If fresh, local wild salmon sounds like the perfect choice for a
summer barbecue, you may be disappointed this month.
Although hundreds of thousands of chinook salmon are swimming past the
Central Coast, commercial fishermen are not allowed to catch them
until July 4. While fisheries scientists predict a large return of
spawning salmon to the Sacramento River and its tributaries this year
-- nearly 2 million -- those fish intermingle in the ocean with a far
less robust population from the Klamath River basin. To protect the
Klamath fish, the entire salmon fishery has been closed from Point Sur
to Cape Falcon in the northern part of Oregon.
That means no local salmon in markets and restaurants at a time when
appetites have been whetted by reports that the fatty acids in
cold-water fish such as salmon are healthy, said Phil DiGirolamo,
owner of Phil's Fish Market and Restaurant in Moss Landing.
"It's going to hurt us," DiGirolamo said. "I didn't
freeze any because the demand was so strong."
DiGirolamo said he has enough salmon to last into the weekend, but no
longer. After that, he may offer Atlantic farm-raised salmon, which
many customers avoid, or possibly Alaskan sockeye.
The commercial fleet unloaded its last catch for a month Wednesday
morning. Tom Hart, president of the Fishermen's Association of Moss
Landing, was first in line with his boat and an estimated 1,400 to
1,500 pounds of salmon in his hold. On better trips he might have
brought in 3,000 pounds, he said.
As dockworkers at Bay Fresh Seafood in Moss Landing immersed Hart's
catch in industrial-sized bins of icy slush, they separated out a
fraction of the fish, those missing one of the fins on their back, and
handed them off to two fisheries technicians from the California
Department of Fish and Game. The "finned" fish, which have
been tagged, are key to managing the ocean fishery.
The tags allow fisheries managers to identify where the fish
originated. Once they know that, they can determine which parts of the
ocean need to be closed off to protect certain salmon runs.
Three years ago, low water levels in the Klamath River led to a fish
kill near the delta. Many adult salmon never made it up the streams to
spawn, and the resulting "class" of smolts is low enough for
managers to be concerned about maintaining a harvestable run. The
trick will be to allow enough of these few fish through the gantlet of
predators, disease and fishing to keep the population going. Fisheries
biologists say 35,000 fish, at a minimum, must make it up the Klamath
to maintain the run.
But that translates to many more fish that must be left in the ocean
to accomplish the goal. The problem for management is that the fish
intermingle in the sea, and there's no easy way to separate them from
the far more abundant Sacramento River fish. That's why some of the
fish are tagged.
The marked fish started life in a hatchery. When they were fingerlings
-- only 2 to 4 inches long -- biologists implanted tiny wire tags in
their snouts. Each tag is marked with a code that tells the fish's
birthday and home stream. Now, three to four years after tagging, the
salmon are at least 28 inches long, which is large enough for
commercial fishermen to keep.
After the fish are unloaded on the dock, fisheries technician Jamie
Barlow interviews boat captains to find out where and when they caught
the fish. She slices off the fish head, which contains the tag, and
ships them to technicians in Santa Rosa to read.
In previous years, tag data showed that Klamath fish were caught in
greatest abundance during June. That information led to this year's
closure to protect the Klamath fish.
