Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: Catch is up but prices are down with Dungeness crab season facing limits in Northern California

May 15, 2023 — The Dungeness crab season in the north of the U.S. state of California will face additional limits on 15 May in response to whale sightings in local waters.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife already closed most of the state’s waters to Dungeness crab fishing on 15 April to prevent interactions with migrating humpback whales. Now, fishers in zones 1 and 2 – stretching between the state’s boarder with Oregon and Point Arena, California – will face a 30-fathom constraint, according to the CDFW.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

The slow death and uncertain future of California’s swordfish fishery

April 13, 2023 — After decades of public scrutiny, legal battles, and many regulatory changes that constricted the fishery, large-mesh drift gillnets for swordfish in California will be phased out by 2027. Deep-set buoy gear, now being employed under federal exempted fishing permits, is set to become the primary method to harvest swordfish off the California coast, with harpoons continuing as a supplemental fishery.

After years of debate and with plenty of bad blood some between primary stakeholders, there is one thing the fishing industry, fisheries managers, and environmental groups agree on: There will be less bycatch from catching swordfish, but unless new technology can be scaled up there will also be less swordfish landed out of California ports.

“It’s not a replacement fishery for large mesh drift gillnets,” says Chugey Sepulveda of deep-set buoy gear. Sepulveda is director and senior scientist at the Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research and is the person who first developed deep-set buoy gear in the Southern California Bight. The buoy gear “was brought online to capitalize/augment the existing harpoon fishery, which supports a market that receives a higher price-point for its catch.”

Deep-set buoy gear has shown to be effective at catching swordfish efficiently with minimal bycatch, yielding a higher market price per pound, but Sepulveda and fishermen currently using the gear under federal exempted fishing permits say it was developed for smaller boats and doesn’t yield the volume of fish needed to cover the costs of larger vessels.

Furthermore, bycatch was still part of the catch for drift gillnets. Fishermen using large mesh drift gillnets earned additional income from retained thresher shark, louver, and other species, that will be lost with deep-set buoy gear.

Deep-set buoy gear consists of a vertical mainline around 150 fathoms in length with a flagpole outfitted with a light or radar reflector at the surface and a heavy sinker to keep the line anchored vertically. Attached to the mainline are typically 1 to 3 circle hooks with a light attached to shine below the thermocline at 20-70 meters (65 to 230 feet) in California waters. The gear is also designed to be actively tended with strike indicators at the surface to alert fishermen when a fish is on.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

CALIFORNIA: Closure of king salmon fishing season a concern for local businesses, fishermen

April 13, 2023 — Whether you consume salmon or fish for it, you won’t be able to enjoy a local catch this season.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council shut down the 2023 recreational and commercial king salmon fishing seasons for most of the West Coast due to near-record low numbers of fish returning to their spawning grounds.

It’s a blow to fishermen, restaurants, and consumers.

Morro Bay resident Ilene French says she always looks forward to salmon season.

“I look forward to it. In fact, I was taking a trip up to Oregon to consume some more fish and salmon and evidently, even in Oregon and Washington the season will be late or maybe even closed,” French said.

Read the full article at KSBY

California salmon fishing slated to shut down this year due to low stock

April 10, 2023 — Chinook salmon fishing off the California coast will be called off until next spring in anticipation that a near-record-low number of fish will return to the state’s rivers to spawn.

The recommendation was made by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a federal commission that oversees West Coast fisheries. It will need to be approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service by May 16.

The measure, unseen in 14 years, would temporarily ban both commercial and recreational salmon fishing in the state. Much of the fishing off the coast of neighboring Oregon would also be canceled until 2024.

Chinook salmon are the “largest and most highly prized” of all the salmon in the Pacific ocean, according to the council. But over the years, the species has become increasingly endangered as a result of drought, heat waves and agriculture.

Read the full article at NPR

California seeks federal help for salmon fishers facing ban

April 8, 2023 — California officials want federal disaster aid for the state’s salmon fishing industry, they said Friday following the closure of recreational and commercial king salmon fishing seasons along much of the West Coast due to near-record low numbers of the iconic fish returning to their spawning grounds.

Dealing a blow to the salmon fishing industry, the Pacific Fishery Management Council unanimously approved the closure Thursday for fall-run chinook fishing from Cape Falcon in northern Oregon to the California-Mexico border. Limited recreational salmon fishing will be allowed off southern Oregon in the fall.

Much of the salmon caught off Oregon originate in California’s Klamath and Sacramento rivers. After hatching in freshwater, they spend an average of three years maturing in the Pacific, where many are snagged by commercial fishermen, before migrating back to their spawning grounds, where conditions are more ideal to give birth. After laying eggs, they die.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Wild salmon crisis hits US West Coast with closure of California, Oregon chinook fisheries

April 6, 2023 — The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted on Thursday, 8 April to recommend the closure of the 2023 commercial chinook salmon fishery from the northern coast of the U.S. state of Oregon to the Mexico border.

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service is likely to accept the recommendation, which will go into effect prior to the season’s start in mid-May, according to a statement issued by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which said the PFMC based its decision off low ocean abundance forecasts and low 2022 returns.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

CALIFORNIA: “Go fishing or go broke”: North Coast fishermen prepare for salmon season to be canceled

April 4, 2023 — California salmon anglers will be forced to consider other methods of income this year, as the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) plans to cancel this year’s salmon season in the state.

Humboldt fisherman Jake McMaster has had a difficult past few months after a short and unlucrative crab season, and now, the news that salmon season will be cancelled has him in troubled waters again.

“With the crab here that wasn’t the greatest, we would have depended on [salmon] pretty heavily, and we’ll just have to focus our attentions on other fisheries,” McMaster said.

Read the full article at KRCR

CALIFORNIA: California Salmon Stocks Are Crashing. A Fishing Ban Looks Certain.

April 3, 2023 — This week, officials are expected to shut down all commercial and recreational salmon fishing off California for 2023. Much will be canceled off neighboring Oregon, too.

The reason: An alarming decline of fish stocks linked to the one-two punch of heavily engineered waterways and the supercharged heat and drought that come with climate change. There are new threats in the ocean, too, that are less understood but may be tied to global warming, according to researchers.

Scientists and fishers had been braced for bad numbers. Conditions were terrible a couple of years earlier, when the salmon were young and tiny in low, overheated creeks and rivers in California. But as the fish counts came in and the models spit out figures, the numbers were even more dismal than expected.

Of all the salmon in California, fall-run Chinook were the last ones robust enough for commercial fishing. But this year, fewer than 170,000 are expected to return to Central Valley rivers. That’s down from highs of over a million as recently as 1995.

Read the full article at the New York Times

CALIFORNIA: California’s salmon fishers warn of “hard times coming” as they face canceled season

April 3, 2023 — Sarah Bates, the captain of a fishing boat in San Francisco, had a feeling something was wrong with the chinook salmon population back in December.

“The fish weren’t coming up the river, and to a certain extent, we were just waiting,” Bates, 46, told CNN. “We thought the run was late. And then at some point, it just became clear that fish weren’t coming.”

But she and other fishermen weren’t sure how bad it could be. It later turned out that catchers along much of the West Coast likely won’t be fishing for salmon at all this year.

“Salmon is my livelihood. It’s my main fishery,” she said. “And it’s the main fishery for a lot of folks in Fisherman’s Wharf. So, I think there are a lot of us that have some hard times coming.”

In early March, West Coast regulators announced that they may recommend a ban on salmon fishing this year. It would be only the second time salmon fishing season has been canceled in California.

Read the full article at CBS News

CALIFORNIA: It’s a bad year for California salmon. Here’s how it hurts the economy and environment

April 3, 2023 — State officials were supposed to take a conservative approach to approving salmon fishing season this year—and they did.

California’s fishing season had been scheduled to open April 1. Instead, as a result of low  projections, the season has been canceled.

Salmon provides more to the state than meets the eye.

“People don’t realize how much California’s a salmon state,” said Micheal Milstein, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokesman. “The Sacramento River is one of the big salmon rivers off the West Coast.”

As commercial and  comes to a pause this year, here’s what to know

Read the full article at PHYS.org