Recreational salmon
season gets nod, commercial still in doubt
By Joel Gallob Of the News-Times
March 15, 2006
Oregon and California recreational
salmon fishermen - both those who go out on charter boats and those who use
their own vessels - will get, at the very least, a six-week season, the
Pacific Fisheries Management Council decided last week. Depending on the
option to be selected by the PFMC in April, sport fishers may see additional
time periods on the water.
But there will not be an equivalent early-season opener for the commercial
salmon fishers and - absent passage of an emergency rule - those fishermen
will almost certainly not see any fishing from Cape Falcon in north
Tillamook County down to Point Sur near Monterey Bay this year.
Fishing Columbia River stocks, and in the coastal rivers and bays, will not
be prevented, but may be quite crowded this season. Other fisheries may also
see extra effort move into them, away from the severely reduced salmon
season.
Eric Schindler, the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife Ocean Sampling Project manager in Newport,
explained the different treatment accorded the sport and commercial fishery
this year. "In 2004, in March and April, here in Oregon, we took 24
recreational Chinook compared to 53,000 in the commercial fishery. In 2005
there were 110 Chinook taken in March and April by the sport fishers,
compared to 32,000 in the commercial fishery."
The chief driver for a possible closure is the expected very low return of
wild Chinook salmon to the Klamath River. If predictions are correct, this
will be the third year in a row when Klamath Chinook do not achieve a
conservation plan "floor" of at least 35,000 returning spawners. A
third year would automatically mandate a rebuilding plan for the Klamath
Chinook, and even the scientific prediction of a third low year is enough to
trigger a commercial closure to protect the Klamath fish.
The closure zone, from Cape Falcon to near Monterrey, California is about
700 miles long.
This year's returning Klamath Chinook represent the members of the 2002 year
out-migrating fish that escaped predators and fishermen, reached maturity
after four years in the ocean, and will soon be coming back to the river to
spawn. In 2002, pressed by Klamath farmers, the White House and Senator
Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Interior Secretary Gale Norton authorized diversion
of Klamath River water to Klamath Basin farmers. 2002 was a drought year and
that diversion, most of the region's fishery scientists say, led to the
extraordinary fish die-off that year. Now, four years later, it has led to a
prediction of insufficient returning spawners.
"The failure to follow scientific advice and the fish kills of 2002 is
now being put onto the backs of family fishermen by taking away their
livelihood," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen.
However, while the 2002 decision helped create this year's problem, the
damage to the Klamath salmon began well before 2002, with dams, diversions
and irrigation use all impacting the Klamath fish, giving that river
uniquely low numbers among major West Coast rivers.
"The decision to curtail fishing on fall-run Klamath River Chinook
salmon won't likely help the species survive migration up or down the river
because of continued low water flows that contribute to higher water
temperatures and explosive growth of the parasite that kills salmon,"
stated Tony DeFalco, West Coast director for the Marine Fish Conservation
Network.
The PFMC will meet next in April and decide what comes next for West Coast
salmon fisheries south of the Columbia River. But it did, last week, adopt
three options each for the post-April sport and commercial fisheries, and
seeks for public comment on them.
The options
The first of the commercial troll management options would open the area
from Cape Falcon to Humbug Mountain (near the California border) May 1-3,
8-10, 22-24, and 29-30; all of June; Sept. 1-23; and all of October. There
would be a 50 Chinook limit per week, and retention only of Chinook 28
inches or longer.
Option two would open the commercial season May 1-3, 8-10, 15-17, 22-24, and
29-30, with a 100 Chinook maximum per open period, and open again Sept. 5-9
and 20-25, with a 50 Chinook ceiling.
Option three would close the region's commercial salmon fishing.
For sport salmon fishers along this main part of the Oregon coast, the first
option is a season open March 15 - October 31 for all salmon except coho,
with a two fish per day maximum. There would be additional rules for the
coho catch, under a landed catch maximum of 35,000 coho.
Option two for the sport fishery would also be open March 15 - October 31,
for all salmon except coho, with a two fish per day ceiling as in option
one. However, rules regarding the coho component would be different and
tighter, with a landed maximum of 20,000.
Option three for the recreational fishery would be open March 15 - April 30
only, for all salmon except coho, again with a two fish per day maximum.
Option one, for both the sport and commercial fisheries, represents the
continuation of last year's rules. The likely effects of option one were
predicted by the council's scientists in a computer model "Output
Summary." It predicted the number of Klamath Chinook caught would be
greater, and start earlier, off the southern Oregon coast than the northern.
Those impacts were predicted to peak in the California part of the Klamath
Zone, and decline to the south, as well as to the north. But it found no
impacts on Klamath Chinook off any part of the Oregon coast from
recreational salmon fishing in March and April.
The "Output Summary" also looked at the likely effects of a
commercial salmon troll season. It was less optimistic. This showed major
impacts on Klamath Chinook from a repeat of the 2005 commercial season off
the northern and central Oregon coast, and similarly large impacts in the
Fort Bragg area of California. It found no impacts at the Klamath Zone
(Oregon or California halves) because there was no fishing in that zone in
last year's season. In short, it found that doing what was done in the 2005
commercial season would generate a huge impact on the Klamath Chinook - a
catch of 22,640 Klamath Chinook, versus just 1,747 from sport fishing.
NOAA's view
In April, the PFMC will adopt one of the options for both the sport and
commercial fisheries. But for the latter, it is already constrained to
achieve goals that can't be met if there is any fishery at all (and probably
won't be met even if there is no commercial fishery).
The method for alleviating the economic harm a closure would cause is the
adoption of an emergency rule temporarily overruling the Fishery Management
Plan.
Whatever the PFMC does will constitute a recommendation to NOAA (National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Fisheries, a branch of the Commerce
Department. But NOAA's decision is not necessarily final, Schindler
explained, as "the Secretary of Commerce must sign it." He
recalled that once, in the 30-year history of modern fisheries regulation,
the Commerce Secretary did reject a package of season regulations from NOAA.
But ordinarily, it is the PFMC that makes a recommendation to NOAA Fisheries
(also known as the National Marine Fisheries Service), and, says Mike
Sorensen, "it will all depend on what NMFS does. The council had a lot
of discussion about an emergency rule."
Sorensen is a charter boat operator in Newport and a member of the PFMC's
Salmon Advisory Subpanel; he attended the March PFMC meeting. He urged all
Oregon fishers, and others in the fishing industry, to write the PFMC to
tell it what effects a closure would have on them. (The address is 7700 NE
Ambassador Place, Suite 200, Portland, OR 97220.)
NOAA Fisheries provided a "Guidance Letter" to the PFMC on March
10 that discussed the Pacific Coast Salmon Fishery Management Plan (FMP)
and, in particular, the Klamath Chinook. "The conservation objective
for Klamath River Fall Chinook (KFRC) requires a return of 33-34 percent of
potential adult natural spawners, but no fewer than 35,000 naturally
spawning adults, be achieved in any one year," it states.
"(I)f the ocean fisheries closed from January through August 2006
between Cape Falcon, Oregon, and Pt. Sur, California (near Monterey) and the
Klamath River fishery (tribal and recreational) is closed immediately and
remained closed in 2006, the expected number of natural adult spawners would
be 29,200. ... Under such circumstances, the council is required to close
salmon fisheries within council jurisdiction that impact the stock,"
(i.e., commercial and sport fisheries from Cape Falcon to Pt. Sur).
"Given the circumstances, any fishing in the closed area that may be
proposed would have to be approved by emergency rule to modify the salmon
FMP," it states.
But the "Guidance Letter" warned that "based on what is
currently known, and given the clear provisions of the FMP, NOAA Fisheries
concludes it will be difficult to justify approval of an emergency rule to
allow additional fishing in 2006."
Further, it stated, the six-week opener starting March 15 "will add to
the catch of KRFC that has already occurred" - making it even harder to
have a commercial or sport season after April.
Joel Gallob is a reporter for the News-Times. He can be reached at 265-8571,
ext. 223 or joel.gallob@lee.net
