SALEM - He sat in the back of Hearing Room F, his hands shaking slightly. He fumbled with the big bright signs he'd brought with him to illustrate his point. He wasn't sure whether to stand up or remain in his chair.

He is a fisherman, not a public speaker. He should be out at sea, one hand on the helm and one eye on the long glistening lines stretched behind the boat's stern, attached to hooks ready to slip in the mouth of a fat Chinook. Instead, his 46-foot boat is tied to the docks in Newport, idle.

It wasn't easy addressing this group of stern-faced politicians, bureaucrats and fellow fishermen. But Paul Alexander had sat through two hours of the governor's emergency salmon summit, listening to everyone else's solutions to his problem.

He had something to say.

"Please," he said, eyes scanning the panel, "Try to get our season for us. I need to go fishing. I need money."

Reeling from the closure of their spring season, faced with the prospect of no salmon fishing whatsoever in 2006, commercial fishermen in Oregon have ventured into the foreign waters of the political arena in greater numbers than anyone can remember.  

On March 23, 300 fishermen and supporters rallied in Astoria against an unprecedented fishery closure. As many packed a meeting room at Coos Bay's Red Lion Inn last week to plead with the Pacific Fishery Management Council to declare an emergency and waive the rules that cut back fishing when salmon runs in Northern California's Klamath River are predicted to drop below 35,000 spawners. And they joined Paul Alexander on Tuesday in Hearing Room F at the Capitol to ask for the governor's help in pressuring the federal government to declare the fishery a failure if the season does get shut down.

Oregon salmon fishermen have watched their political clout dwindle as their numbers have diminished. But now they are writing letters to federal rulemakers, calling their congressmen, bending the ears of any reporter within reach and driving hours to attend these meetings - in part because it's more productive than twiddling their thumbs in port but also because these fishermen have no other choice.

Their livelihood is at stake.

"I learned years ago you can shape your own destiny if you do get involved," said Florence troller Al Pazar, who used to fish exclusively for salmon but outfitted his boats for crab and other species after regulators clamped down on salmon trollers in other waters. "There have always been a few guys willing to carry water for the rest of the fleet. Now more people are showing up."

Hard times hit after rebound

Alexander is a newcomer to Oregon's fishery, though he spent 15 seasons working boats in Alaska. A religious conversion led him to elementary school teaching, he said, but a few years back, a friend talked him into buying a salmon boat. Demand for wild salmon had spiked with awareness about the health risks associated with farm-raised fish, which continue to dominate the market. Plus, years of work restoring the rivers that spawn Northwest salmon and fine-tuning the regulations that keep their stocks healthy had led to a rebound in fish numbers. Salmon fishermen earned $7 million in 2003 and almost $10 million in 2004. Things were looking good for the industry.

So Alexander, 47, put up his Salem home as collateral, bought a 46-foot boat, the Metta Marie, and got back into the business he'd dreamed about since he was a child growing up in Ilwaco, Wash. Then the second poor run on the Klamath in two years prompted federal fishery managers to hack away at last year's season, trimming up to 110 days from the total Oregon trollers can ply the waters. Alexander tried to switch to tuna, but those fish run much farther out to sea, where rising fuel costs make the journey more expensive and harsh weather conditions make it more dangerous.

"My fishing income in 2005 was $10,000, after expenses," he said.

When word got out that the federal government had shut down the spring season and is now mulling a full-fledged closure, Alexander decided to follow the advice of his colleagues and to "get his head out of the sand" and make himself heard.

Last month, he wandered into the state Capitol looking for congressional staffers to press his case. There he learned about the governor's salmon summit, and that he could watch the proceedings on a television in an overflow room in the Capitol basement. As he walked by the live hearing, he worked up the courage to walk in and speak.

"I understood I didn't really have a place to be speaking at that point," he said. "But I felt like if I didn't say it, nobody's going to hear it. We need a season. The federal government is going to shut us down."

Loss has ripple effect

If nobody hears the fishermen's plea, it won't be for a lack of trying. One by one, speakers at the hearing in Coos Bay on Monday took the podium with equal parts fervor and desperation.  

"This can't be fixed on the ocean," said John Ward, president of the Southwest Oregon chapter of the Association of Northwest Steelheaders. "You take us off the ocean now, we're going to be off the ocean for 10 or 100 years. Why? We're not fixing it in the river, and the river can't fix itself."

That argument drew hearty applause from the standing-room-only crowd, many of whom agreed that the problems on the Klamath River - farms that suck water out of it, dams that block fish passage, diseases that kill smolts and sea lions that gobble up adults - aren't solved by greater restrictions on fishermen.

"The first thing that can be done, said Dan Varoujean, a Coos Bay fish researcher, "is to shoot 300 sea lions at the mouth of the Klamath river," at which point his testimony was interrupted by raucous applause.

It's not just fishermen shouting their opinions to the federal government. The Coos Bay meeting drew comments from local elected officials, the owner of a trucking company, a marine supplier, a restaurateur and a fish retailer, among others. All agreed that a closed fishery would have a staggering impact on communities up and down the Oregon Coast. Yachats economist Hans Radtke puts the loss at $20 million if the sport and commercial fisheries are closed down this year. And the ripple effect on other businesses is triple that, some economists estimate.

"I sell hot dogs in the boat basin in Charleston," said Patrick Wilson, testifying in Coos Bay last week. "Last year I lost a third of my business. When you put these guys out of work, what do you think that does to me? Everything else is protected, except for us. Where do we fit in? You're not doing any good. You're just ruining us."

At the governor's summit, Depoe Bay Mayor Jim White was equally incensed.

"We only have eight commercial fishermen in Depoe Bay and we're looking at over a million dollars with just those eight fishermen," White said. "When this happens, child abuse incidents go up; domestic disturbances go up. This is ridiculous that we have to sit here and try to come up with something to help our fishermen. We have to stop waiting until the last minute. Here I sit right now trying to save Depoe Bay. I need your help now. So do all our fishermen, and all our communities. Please take immediate action."

If the season is shut down, trollers are asking for a host of emergency aid, from special unemployment benefits, direct compensation for boat owners and deckhands, fee waivers for their ships and "bubble" fisheries that allow limited trolling in state-owned waters.

What most salmon fishermen say they really want is simple: a season, even if it's sharply reduced from past years.

But the decision of whether to allow fishing, or totally close off most of the California coast and nearly all of the Oregon Coast to salmon fishing this year, lies with the federal government, with input from Pacific Fishery Management Council. The council's recommendation is expected by the end of this week. To get a season, the council will have to declare an emergency and allow trollers to fish "below the floor" of Klamath River stocks, meaning that the rules that would normally prompt a closure are waived.

Holding on to hope

Even if the council recommends an open season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could choose simply to ignore that advice and shut the season down anyway, leaving trollers in the lurch. About half of the 700-member Oregon fleet fishes exclusively for salmon, so they'd be immediately out of work.

"They'll either get jobs or starve," said Kevin Bastien, a Newport troller who'd planned on running a friend's boat this year. "Mainly, they'll stick with fishing though. It's kind of hard to train independent people to do other things. They always find they have to come back."

Some of the fishermen see hope for Oregon's fleet in the urgent calls to solve the Klamath River's many ails.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Department of the Interior must make sure enough water flows down the river to help salmon populations, a victory for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, a group of commercial trollers that sued the Bush administration in 2002 after the government curtailed water flows for fish in favor of irrigation for area farmers. And Gov. Ted Kulongoski said at last week's summit that he will reach out to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Klamath Indian tribe to find solutions that benefit all who make their livings from the river.

It is enough to encourage some. Don Stevens, who retired from the industry in 1995 after a similar downturn for salmon, is now negotiating to buy a boat, even as he exhorts the government to save this year's season.

"I'm optimistic the fishery is going to come back," Stevens said. "The fishery is healthy. The Klamath River is sick."

People like Paul Alexander are hoping that prediction comes true.

Winston Ross can be reached at (541) 902-9030 or rgcoast@oregonfast.net.

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Source:  http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/04/02/a1

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