Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: News media reports that California’s salmon season is closed for all of 2023 inaccurate

March 15, 2023 — Salmon season isn’t closed for all of 2023 yet. But all three recommended alternatives to be considered by regulators at a week-long meeting beginning April 1 would close the California fishery for all of 2023 if followed. However, this is not a certainty. In years past, changes have been made during the public process that is still ongoing. Numerous media reports, such as this Bay Area news broadcast, have misconstrued the existing closures as being for the entire season.

Sport salmon fishing groups and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) recommended March 4 that the salmon fishing season be canceled. This was accompanied by a push to get a federal disaster declaration to aid fishermen. The suggestion by the fishing groups, who knew the PCFFA was considering closure, was widely reported as a closed salmon fishing season even before last week’s PCFFA meeting. Temporary closures of the early part of the season, when few salmon are caught in California, are not infrequent, and no decision on actually closing salmon season will be made until the April 1-7 meeting of the Pacific Fishery Management Council. In the past, alternatives have been modified when innovative proposals have been made by environmentalists or the fishing industry.

Read the full article at the Mendocino Voice

 

Chinook salmon season likely to remain closed In Oregon and California

March 14, 2023 — March is usually a time of bustle and activity on the port docks of the Oregon Coast. Salmon fishermen return to the docks to ready their trollers. Crabbers with salmon permits begin the process of transforming their boats for the upcoming season. Hay racks arrive, gurdies are put on, hydraulic lines are reconnected, and crab tanks removed.

Everywhere fishermen are exchanging news of season openers, which hoochies and spoons they think will be hottest, what the price might be, and where they believe the salmon will show up first. Spring comes with renewed promise as crab harvest has slowed down and the excitement of chasing Chinook salmon takes hold.

That most likely won’t be happening for most of Oregon, and all of California this year. The Pacific Fishery Management Council released the season alternatives for the Chinook salmon season in California, Oregon, and Washington this week. These three alternatives are released each year for consideration, with each one presenting a different season structure, before the season is set, giving fishermen a chance to voice their preferences in regards to opener lengths, which months typically offer better fishing, and conflicts with other fisheries.

As fishermen had feared, following the presentations at the Oregon Deoartment of Fish and Wildlife Salmon Commission meeting on Feb. 27, and the CDFW meeting on March 1, which showed catastrophically poor returns in the Klamath and Sacramento Rivers, and low projections for 2023, each of the alternatives that have been offered for consideration confirm the worst; commercial salmon season may be closed on all but the most northern tip of the Oregon coast until Sept. 1, and it may not open at all in California.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Lawsuit calls for feds to protect California humpback whales from gill nets

October 28, 2022 — The Center for Biological Diversity is suing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, claiming it is not protecting endangered Pacific humpback whales from entanglements in California drift gillnets.

The Center, in the lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday, claimed that in the past two fishing seasons, about 12 Pacific humpbacks were caught in the California drift gillnet fishery. Researchers claim this excessive harm to endangered humpback whales violates the Endangered Species Act.

Whales caught in drift gillnets can drown or become constricted by nets as they swim away, causing stress, injuries and infections. This makes any entanglement of a humpback whale in drift gillnet gear an unlawful “take” under the act.

The fishery allegedly leaves mile-long hanging nets in the ocean overnight to catch large fish like Pacific bluefin tuna, swordfish and thresher sharks. The fishery then discards more than half of the fish caught, the lawsuit alleges. The fishing effort takes place from Aug. 15 through Jan. 31 and overlaps with important areas for sea turtles, threatening those endangered animals as well.

The Center claims NOAA Fisheries failed to adequately analyze the impact on the humpback populations listed under the act in 2016. Entanglements can lead to death, injury and lower calving rates in whales.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

California Harbor Porpoises Rebound After Coastal Gillnetting Stopped

January 14, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Harbor porpoises have rebounded in a big way off California. Their populations have recovered dramatically since the end of state set-gillnet fisheries that years ago entangled and killed them in the nearshore waters they frequent. These coastal set-gillnet fisheries are distinct from federally-managed offshore drift-gillnet fisheries. They have been prohibited in inshore state waters for more than a decade. The new research indicates that the coastal set gillnets had taken a greater toll on harbor porpoise than previously realized.

The return of harbor porpoises reflects the first documented example of the species rebounding. It’s a bright spot for marine wildlife, the scientists write in a new assessment published in Marine Mammal Science.

“This is very good evidence that if we can eliminate the deaths in fishing nets, marine mammal populations can come back in a big way,” said Karin Forney, a research biologist with NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center who is based in Monterey Bay.

The State of California managed set-gillnet fisheries for white seabass and halibut in coastal waters off central California beginning in the 1930s. Before the 1980s, there was little solid information about the impacts of coastal set-gillnets on protected species such as marine mammals and seabirds. Harbor porpoises were vulnerable to this coastal fishery because they frequent shallow inshore waters where the nets were historically set.

The scientists estimated, based on a combination of data, that as many as 300 harbor porpoises per year may have been killed in California’s coastal set-gillnet fisheries during the 1980s. One 1994 study (PDF, 4 pages) confirmed the deaths of more than 50 harbor porpoises in Monterey Bay alone, with the authors speculating that the true number was far higher.

Read the full release here