Oregon salmon rated as "avoid" on Monterey Bay Aquarium's seafood watch guide

[depakid]

The Monterey Bay Aquarium's popular "Seafood Watch" guide is advising shoppers and commercial fish buyers to avoid wild-caught salmon from Oregon and California, saying the population of salmon that originates in the Sacramento River and migrates into Oregon waters is too depleted to eat.

The change to the sustainable seafood guide, announced last week, tosses a stinkbomb in the middle of the first commercial salmon fishing season off most of Oregon's coast in three years.

Hundreds of thousands of consumers download wallet-sized pocket guides each year. Beginning the second week of July, the guides will put a red spot beside wild-caught salmon from Oregon and California and advise consumers to "avoid" them.

The aquarium also works with fish buyers for groceries and restaurants, including Portland-based New Seasons markets. For a decade, its recommendations have helped move more large-scale fish buyers to consider the condition of runs.

Ed Cassano, director of the Seafood Watch program, said its review concluded that federal fishery managers shouldn't have authorized fishing for Sacramento fall chinook in the first place given the perilous state of the run.

"It's a hard thing to do," Cassano said of the recommendation. "But we're highly concerned that the season was opened at all."

Commercial ocean salmon fishing from Cape Falcon, near Nehalem on Oregon's north coast, south through California was closed in 2008 and 2009 because of concerns about historically low Sacramento returns. The Pacific Fishery Management Council allowed a limited season this year after projections indicated that Sacramento returns should perk up in 2010.

The aquarium's pocket guide will list wild-caught salmon from Alaska as the "best choice" and wild-caught salmon from Washington as a "good alternative." In Oregon, it doesn't draw a distinction between fish caught south of Cape Falcon and fish caught to the north, which typically come from the relatively healthy Columbia River system.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/06/oregon_salmon_rated_as_avoid_o.html

[Oregone]

1. Tough news for coast towns

As if their economies don't have enough bad news

[Dead_Parrot]

2. Not wonderful news for the fish, either.

Maybe they should have caught less of them?
:shrug:

[Oregone]

3. "Maybe they should have caught less of them"

Ah, you think their depletion is due to too many being caught? heh

[Nihil]

5. The phrase "commercial salmon fishing season" is a clue ...

> Ah, you think their depletion is due to too many being caught? heh

... and, regardless of laughter, catching fish *does* increase their depletion.

Why else would you say it was "tough news for coast towns" if catching them
didn't figure in the equation? They can still do their salmon-watching tours
or other non-destructive "use" ... just not kill as many for sale.
:shrug:

[Oregone]

6. Its a tiny drop in the bucket

Man has fucked oceans and spawning grounds through pollution and over development.

These people are losing their way of life (the ones who haven't already after logging scale-backs took their jobs), and its a hundred year process thats doing what the gulf oil gush has done in 2 months. Whatever may be due to commercial fishing (which may of taken place before they were born and management quotas were implemented), is just a small piece of the puzzle.

Conventional wisdom holds that the depletion of Pacific salmon is a consequence of
the economic development and exploitation of Pacific Northwest ecosystems, including
fur trade, mining, timber harvest, grazing, irrigation, dams, municipal and
industrial development, pollution, and excessive harvest. An attempt to support the
fishery through artificial propagation is also recognized as a contributor to the decline.

http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/56/4/467.pdf


Your response seems a bit heartless, as if you are blaming the economic plight of coastal communities on their own greed and zeal. They are just people trying to make a living, and there isn't much of one to be had in those areas otherwise.

[Nihil]

7. Your first sentence is exactly right.

> Man has fucked oceans and spawning grounds through pollution and
> over development.

I also agree with the extract that you included ...
> Conventional wisdom holds that the depletion of Pacific salmon is a consequence
> of the economic development and exploitation of Pacific Northwest ecosystems,
> including fur trade, mining, timber harvest, grazing, irrigation, dams,
> municipal and industrial development, pollution, and excessive harvest. An
> attempt to support the fishery through artificial propagation is also
> recognized as a contributor to the decline.

... but disagree that commercial fishing (also known as "excessive harvest"
in that somewhat biased euphemism) is "just a small piece of the puzzle".


> Your response seems a bit heartless, as if you are blaming the economic plight
> of coastal communities on their own greed and zeal.

I picked up on the phrase "commercial salmon fishing season" for a reason.

True, it might have been less than tactful but I've grown fed up with hearing
the complaints of fishermen who blame everyone except themselves for the fact
that there aren't as many fish around as in their father's or grandfather's day.

That applies to West Coast, East Coast, Canadian, Scottish, English, French,
Spanish, Icelandic or any other group who have made a living from the gradual
(or not so gradual) extinction of fisheries for their own profit.

That doesn't mean that I disagree with your summary of other contributing
factors but neither do I give them a free pass because a group exploiting a
finite resources has hit a problem with their "Business As Usual" plan.

:shrug:

[Kringle]

4. what about whales? .nt