A Fort Bragg-based fishing group is accusing federal officials of covering up their own mismanagement of the formerly salmon-rich Klamath River watershed by imposing severe new fishing quotas based on "bad science."

In a lawsuit filed this week in San Francisco, the 100-member Salmon Trollers Marketing Association at Noyo Harbor said the North Coast salmon industry is being "devastated" needlessly.

The legal action targets the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is blamed for "adopting punitive fishing regulations instead of addressing its own mismanagement of the Klamath River."

Ben Pratt, a second-generation fisherman and association member, said the federal agency's decision to force fishermen to follow "these irrational quotas is devastating the industry, and coastal communities."

Federal spokesman Jim Millberry said Thursday the agency has not seen the lawsuit, "so we can't comment on the allegations."

Pratt, speaking by cell phone Thursday from his boat plying the waters off Point Arena, said he and other coastal fishermen aren't having much luck this season.

"It's too little, too late," Pratt said.

Mendocino attorney Edie Lerman, who filed the suit, said federal policies this year closed seven of what usually are the most productive weeks of the salmon season. New quotas limit commercial fishing vessels to 75 salmon a week, a catch that Lerman said won't even pay for the fuel used by a fishing boat.

The local fishing industry blames dwindling Klamath River salmon runs on federally approved diversions of water for agricultural and domestic use. The lawsuit cites federal plans to step up diversions, a move it says is likely to increase the possibility of further fish kills. About 68,000 salmon died during the 2002 Klamath River spawning season because of too-warm water temperatures, according to the suit.

Pratt and other members of the Fort Bragg association have won the backing of Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena.

"Despite comments to the contrary, the declining salmon populations in the Klamath River basin are not due to overfishing, but to federal mismanagement," Thompson said.

In a letter of support, Thompson wrote that a 10-year management plan hastily approved by the Bush administration is "so flawed it has been ruled as arbitrary and capricious in three different courts of law."

 

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