Searching For Solutions To Collapsing West Coast Salmon Populations - SF Chronicle

[hatrack]

California's salmon industry is waiting for the blow to fall: a near-certain ban on fishing this year. It's a drastic step that could keep hundreds of commercial skippers and thousands of weekend fishermen ashore. It could also open a debate over the iconic fish's future and its mountains-to-sea life cycle that touches nearly every hot-button conservation topic from climate change to dam demolition.

The state's salmon mother lode, the Sacramento River, showed a dearth of returning fish last fall. Those are the prime-time months for the river-reared breed that spends its three-year life in ocean waters before coming home to spawn. No one disputes the numbers: only 68,000 were counted against a bare-minimum expectation of 122,000. This drop has brought a federal agency, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, to the brink of canceling this summer's salmon season, with a decision due next month.

It's the nuclear option in the fishing world, but it's met with acceptance by fishing groups, biologists and environmentalists. With stocks so low - and next year possibly as bad - no one sees an alternative. Salmon challenge California's modern nature like no other creature. The fish live and breed in cold, free-flowing rivers, the same water that farms and cities divert, siphon and store behind dams. Californians drive on roads carved into steep hills that can shower mud that smothers spawning beds. Logging, crop spraying, soil tilling, and riverside cattle-grazing are also harmful.

Fishing groups and environmentalists have long complained about these issues, venting most of their wrath on delta water pumps that suck up young fish and disrupt water flows. But the newest factor is climate change as shown by a shift in ocean currents. Instead of bringing up nutrients from the deep, the currents have changed as ocean temperatures have risen. Since salmon spend most of their life at sea, the impact is crucial. Will the currents change for good - or is it a brief disruption? Restoring salmon stocks will be much harder if the ocean's food supply stays scarce.

EDIT

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/23/MNP3VG03D.DTL

[pscot]

1. The spring chinook run

in the Columbia is looking OK so far, and sport fishing for blackmouth in Puget Sound has been moderate but steady all winter. These latter are mainly hatchery fish that winter in the sound. This suggests that problems with the California runs may be due to watershed problems or some other factors peculiar to those runs.

[tavalon]

2. The salmon, along with the frogs and a number of other significant species

are playing our canary in the coal mines. We need to listen and it isn't as easy as canceling this summer's fishing run, though it's a nice stop gap. We have big ass problems in all of our ecosystems but the ocean is the one that will destroy us first. I don't know if it's too late but if it's not, it's damn close. Time to make drastic changes. While my personal decision to actually become a vegetarian (and not a pesco vegetarian) is because of this, it's actually not a huge step for me as I cut out red meat about 30 years ago and my consumption of chicken has always been minimal. But my main source of protein has been fish. That is what must now change, not because my stopping eating fish will save the ocean ecosystem but just because, for me, it is the right thing to do. Most of my eco-changes are based on that. I lack the optimism to believe that one person can make a damn bit of difference, but just as with the starfish being thrown back into the ocean by the little boy, it matters to that specific starfish. And it matters to my soul.