October 11, 2018 — Money local commercial salmon fishermen will soon receive as compensation after reform policies pushed them off the Columbia River is “not nothing.” But it’s not quite something, either.
“It means a little bit of a paycheck,” said David Quashnick, a gillnetter who has been fishing since he was a teenager and now has two sons who run their own boats. “It’s not enough. I would rather be fishing and not having to worry about free money.”
Clatsop County informed 129 commercial gillnetters in September that they were eligible for a cut of the $500,000 set aside in the state’s Columbia River Transition Fund to compensate them for direct economic losses and reimburse them for gear.
This month, county officials said 124 fishermen had responded and applied for around $460,000 worth of the pot as of last week.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will give final approval for how the county intends to distribute the funds, but Theresa Dursse, executive assistant and clerk for the Clatsop County Board of Commissioners, said the county hopes to start cutting checks to fishermen soon. Fishermen who applied for compensation for economic losses will receive checks ranging from a mere $56 to the maximum $8,750. Fishermen who applied for reimbursement for gear will receive up to $2,750.
Gillnets, which hang vertically in the water and catch fish by the gills, were phased off the Columbia River main stem after former Gov. John Kitzhaber introduced a harvest reform plan in 2012. The plan, commonly referred to as the Kitzhaber Plan or Columbia River Reform, was pitched as a way to protect wild salmon and steelhead runs by replacing gillnet gear with more selective types of equipment.
The remaining gillnet fishermen were shifted to off-river, or “select areas,” like Youngs Bay.