No Salmon in 2008?
By Susan Chambers, World Link.Com
January 30, 2008

COOS BAY — Here we go again.

The complete closure of commercial salmon fishing in Southern Oregon and Northern California in 2006 could repeat in 2008.

In 2006, it was due expected low returns of spawning Chinook to the Klamath River.

This year, it’s Central California rivers, primarily the Sacramento, that could drive cutbacks to commercial and recreational salmon fishermen.

And in a cruel twist, the Klamath River this year had fairly good runs — a situation that would normally put /southern Oregon fishermen’s fears at ease.

The Portland-based Pacific Fishery Management Council, which determines fishing seasons and regulations to be approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service, still is verifying numbers, but those numbers likely won’t change much, PFMC Executive Director Don McIsaac said in an e-mail to council members.

Only 90,414 adult fall Chinooks returned to Central Valley rivers in 2007, according to the preliminary figures. The last time returns were that low was in 1992, when returns were only 82,625. The average returns between 1970 and 2006 are 253,778.

“The Klamath could dampen the impact, but it’s a little early to know for sure yet,” council member Frank Warrens said.

Still, that’s not settling well with some local trollers. They have one word on their minds: disaster.

Where are the salmon?

Charleston salmon fisherman Rick Goche is worried. He’s been working on trying to get federal assistance for the 2007 season.

Some argue that fishermen could fish in 2007, whereas their boats were tied to the dock for the whole year in 2006 and for three months in 2005. Where is the disaster in 2007?

“We didn’t catch them,” Goche said of the Chinook that weren’t biting their hooks. “We fished hard all year long, but the fish weren’t where the fleet was.”

The 2007 season also had some closed areas, but not as many as in 2006. It was in those closed areas that fishermen hoped the Chinook were hiding.

They weren’t.

“When the returns started being counted, it started to become obvious that the fish weren’t there, either,” Goche said.

The whole situation has federal fishery managers baffled.

“There was a general decline in 2007 Chinook returns coastwide except for the Klamath,” PFMC salmon staff officer Chuck Tracy said in an e-mail.

A wide impact

The Klamath River’s disastrous problems during the last few years could be just a fraction of the impacts from the Central Valley rivers in California.

The runs are bigger on the Sacramento and, for the most part, the most stable runs of the three main salmon-producing rivers that include the Klamath and the Columbia.

“This is particularly disconcerting in that this stock has consistently been the healthy “work horse” target stock for salmon fisheries off California and most of Oregon,” McIsaac said in the e-mail to council members.

It also provides salmon catches to fishermen in Washington and as far away as British Columbia, Canada.

To say that it won’t affect Oregon fishermen is something managers and fishermen aren’t even considering.

It will — in the same way Klamath River runs affected both Oregon and California fishermen for the past few years, thanks to the mixed-stock management system.

A Klamath Chinook looks the same as a Sacramento fish. Or a Columbia River Chinook. Or any Chinook from a number of coastal streams. There’s no way for fishermen to tell whether the sleek silver fish on the end of their hooks are from which rivers, without a detailed DNA analysis.

Thus the reason to manage conservatively.

And fishermen are getting ready.

“I’m worried about us having a season at all in 2008,” Charleston troller Jeff Reeves said. “I will be involved in the council process. With the loss of Scott Boley, several of us are going to try to take his place.”

Boley was a steadfast supporter of the fishing industry, understood the science behind fishery management and was able to work with both fishermen and managers for the benefit of both. He died in 2007.

Reeves said the fishermen have a huge task ahead of them, since there has been no significant problem on the Sacramento River in the past 35 years or more.

“We’re in unexplored territory,” he said.

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