Looks like much of the US West Coast is about to get a taste of what the collapse of cod stocks did to New England commercial fishing, but with salmon as anti-catalyst. Several reports out today focus on federal fisheries managers in California and Oregon pretty well corralled by their own rules. So few salmon, of several species (chinook, coho, pinks mainly), are showing up to spawn in rivers and streams – falling below a trigger threshold the regulators set for themselves – that they may have to suspend catching the fish there or at sea altogether, including sports fishing.

The Tracker notes that this news is melancholy vindication for a Univ. of Washington professor, David R. Montgomery. A few years ago he wrote an eye-opening book, “King of Fish – The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon,” on the centuries-old efforts by fishery managers, kings, and other authorities to protect salmon from overfishing and habitat ruination. Once, his book makes clear, salmon were jaw-droppingly abundant. Efforts to keep it that way failed in the United Kingdom, then in New England, and Montgomery forecast futility for the Pacific Northwest too. I bought the book at a AAAS meeting in Seattle four years ago. Here’s a plug for it as useful to any reporter wanting the back story to this latest round of wild salmon’s fade. Let’s hope Alaska’s still-thriving fishery bucks history.

Stories:

San Jose Mercury News Mike Taugher reports, as do several outlets, that fishery managers have drawn up a list of possible factors in the collapse. It is 46 items long – presumably (Tracker hasn’t read it) covering climate change, ocean shifts, dammed rivers, logging, too much fishing, pollution, diversion of water from California rivers into aqueducts… ; Sacramento Bee Matt Weiser ; SF Chronicle Peter Fimrite doesn’t provide (as most reporters don’t either) much distinction among the pertinent species of salmon. Salmon, it seems to most reporters, are salmon ; Grass Valley Union Denis Peirce - a small outlet’s outdoors writer tries to put the news in context, to offer some hope for the fishery’s recovery, and to not look hysterical. But he goes along with a drastic reduction in fishing ;

Related News:

Santa Rosa Press Democrat Robert Digitale reports a new genetics and GPS-based way to determine which salmon in the sea are part of an endangered run, and which might come from a river that’s still a robust spawning ground. How that would help fisherfolk sift endangered from not endangered fish, while fishing, isn’t clear here – looks more like a way to gather stats on specific stretches of ocean for population studies. But who knows – could one have a genetic system that scans fish instantaneously for their provenance and somehow lets go, unharmed, those from struggling runs? ;

Chinook Observer (Washington State’s Long Beach area) Capt. Ron Malast , a commercial fisherman, writes in the local paper that with Washington possibly exempt from an upcoming absolute ban, sportsfishers should book a spot on charter boats early. (The pic above is his).

Grist for the Mill:

Pacific Fishery Management Council Press Release ; Press Packet Site ;

-CP

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.