Small population may make salmon off-limits in ocean

By Dylan Darling, Record Searchlight
February 28, 2006

Despite strong numbers in autumn, fall-run Sacramento River chinook salmon could be banned for commercial and recreational anglers in the ocean because of low numbers on the Klamath River.

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council, which determines offshore fishing seasons for California, Oregon and Washington, is weighing a ban on salmon fishing this year. The ban would stretch 700 miles from Point Sur near Monterey to Cape Falcon near the mouth of the Columbia River in northern Oregon.

The ban would be the first of its kind for operators of about 1,000 salmon-trolling boats, whose industry already has been left reeling by limited seasons and catch quotas.

"We would have expected the catch to have been in the hundreds of thousands," said Rod McInnis, regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Last fall, a bumper run of 383,500 chinook came up the Sacramento River to spawn, which officials say suggests there will be a high number of the fish in the ocean this year. But, while at sea, those chinook mingle with fall-run Klamath chinook, whose numbers were at the other end of the spectrum.

"You can’t tell them apart," said Chuck Tracy, salmon staff officer for the council.

Because of the mixture of the abundant Sacramento and diminished Klamath stocks at sea, the council is considering calling off the catch to protect the Klamath fish.

The Klamath River, which has been the center of an agricultural and environmental battle that’s included the 2001 irrigation-water cutoff at its source and 2002 fish die-off on its main stem, saw 29,000 natural-run chinook last fall, McInnis said. Council rules allowing commercial and recreational fishing require at least 35,000.

A combination of the fish die-off, a lethal parasite that killed many of the progeny of the survivors and poor ocean conditions has brought the Klamath chinook numbers down.

"This is a low point for fall chinook in the Klamath," McInnis said. "Unless some new information comes about, (the council) will call for closure."

The council is one of eight regional fishery-management councils established by a federal act in 1976. Next week in Seattle, the council will consider the ban as well as the possibilitys of a severely limited catch. There will then be public meetings in Oregon, Washington and California. At the beginning of April, the council will decide whether to propose a ban and the Fisheries Service will make the final decision.

"The options are no season to almost no season," said Glen Spain, northwest regional director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.

The proposed ban would block the last commercial and recreational salmon fishing left between the middle of California and top of Oregon.

Without salmon, commercial fishermen in Northern California and southern Oregon could take a substantial financial hit, a year after losing $30 million to $40 million because of constricted seasons.

"It could easily hit $100 million this year," Spain said.

Last year, fishermen hauled in 6,000 chinook in the waters off California near where the Klamath meets the Pacific during a season that lasted 13 days, Sept. 3 to 16, Tracy said. The season was short because it lasted only until a quota was met.

The fall-run chinook on the Sacramento and Klamath are the last salmon that fishermen, commercial and recreational alike, legally can pull into their boats. Winter-run chinook and coho salmon already are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act from southern Oregon to Central California, meaning they aren’t to be caught, McInnis said.

Near where the Klamath runs into the sea, the Yurok Tribe also is evaluating the low chinook numbers to determine how many fish its members should catch this year. The tribe catches chinook for food and ceremony, said Dave Hillemeier, Yurok fisheries department manager.

"It’s safe to say that there will be a minimal fishery, if any at all," Hillemeier said.

Reporter Dylan Darling can be reached at 225-8266 or at ddarling@redding.com.