THE SEASON THAT GOT AWAY?

Salmon season at risk for state's fishermen

By Ken McLaughlin

Mercury News

The picturesque harbors that dot the central and Northern California coast are unusually sleepy these days, and the fishermen are unusually angry.

The federal government is on the verge of canceling the salmon fishing season -- a move that would idle a $150 million industry and drive up the cost of the West's signature seafood.

Fishermen like Duncan MacLean of Half Moon Bay are being told they must sacrifice to save a strain of salmon that breeds 400 miles to the north in the once-mighty, now-sickened Klamath River.

The Klamath's parasite-infected water, too warm and clogged with toxic algae, is killing its fish. So regulators are proposing drastic steps to protect them, both in the river and in the ocean, where they mingle with more plentiful salmon from other West Coast tributaries.

``What's wrong with the Klamath has nothing to do with fishing,'' said a frustrated MacLean, 56, who makes his living crabbing and fishing for salmon out of Pillar Point Harbor. ``But fishermen are paying the price. The federal regulators know what kind of economic hardships and devastation closing the salmon season will cause.''

The powerful Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in Sacramento next week to decide whether to cancel or drastically reduce the salmon season. The action would affect 700 miles of the Pacific coast, from Falcon Point in northern Oregon to Point Sur south of Monterey.

Though they spawn in specific rivers, salmon live much of their life in the ocean, where it is impossible to distinguish Klamath salmon from any other variety. ``There's no way to tell which ones you're catching,'' said Brian Gorman, spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The fishermen are furious at regulators for suggesting that the only way to protect salmon is to rope off a huge part of the ocean. Fishermen point out that there is no evidence ocean salmon are being overfished -- and that the salmon-rich Sacramento, Columbia and American rivers have been revived.

The way to solve the problem is to fix the Klamath, they say.

Gorman said this will be the third year that the number of Klamath salmon dips below a previously set ``floor'' of 35,000 spawners -- and the council's management plan calls for drastic measures if that happens.

Surprisingly, the government finds little support among environmental groups. They blame the Bush administration for triggering the Klamath fiasco by giving water to southern Oregon farmers in 2002 -- a decision that killed as many as 70,000 adult salmon.

``We are really sympathetic to the salmon fishermen,'' said Rod Fujita, a marine ecologist in the Oakland office of Environmental Defense. ``Overfishing is not the problem. It's under-watering of the river.''

The fishermen say that the ``fishing infrastructure'' in towns from Morro Bay to Moss Landing to Bodega Bay is so fragile that one lost salmon season could kill California's fishing culture.

``If we lose the processors and the businesses that buy the salmon, we'll lose the market and never get it back,'' said Monterey native Mike Ricketts, 70, who's been salmon fishing commercially for 35 years.

The Klamath debacle is the latest crisis facing commercial fishing in California. Global markets and the proliferation of fish farms have exported jobs and sent prices plummeting. Many fishermen feel they're under siege because of soaring fuel prices and the current movement to establish more marine reserves -- akin to oceanic national parks that provide a haven for sea life.

The uncertainty is already having a dramatic effect on fishing towns like Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz, Moss Landing and Monterey. At this time of year, the harbors are usually buzzing with activity as excited salmon fishermen get their boats ready for the commercial season, which traditionally begins May 1 in California.

Not this year.

Joe Donatini, owner of Johnson Hicks Marine Electronics in Santa Cruz, said his sales are down more than 20 percent this month.

``Everybody is really still hesitant to go out there and spend a lot of money on electronic equipment until we know we will actually have a season,'' said Donatini, whose business sells GPS and radar devices, fish finders and auto pilots.

The recreational salmon season starts today, allowing sport fishermen to fish in state waters, three miles from shore. But the state Fish and Game Commission is expected to quickly end the season if regulators prohibit fishing in federal waters -- hurting businesses such as charter-boat companies and bait-and-tackle shops that depend on the recreational fishermen.

Canceling the salmon season will devastate the fishermen more than economically.

Many of the commercial salmon fishermen are in their 50s, 60s and 70s and see themselves as a dying breed. They have hands as weathered as their boats and faces creased through years of exposure to the sun, wind and constant spray of salt water.

``Salmon to the West Coast is like lobster to New England,'' said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations in San Francisco.

``It's part of California's heritage,'' said Mike Stiller, current president of the Santa Cruz Commercial Fisherman's Association.

The collapse of the Klamath salmon runs can be traced to a drought in 2001, when federal authorities cut water deliveries to farmers in the Klamath basin, causing bankruptcies and other economic hardship among southern Oregon farmers.

A year later, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton decided to open the headgates on irrigation canals in Klamath Falls, Ore., to give the farmers the water they needed. Environmentalists, American Indian groups and fishermen protested, predicting calamity for the fish downstream.

They were right. In September 2002, an environmental disaster left between 50,000 and 70,000 adult salmon rotting in the Klamath.

The California Department of Fish and Game concluded the fish kill -- the largest die-off of adult salmon ever recorded in the West -- was directly caused by Norton's decision to pump extra water to the farmers.

The administration was embarrassed again six months later when the Wall Street Journal reported that White House political strategist Karl Rove had worked behind the scenes to shore up Oregon's GOP agricultural base by pushing for a change in the Klamath policy.

Rep. Sam Farr, D-Salinas, said Friday that he agrees with fishermen who say federal agencies have not done enough to rescue the Klamath. And he hopes that regulators can be convinced to allow at least a partial salmon season -- a compromise now being proposed by fishermen.

``The only way to get attention to a problem in Washington is to create a crisis and hear the whistle blow,'' Farr said. ``The whistle has certainly blown on this one, and the administration needs to show some leadership.''