarkets and restaurants across the state, even if the local fishing fleet remains tied up in the dock. Fish farms in Chile and British Columbia and strong wild runs in Alaska will simply fill the gap, suppliers said Friday.

``It still sells, even though it's frozen,'' said P.T. Saechao, the butcher at the upscale Village Market in Oakland. ``We may have to go with farmed, if that's all we can get that's fresh.''

This week federal regulators slashed the salmon season by roughly 90 percent, allowing commercial boats to catch no more than 75 salmon a week and banning commercial salmon trawling in most of June and July, the heart of the season. Many boats have been catching 700 to 900 fish a week.

That there's any season at all is a bit of a surprise. Three consecutive years of poor Klamath River salmon runs threatened to force a total ban on any salmon fishing - recreational or commercial - from Point Sur to Astoria, Ore. But late Thursday, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council approved an emergency rule to open the season and keep the industry somewhat intact.

At the Monterey Fish Market in Berkeley, co-owner Kim Steele expects to still get fresh Pacific Chinook, or king, salmon intermittently.

Customers, she said, ``want wild salmon but they will take farm-raised.'' That might be influenced by the price: Wild California salmon normally sells for $11 to $13 a pound at most markets. This year, Steele cautioned, ``it might be $17 a pound. It might be up to $20 a pound.''

Even at those prices, fishermen say they will still land in the red. Many are looking for some sort of disaster relief assistance from the federal government. Others simply won't make it.