Commercial trollers express support for full closure of season

By Winston Ross

The Register-Guard

April 1, 2008  

COOS BAY — Federal fishery managers presented three bleak options to a room filled mostly with commercial salmon fishermen on Monday night.

None of the options came as any surprise, given the bad news that’s been cascading out of the Sacramento River lately. Juvenile fish returning to spawn are at record lows on the body of water most critical in supplying salmon for the West Coast fleet, which sets up what may be the worst year in the industry’s history.

What was interesting about the meeting, however, was the result of a quick straw poll taken by Rod Moore, a member of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which will choose one of the options to recommend to federal regulators later this month. In a show of hands, most of the commercial trollers present said they preferred the third option: an unprecedented, West Coast-wide closure. No salmon caught in federal waters, with a few minuscule exceptions.

If that sounds like fishermen wishing demise upon themselves, it isn’t, explained Jeff Reeves, vice chairman of the Oregon Salmon Commission. It’s more of a reality check.

If the Pacific Fishery Management Council recommends a meager salmon season, as would be the case if it chooses either of the two other options on the table at this point, Reeves believes the National Marine Fisheries Service would be unable to adopt such a recommendation. That’s because the fisheries service is required to ensure that the fleet doesn’t result in so many fish caught that the overall populations drop below a certain “floor.” For the council to recommend anything but a total closure, then, is a fairy tale, Reeves said.

“It’s a false hope,” Reeves said. “It’s unfair to fishermen to operate under the pretense that they would fish. NMFS (the agency which ultimately sets the season) won’t allow it.”

Curry County Commissioner Lucy LaBonte added other reasons the fleet might pick what seems like the worst option. If the limits are too tight, many trollers actuallywill lose money on the season, given that the price of diesel fuel is now above $4 a gallon and it costs up to $10,000 just to get a boat ready to fish.

“Last year, a whole bunch of people went out fishing and lost money on fuel,” LaBonte said.

Plus, LaBonte added, a limited season might weaken the urgency with which the fleet can ask for a federal disaster declaration from the U.S. secretary of commerce.

Whatever the motive, the show of hands represents the grim outlook among West Coast salmon trollers, a perspective that’s steeped in anger among some fishermen.

“We’re better off getting a job at McDonald’s,” said James Day, a commercial troller and river guide from Brookings who advocated for a closed fishery but also wants protections for salmon-feasting California sea lions lifted, so they can be killed. “The policy we’ve got now is not working. Fish managers need to step up and get the job done, or get a new job. The way it’s going, we’re all going to be on unemployment. When we’re gone, you guys are gone, too.”

In her testimony, LaBonte described the wider context.

“ Curry County is not on I-5,” she said. “We were a timber county. That’s gone. When that went, we invested a lot of federal and state funding in docks and ports. When this goes away for Curry County , it is a major disaster.”

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