Salmon Ban Would Hit Towns Hard

Fishing towns along the Northern California coast are bracing for a shutdown of this year’s salmon season -- a possibility that grew more real with a decision Friday by a federal advisory panel.

At its meeting in Seattle, the Pacific Fishery Management Council included an unprecedented closure of the six-month fishing season as one of three options it will place before the National Marine Fisheries Service this spring after a series of public hearings.

The action was triggered by dramatically dwindling stocks of Chinook salmon on the Klamath River, which empties into the Pacific north of Eureka, Calif.

After a week of bitterly contentious meetings with commercial fishermen and charter-boat operators, the council also laid out two other options, according to Jim Martin, a Fort Bragg sportfishing advocate who was at the meeting: continuing salmon fishing at last year’s diminished level, and banning salmon fishing at different times along different stretches of coast.

The fisheries service will make the final decision.

The management council will hold hearings on the proposals in Washington state, Oregon and Santa Rosa, Calif., in the last week of March.

Canceling the season would be a blow to towns along the rugged Mendocino coast, where the timber and fishing industries have been severely curtailed.

“It’s depressing,” said Martin, with the Recreational Fishing Alliance in Fort Bragg. “It’s so much a part of our identity here.”

As recently as the 1980s, the town, 150 miles north of San Francisco, was known as one of the biggest salmon ports on the West Coast.

Since then, an annual Fourth of July cookout touted as “the world’s largest salmon barbecue” has raised funds for a nearby salmon hatchery. Last year, the local fish supply was so thin that the salmon had to be shipped in from Alaska, Martin said.

Debbie DeGrew, executive director of the Mendocino Coast Chamber of Commerce, said she’s spoken with charter operators who fear a salmon ban would drive them out of business.

“We’re very concerned,” she said. “If the charter boats are gone, it’ll be like a ghost town down at the harbor, and the effects will start to ripple all through town and down the coast.”