The State - News from Oct. 2, 1988

California’s two-year drought is endangering the chinook salmon--also called the king salmon. The fish normally spends its adult life in the ocean but breeds in Northern California streams. The state Department of Fish and Game says that this year a lot of the salmon eggs are not likely to hatch because water levels are low and rivers are overheated for successful spawning. Hundreds of thousands of salmon are crowding into the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers to spawn and lay their eggs in the gravel beds of the rivers before dying. Fishermen are catching many salmon in San Francisco Bay this year, but “three years from now we are faced with a disaster,” according to Zeke Grader, spokesman for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisheries Assns.