Saving Seafood

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

California cuts short commercial Dungeness crab season

April 2, 2023 — California will cut short the commercial Dungeness crab season to protect humpback whales from becoming entangled in trap and buoy lines, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Thursday.

Commercial fishing will end on April 15 from the Mendocino county line to the Mexican border, the agency said. It will still be allowed in the waters off Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

Recreational crabbing also will be allowed.

Read the full article at Associated Press  

California crab fisherman sues Pacific Seafood over alleged crab price-fixing

March 21, 2023 — A crab fisherman in the U.S. state of California has sued Pacific Seafood alleging it has “artificially suppressed” the price paid to fishermen for Dungeness crab.

The fisherman, Brad Little, filed the suit in a federal court in San Francisco, California, alleging he and 1,400 other commercial crab fishermen in California, Oregon, and Washington were paid lower prices for crab due to a price-fixing scheme perpetrated by Pacific Seafood. The complaint alleges Pacific Seafood fixed the price of crab through a “multipronged strategy of monopsonization, coercion, dumping, and secret deals.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

CALIFORNIA: No California Salmon This Year: Water Diversion, Drought Caused Fish Stocks to Crash

March 20, 2023 — Most summer mornings at first light, Jared Davis is a few miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge, motoring his charter fishing boat Salty Lady over the Pacific Ocean. His eyes sweep the horizon, looking for diving birds, but mostly he watches the screen of his dashboard fish-finder for schools of anchovies — a sure sign that salmon are near. When the signs look good, he throttles down to trolling speed and tells his customers to let out their lines.

“Drop ‘em down!” Davis calls out the window. “Thirty to 40 feet!”

When the bite is steady, the Salty Lady may have 20 customers on board, each spending $200 for the chance to catch salmon. On the best days, fishing rods bend double the moment the lines go down, and a frenzy of action ensues, often amid a hundred or more other boats. Hooked Chinook thrash at the surface, and the deck becomes strewn with flopping fish.

Last year, California’s commercial and recreational fishing fleet, from the Central Coast to the Oregon border, landed about 300,000 salmon.

But this year, Davis and other salmon anglers won’t be fishing for salmon at all.

Read the full article at Times of San Diego