Salmon Fishing Closed On West Coast

DRAFTSTUD

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Salmon fishing was banned along the West Coast for the first time in 160 years Thursday, a decision that is expected to have a devastating economic impact on fishermen, dozens of businesses, tourism and boating.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez immediately declared a commercial fishery disaster, opening the door for Congress to appropriate money for anyone who will be economically harmed.

The closure of commercial and recreational fishing for chinook salmon in the ocean off California and most of Oregon was announced by the National Marine Fishery Service.

It followed the recommendation last month of the Pacific Fishery Management Council after the catastrophic disappearance of California's fabled fall run of the pink fish popularly known as king salmon.

It is the first total closure since commercial fishing started in the Bay Area in 1848.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency last month and sent a letter to President Bush asking for his help in obtaining federal disaster assistance. Schwarzenegger plans to appropriate about $5.3 million for coastal salmon and steelhead fishery restoration projects.

The disaster declaration allows state officials to work with Congress on obtaining appropriations for businesses and fishermen and women, some of whom will lose as much as 80 percent of their annual income.

Although salmon spawning has been in decline all up and down the coast, the biggest problem is in the Sacramento River and its tributaries. So few salmon returned last fall that the fishery council was required under its management plan to halt fishing throughout the salmon habitat, which is all along the California and Oregon coasts.

The commercial salmon season off California and Oregon typically runs from May 1 to Oct. 31. The recreational season was to have begun April 5.
 
I went back to this tread a week or so ago and posted an update. Other than the fact that I live out here and every once in a while fish for king salmon, I didn't have much information on what was going on with the local fishing industry. So I talked to some very knowadgable anglers and a charter boat captian about this subject as far as California is concerned.
The #1 problem is adquate water runoff from the mountains, into the rivers, streams and deltas not returning to the Pacific. The water the spawning adults use is being dammed and diverted to Southern California and the State collects those revenues (we're talking $millions.)
#2 problem: the immature smolts (fingerlings and bigger) get trapped behind diversion dams and ponds and die in the unairated, brackish water. A large percentage of the immature, young salmon never make it out of the Delta and die before they can reach the Pacific so they can mature.
#3 problem: 100's of thousands of these young fish also get chewed up in the pumps the State uses to pump the water to Southern California. (Into the Periferial Canal?)
#4: We normally have wide temperture changes in our Coastal ocean currents called El Ninio:warm. and EL Ninya: cold. We are currently in an El Ninya cold current stage which scatters and disperses the baitballs of anchovies and krill the salmon feed on in the Pacific. Mature fish are therefore hard to find.
#5: One person I talked to said that the adult, spawning fish simply weren't finding their way back to the tributaries of their birth to spawn because not enough water was flowing from these places as before. The fish can't "smell" their way back.
As far as I'm concerned, we ought to shut off all the water we're selling to L.A... as if that's going to happen. DD
 

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