Under a federal agency’s recommendation US authorities have decided to ban the commercial catching of salmon off California. Now the lovers of king salmon will have to settle for fish hooked in the Pacific Northwest this year. The ban also covered much of Oregon. This has been done to save the fabled fish. The move, which the National Marine Fisheries Service is expected to make final by May 1, comes after the fewest chinook salmon ever recorded made their way up the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers last fall.
Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, told that there are just no fish, if they allowed any fishing, they would be putting at risk future fishing. This is the second year in a row that commercial fishermen will not be allowed to reel in Chinook. Fisheries biologists are projecting that, even without fishing this summer, the fall run of chinook will be almost twice as plentiful as last year’s, but the numbers will barely reach the council’s minimum goal of 122,000 fish.
The council, established three decades ago to manage the Pacific Coast fishery, advised that some sport fishing be allowed in California and Oregon, mostly where the much-improved Klamath River salmon runs are located. It is told that the Klamath and Trinity river runs were declared a disaster in 2006, but runs there are looking better than the Sacramento this year. Recreational fishermen would be allowed to take chinook from Aug. 29 to Sept. 7 from the mouth of the Klamath River to southern Oregon.
The fall run in September and October has for decades been the backbone of the West Coast fishing industry. At its peak, it exceeded 800,000 fish. Over the past decade, the number of spawners had consistently topped 250,000. NOAA believes that the destruction of river habitat, water diversions and dams in the Central Valley so weakened the fall run that it couldn’t withstand two recent years of scanty food supply in the warming Pacific Ocean.
