Salmon cutbacks serve as warning

THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Last updated: April 13th, 2008 01:26 AM (PDT)

It is not the only West Coast salmon run in trouble, but its decline is so frighteningly steep that fisheries managers, fishermen and environmentalists in Washington state are feeling chills.

The alarming drop in many Oregon and California salmon runs is a “wake-up call,” warns Washington’s fish and wildlife director, Jeff Koenings.

Koenings is right. The urgency of Washington’s salmon restoration efforts has to be kicked up a notch.

The ocean fishing picture in California and Oregon is ugly. From 2002 to 2005, the Sacramento River chinook harvest annually averaged about 800,000, bringing an average of $61 million a year into coastal fishing communities.

This year’s allowable ocean harvest will be nearly zero.

Warning bells went off last fall when the return of immature chinook jacks from the Sacramento River, a reliable indicator for the summer run, was less than 6 percent of the long-term average.

On Thursday, federal fisheries managers decreed that this year’s ocean salmon harvest will be the smallest on record. Only a tiny sport fishery of 9,000 coho will be allowed. Authorities decided the risk of incidentally taking Sacramento chinook is too great to even allow fishing for other, less vulnerable salmon.

In other words, every chinook counts. The governors of Oregon and California have already sought federal disaster aid for their hard-hit fishing towns. Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire may do the same.

Washington’s ocean chinook fishery, which comes from different sources, will remain about the same this year. But the coho harvest will be cut about 80 percent. Puget Sound chinook returns are expected to be about the same, but some restrictions will be imposed to improve survival rates for wild fish.

In California, experts aren’t certain what is hammering the chinook run. But the two main suspects are heavy diversions of river water for agriculture and changes in ocean conditions that may or may not be related to climate change.

Unbelievably, the Sacramento chinook are not listed as endangered. No one foresaw this year’s crash. Barring a miraculous turnaround next year, a listing seems likely. Next would be a pitched legal battle over precious water resources.

Washington’s Koenings says the Oregon and California declines “could signal the future for the Washington coast and Puget Sound as well, unless we restore habitat, carefully manage harvest and retool hatcheries.”

The choice is up to us.

Originally published: April 13th, 2008 01:26 AM (PDT)