Early Season Salmon Fishing Cancelled For All Of California, Most Of Oregon - CC Times

[hatrack]

Early season salmon fishing off the coasts of California and most of Oregon was shut down Wednesday by federal regulators responding to an unprecedented collapse of salmon populations along the West Coast.

The actions affect commercial and recreational fishing seasons either underway or scheduled to open in the coming weeks. When they meet again next month, regulators are likely to close the bigger fishing seasons that come later in the year. Specifically, a small recreational fishing season off Fort Bragg that opened in mid-February will close April 1. Other recreational fishing seasons from San Francisco to the Mexican border that were scheduled to open April 5 have been closed. Commercial fishing that was scheduled to open off Fort Bragg on April 7 was also closed.

In Oregon, the start of recreational and commercial seasons that were set to open March 15 were delayed to April 15, but it appears likely that those seasons will be closed when the Pacific Fishery Management Council meets again in early April.

The actions were in response to major declines in salmon populations that were especially pronounced in California's Sacramento River fall run of chinook salmon, which produced more than 80 percent of the salmon caught off the California coast. Last year's return of spawning adults was less than 90,000, the second lowest figure on record. Worse, the number of returning two-year-olds -- a key predictor of the 2008 return -- was a record low, meaning this year is likely to be much worse.

EDIT

http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_8557645?nclick_check=1

[fed-up]

1. link doesn't work for me nt

[hatrack]

2. Weird - not loading now for me either

Worked fine the first time . . .

:shrug:

[bananas]

5. Try this

http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_8557645

[fed-up]

3. why the salmon are dying-last week's local editorial-- and stories from 2003/07

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=632086

Why the salmon are dying

This article was published on 03.06.08.

Last fall, scientists were puzzled and worried when they realized that the number of coho and chinook salmon returning to West Coast rivers like the Sacramento were lower than they’d been in 37 years—only one-third of what scientists expected. What could be causing such a drastic collapse?

Today they have a pretty good idea. Early this week, fisheries biologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said their examination of the decline points to unusual changes in weather patterns that in 2005 forestalled a phenomenon called upwelling.

Ordinarily, upwelling stirs the water in the California Current, which flows along the coast from north to south, kick-starting the ocean food web by fostering phytoplankton growth. Without phytoplankton, the web dies. Juvenile salmon entering the ocean that year starved to death, as did millions of seabirds.

It’s not a permanent situation, the NOAA reports; this year, for the first time since 2005, the food web should be very good. In the meantime, though, salmon stocks are extremely low, and the federal Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting next week to consider whether to close offshore salmon fishing in 2008, a decision that would have disastrous impacts on coastal communities.

We can expect to see more such catastrophes, according to a new study by a team of American, British and Canadian researchers who, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, mapped the impacts of human activity on all of the world’s oceans.

Every square mile of ocean is being affected, even isolated regions, the study notes, and many areas near heavily populated coastlines are nearing collapse. Overfishing, nutrient runoff and, especially, rising water temperatures because of global warming are the biggest culprits.


some local history on salmon issues along with an activist/friend's website (with pics/video of last fall's salmon run)
http://www.buttecreek.org/

Butte Creek Spring Run Salmon
Butte Creek has the largest run of Wild Spring Run Chinook Salmon in California. Over $30,000,000 has been spent on improved fish passage. Much of the best salmon habitat still has reduced flows (less than 50%of normal flow) and increased water temperature due to hydroelectric diversions and as a result massive pre-spawn die-offs have occurred in recent years. However, by all measuresButte Creek spring run have recovered. Butte Creek has averaged over 9,000 salmon per year for the last twelve years (see Spring Run Populations), 3,000 more than the estimated capacity, and tagged stray Butte Creek Spring Run have shown up in Battle Creek, Clear Creek, and the Feather River Hatchery. Steelhead trout are making a comeback also although information is sketchy. (see fish report) Other forest and aquatic creatures have also benefited including Bald Eagles like the one in the photo, seen last May.

Butte Creek Salmon Cam

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles8/Bacher_Butte-Disaster.htm

Federal Government Intervenes in Butte Creek Salmon Disaster
by Dan Bacher
Dissident Voice
October 7, 2003

The worst ever die off of threatened spring-run chinooks on Butte Creek has prompted a federal government agency, NOAA Fisheries, to press for a series of actions to stop this from happening again in 2004. Unfortunately, the government intervention was taken too late for this year’s run.

The banks of Butte Creek, the most vibrant remaining spring chinook fishery in California, have been littered since July with thousands of carcasses of salmon that died before they were able to spawn. In a beautiful canyon where anglers and environmentalists should be celebrating the return of a huge run, the survivors of the fish kill are now spawning.

In a disaster much worse than even the Klamath fish kill of 2002, the federal government, fishery activists and DFG agree that the majority of wild spring-run chinooks perished before spawning, although they disagree on the exact numbers. The fish died from the same two diseases - Columnaris (bacterial gill disease) and Ich - that killed spring chinooks on Butte Creek and fall chinooks on the Klamath River last year.

Michael E. Aceituno, Supervisor of Sacramento Area Office of NOAA Fisheries, estimated the pre-spawning mortality to be “80 to 90 percent of the adult escapement” in a letter to Magalie R. Salas, Office of the Secretary, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Emphasizing the seriousness of the situation, Aceituno said, “The final pre-spawning mortality estimate is likely to represent a significant proportion of the entire population of the Central Valley spring-run Chinook Salmon Evolutionarily Significant Unit (ESU).”

..snip



http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=558734
Targeting a billionaire's dams
An unlikely coalition wants Warren Buffett to restore the Klamath River's salmon fishery

By Robert Speer
[e-mail]
More stories by this author...

This article was published on 09.27.07.

..snip

A recent series of events, however, has created conditions that could change all that.

First, in 2001, federal regulators, concerned about low river flows that could harm salmon, angered farmers in the Upper Basin by cutting off their flow of water.

Then, in 2002, after political pressure forced regulators to restore the farmers' water, the Klamath River suffered the largest salmon die-off in U.S. history, some 68,000 fish. California Fish & Game officials blamed the outbreak of a fatal gill-rot disease on low water flows resulting from the federal water policies.

As a result of the die-off, commercial salmon fishing along a 700-mile stretch of the California and Oregon Coast was curtailed for several years—cut by as much as 90 percent in 2006, for example. The financial pain suffered by coastal counties has been severe.

The competition for Klamath River water is one reason why the fish are dying off, but environmentalists, fishing groups and the tribes believe the dams play a larger role. They block the fish from much of their former spawning grounds, heat river water to temperatures lethal to salmon, and provide habitat for massive blooms of toxic algae, a health risk to both fish and humans.

Since 2004, the dams have been going through a 50-year relicensing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. During that process, anti-dam activists have been trying to pressure PacifiCorp—the Portland, Ore.-based utility company that owns the dams—to tear them down.

If the activists are successful, it will be the biggest dam-removal project in U.S. history, and would revitalize one of the nation's greatest rivers and bring new live to the subsistence economies of the Indians. But it would also mean removing four emissions-free plants that provide power sufficient for 70,000 homes, about 2 percent of PacifiCorp's output.

..snip

[WhiteTara]

4. thank you dick cheney

I hope your ranching buddies in Oregon made out like bandits because the rest of us are screwed.