Salmon Fishing Ban Considered

Federal regulators are considering an unprecedented ocean fishing ban on Chinook salmon along 700 miles of California and Oregon coast, threatening to spread distress from beleaguered commercial fleets to family dinner tables.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council meets next week in Seattle to recommend how the federal government should tackle a problem caused by plummeting commercial salmon stocks on the troubled Klamath River.

Biologists have warned for years that a combination of warm and low-flowing waters in the once mighty Klamath -- at one time among the nation’s most productive salmon-producing rivers -- would cause the highly prized Chinook runs to plummet.

Commercial fishermen heaped blame Friday on the Bush administration for managing the river in a way they contend favors farmers, dam operators and timber companies at the expense of fish.

“The federal government has done absolutely nothing to help, and fishermen are angry,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns. “It’s almost like they created this Klamath situation to make them look competent on Katrina.”

Jason Peltier, a U.S. Interior Department deputy assistant secretary, called the potential fishing curtailment “devastating news” but defended the Bush administration’s stewardship of the Klamath.

“There’re been an awful lot of mud thrown at us” over the Klamath River, Peltier said, suggesting that a turnaround will not be produced by “that sort of finger-pointing” and that U.S. officials remain hopeful the river’s ills can be healed.

During an average year, salmon fishing in California and Oregon is a $150-million industry. The commercial mainstay is the silver-sided Chinook that return each fall from the sea to spawn and are sold in supermarkets as king salmon.

Experts say a commercial ban, one of three options that the Pacific Fishery Management Council will weigh, could put hard-hit coastal fishing fleets financially underwater and prompt consumer price jumps and scrawny inventories.

The targeted area stretches from northern Oregon to California’s historic Point Sur lighthouse, just south of Carmel.

Fishermen, who normally fish for salmon six months of the year beginning in the spring, say they expect at the very least to see their season shortened to just a few weeks because of the latest troubles on the Klamath.

The river, which emerges from the snowmelt of the Cascade Range in Oregon and dashes south into California before emptying in the sea north of Eureka, has for several years been the trouble spot for salmon on the Pacific Coast.

While the Sacramento River last year rebounded to produce one of its biggest salmon returns in decades, the Klamath has endured an epic drought and fiery water war between farmers and environmentalists in 2001, and a massive die-off of returning adult Chinook in fall 2002, when by some counts more than 70,000 fish rotted on the banks.

But an ecological tragedy that didn’t hit the headlines has caused the current rash of problems, biologists say. During spring 2002 and again the next year, more than 80% of the juvenile fish returning to sea from the Klamath succumbed to a parasite scientists blame on a combination of low river flows, pollution and warmer water.

The parasite, C. shasta, thrives inside river-bottom worms. Of late, scientists say, the worm populations have ballooned in the main reaches of the Klamath.

Part of the problem is less springtime water because of upstream irrigation diversions for farmers, biologists say.

But the biggest factor is a series of about half a dozen dams on the Klamath that have so quieted the natural turbulence of springtime flows that river-bottom gravels aren’t being churned up, allowing the growth of algae where the worms can thrive.

In addition, runoff from farming, ranching and logging have combined with warmer water to fuel the algae proliferation -- and thus produce more worms and parasites.

Small fish pick up the parasites on their way out to sea, succumbing silently in the ocean depths.

“When adult fish wash up on the beach, it’s a strong visual. But when the little fish struggle and die because of some parasite in the river, it’s harder to observe,” said Chuck Tracy, the management council’s salmon expert. “But that is what happened.”

Aside from spawning anger among fishermen, the potential ban could spill over into ongoing discussions on the renewal of federal hydropower licenses for the Klamath River dams.

Environmentalists, Indian tribes that depend on salmon, fishermen and others are engaged in closed-door talks with power generators and the federal government over the possibility of removing at least a few of the dams.

“I’m very optimistic something good is going to emerge,” said Ron Reed, a cultural biologist for the Karuk Tribe, whose members fish the Klamath as their ancestors did, with nets made of hooped tree boughs. “All the information being gathered would seem to support dam removal.”

Not even the most dramatic steps will help this year.

The fisheries council is expected next week to select three alternatives, ranging from a restricted season to an outright ban, then hold hearings later this month, and in April make a final recommendation to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

A decision to ban fishing would have to be approved by U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez.

The Klamath’s woes have in recent years put a black cloud over what should have been a time of bountiful harvests from the sea, fishermen say.

The Sacramento River last year saw a run of about 400,000 fish, roughly 10 times the Klamath’s production. The dwindling numbers returning to the Klamath prompted regulators to cut the fishing season for California roughly in half.

While salmon return dutifully to the stream where they were spawned, in the ocean the fish commingle with salmon from countless other tributaries.

Despite the plentiful run in the Sacramento River, the possibility exists that fishermen could snag Klamath salmon, which are virtually indistinguishable from their southern cousins.

Biologists estimate the Klamath needs at least 35,000 returning fish each year, but expect the total this year to barely reach 30,000.

Mike Becker, captain of a 47-foot commercial fishing boat out of Newport, Ore., said many of his peers are already out looking for jobs on the land.

“There won’t be enough of a season to break even,” he lamented. “If we get three or four weeks, which I think it’ll come down to, you can’t make enough to pay your expenses.”