The salmon crisis arrives

A fishery shutdown will harm coastal households, but 'disaster' looms for chinook stocks  

March 17, 2008

The Oregonian Editorial

E ven now, nobody seems to know just why the traditionally strong run of Sacramento fall chinook has plunged to dangerously low levels -- levels so low that "the word 'disaster' comes to mind," according to Don Hansen, chairman of the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Is it ocean temperatures? Oxygen levels? Sea lions? Deteriorating spawning grounds? Hatchery practice changes? The accumulated impact of dams? A scarcity of krill? Overfishing? Pollution? Some combination of all of these? Nobody really knows.

But everybody knows the implications of a disappearing salmon run. The council on Friday narrowed the options for responding to the decline, and none of them represent good news for people who rely on the fishery for their livelihoods. It's possible next month that the council will shut down all chinook fishing from northern Oregon to the Mexican border, driving commercial and recreational anglers to other stocks, other places or out of business. The spring season already has been shut down.

Depression is settling in communities up and down the Pacific Coast, but this time there is little argument that the chinook run stands on the brink of disaster and that it makes little sense to deplete the diminished number that survive. Anglers will turn to crab, tuna or other species in the hope that stocks will rebound next year, but they know that the indicators aren't promising.

The decline, following a similar decline in coastal coho runs last year, certainly suggests an offshore cause, but it's also no secret that wild salmon runs have long been stressed by the way we've dammed rivers, allowed sediment to filter into streams, dumped farmed fish into the gene pool and overfished the stocks that remain. Such stresses are the reason, for example, why U.S. District Judge James Redden has twice ordered the government to spill more water through the Columbia River dams to assist migrating salmon.

The new salmon crisis should lead us in two significant directions. One should be research into the salmon's experience in the ocean, which remains, essentially, a blue mystery churning beneath our vision. The other direction is toward assisting the households whose income has suddenly been yanked away, whether by direct relief payments or other means.

People who catch salmon are at the tail of the salmon life cycle. They shouldn't be made to shoulder the full consequences for all the factors that have contributed to the salmon's decline. It is a regional problem -- a global problem, perhaps -- and the pain should be shared widely.

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