Salmon may be off-limits

Government fishery managers took steps Friday toward an unprecedented total ban on salmon fishing this year off the California and Oregon coasts, a move that would hammer beleaguered harbors and deprive the West of a culinary and cultural prize.

A ban would cut deeply into a $150-million industry already suffering hard times, hitting not just commercial fishing but also the state’s recreational angling industry.

The move by the Pacific Fishery Management Council came amid historically low returns of chinook salmon to the Sacramento River, considered the backbone of the West Coast fishing industry.

Fewer than 60,000 chinook, known in fish markets and on menus of swank restaurants as king salmon, are expected to spawn this fall in the river, less than half what regulators say is needed to justify a nominal fishing season and just a fraction of the 800,000 that arrived from the sea during the bumper crop of 2002.

Federal scientists blame the anemic returns on a variety of factors, but have focused on poor ocean conditions, potentially linked to global warming, that have caused the chinook’s food sources to plummet.

But anglers also blame troubles in the environmentally fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where fish populations have plummeted because of pollution, predators and increased water exports to the south.

“There’s no smoking gun here, but there’s a lot of spent shell casings and people who created problems in the delta,” said Duncan MacLean, a Half Moon Bay commercial fisherman. “What started out as trouble for little fish like the delta smelt has blossomed into a problem for salmon and the whole state.”

The fisheries council voted unanimously to accept three options and to make a final recommendation to federal regulators next month when it meets in Seattle, after hearings in coastal communities. The options ranged from allowing anglers to haul in about 5% of an average year’s catch to shutting down the season entirely.

If enacted by the National Marine Fishery Service, the seasonal closure would mark the first time salmon fishing has been banned off California since the first commercial fishermen arrived in 1848, said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns.

“It’s going to have a big effect on coastal communities,” said Grader.

In 2006, north coast cities and salmon fishermen struggled after regulators slashed the season to about one-tenth of normal because of low returns on the Klamath River along the Oregon-California border.

That cutback ultimately prompted Congress to authorize $60 million in disaster assistance to the industry.

Last year was expected to be far better, but the catch turned out to be about as poor as 2006. The first signs of trouble appeared on the Sacramento River. Over the fall, the number of returning chinook was a third of what scientists expected.

“The status of Sacramento fall chinook has suddenly collapsed to an unprecedented low level,” said Donald Hansen, chairman of the council. “The effect on California and Oregon salmon fisheries is a disaster by any definition.”

Said Dick Pool, president of a large fishing tackle company and leader of the advocacy group Water for Fish: “2008 and 2009 are toast as fishing seasons.”

Federal lawmakers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the governors of Oregon and Washington have petitioned the Bush administration to take steps toward renewing disaster assistance for the commercial fleet and its support network of packinghouses, fuel docks, tackle suppliers and other businesses.

A ban would also put most rivers and other streams in California off-limits to salmon fishermen, risking the livelihood of scores of fishing guides who depend on the salmon as a key draw for anglers.

“There will be a huge economic impact, and it will be felt more broadly on the coast than in 2006,” said Rod McInnis, southwest regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service. “This is unprecedented. The Sacramento fall chinook have always been a workhorse of a fish stock. But not this year.”

A quarter-century ago, more than 8,000 fishing vessels operated off California and Oregon. Today there are fewer than 1,000.

Although most fishermen concede that a year without salmon appears likely, the causes and remedies for the West’s fish woes are less clear.

National Marine Fisheries scientists say the salmon slump stretches up and down the coast, leading them to suspect the trouble lurks in ocean currents. They say a shift in winds over the Pacific compromised the upwelling of nutrients that fuel the aquatic food web. Chinook and other salmon populations sagged as a result.

Commercial anglers, Indian tribes and environmentalists contend that the flagging health of the delta has contributed to the decline of Sacramento River salmon, which as juveniles migrate to sea through the brackish estuary.

Bill Jennings of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance blamed “an epidemic of pollution” in the delta from urban runoff, sewage discharge, farm waste and toxic industrial waste.

He said state and federal wildlife agencies have been “AWOL from the process” and have failed to keep a lid on water quality problems.

But most of the criticism has centered on water exports to farms and cities to the south. Recent years have been among the biggest on record for pumping water out of the delta and into the state’s giant aqueducts that deliver water to Southern California.

But recently, pumping from the delta has been cut to a fifth of its normal level, in response to a federal court order protecting the endangered delta smelt.

Although ocean conditions can’t easily be managed, the fate of the delta “is something we have control over,” said Grader, of the fishermen’s association. He said there is a clear connection between big pumping years and a subsequent hit on salmon populations.

“If it continues,” he said, “we’re going to be looking at permanent closures of our salmon fisheries.”

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eric.bailey@latimes.com