Saving Seafood

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

CALIFORNIA: California Fishermen Bracing For A Complete Closure of Salmon Season

March 11, 2023 — The sight of his charter boat, Salty Lady, propped up on blocks in a Richmond boat repair seemed the perfect metaphor for Captain Jared Davis’ upcoming salmon fishing season — up in the air.

With the biologists in California projecting a record low return of Fall chinook – or King salmon – Davis’ prospects of getting to fish this year were about as empty as his nets.

“The numbers are pretty clear,” said Davis who operates out of Sausalito, “I don’t see how there could be any other options aside from having a completely closed season this year.”

Fishing regulators are likely to come to the same conclusion. On Friday, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council is set to release its fishing options for the upcoming commercial and recreational salmon seasons which normally begin in May. But most in the industry expect the council to recommend closing the entire salmon fishing season for the first time since 2008, and only the second time in history.

Read the full article at NBC Bay Area

OREGON: Oregon fishing season called off due to dwindling salmon populations

March 11, 2023 — An extremely low “abundance” of California Chinook salmon stocks and projected low spawning escapements has led to the cancellation of the upcoming commercial and recreational salmon fishing season along most of the Oregon coast.

Thursday’s announcement came in two parts from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, with both actions canceling fishing seasons between March 15 and May 15, 2023.

According to Fish and Wildlife, the action applies to all commercial ocean troll salmon fishery seasons from Cape Falcon to the Oregon-California Border. Meanwhile, recreational salmon fishing has been canceled in ocean waters between Cape Falcon and Humbug Mountain off the Oregon coast.

Fish and Wildlife’s announcement said the decision arrived in consultation between the National Marine Fisheries Service, Pacific Fishery Management Council and the state of California.

The agencies’ rationale is that “multiple stocks of California Chinook Salmon are at extremely low abundance and are projected to potentially fall below target spawning escapements.”

Just this January, the Biden administration said it would consider adding Chinook salmon in Oregon and Northern California to the endangered or threatened species lists. The consideration came at the behest of nonprofits who petitioned in August 2022 and pointed out that by the 1950s, most spring-run populations of coastal Oregon and Northern California Chinook salmon “were severely depressed or extirpated due to a combination of habitat degradation, commercial fisheries, and negative impacts of artificial propagation through hatcheries.”

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

CALIFORNIA: Fishing groups call to suspend California 2023 salmon season

March 6, 2023 — With more bad news forecast for California salmon, several fishing advocacy groups called Friday for the state to impose an immediate closure of the 2023 salmon season and seek federal assistance for a fishery disaster.

In a joint statement the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the Golden Gate Fishermen’s Association, and the Northern California Guides and Sportsmen’s Association said Gov. Gavin Newsom with the state legislature and agencies must ask for “disaster assistance funding for affected ocean and inland commercial operators.”

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife held its annual pre-season briefing March 1 “and reported some of the worst fisheries numbers in the history of the state. These numbers follow years of drought, poor water management decisions by federal and state managers, occasional failure to meet hatchery egg mitigation goals, inaccurate season modeling, and the inability of fisheries managers to meet their own mandated escapement goals,” the fishing groups said.

“Unfortunately, we have gotten to a point that we have been warning was coming; another collapse of our iconic salmon fisheries”, said George Bradshaw, president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “The harvest models, escapement goals and model inaccuracies show there is no warranted opportunity to harvest chinook salmon in the state of California in 2023.”

Read the full National Fisherman

ALASKA: Challenges spawning rapidly in salmon lawsuit

March 3, 2023 — Local leaders and state legislators this week joined the growing opposition to a lawsuit that could halt Southeast Alaska’s commercial troll fisheries due to what a conservation group in Washington state calls inadequate federal management of the fisheries’ impacts on salmon runs in that state and endangered killer whales that depend on them as a food source.

Opposition in Alaska has increased significantly since a magistrate in Washington issued a favorable preliminary ruling in December to Wild Fish Conservancy in the lawsuit it filed in 2019, which seeks the shutdown Southeast Alaska Chinook (king) salmon troll fisheries until their impact on the Southern Resident Killer Whales is assessed. The proposed order would essentially shut down Southeast Alaska fisheries for 10 months of the year, making them economically nonviable for many trollers, and a final ruling is pending.

Resolutions supporting the Southeast fisheries were approved by the Juneau Assembly on Monday and the Alaska State House on Wednesday, adding to numerous such resolutions already passed by other affected communities such as Ketchikan, Sitka and Petersburg. The House resolution was introduced by Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, a Sitka independent, who said the lawsuit threatens “a catastrophic stoppage, an unnecessary stoppage.”

“These are incredibly important fisheries to our regions, and I think that’s evidenced by the folks who have pulled together and supported the trollers,” she said. “They initially took on this lawsuit themselves, which is not easy to do when each of those vessels is a small business.”

Himschoot said the lawsuit affects about 1,500 people working in the fisheries and about $85 million in economic activity.

The resolution — asking the National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the state’s congressional delegation to take measures to keep the fisheries operating — passed 35-1 with both of Juneau’s House members voting in favor. The no vote was cast by Rep. David Eastman, a Wasilla Republican who regularly dissents on otherwise consensus measures and argued it’s improper for the Legislature to take such an action on pending litigation.

Read the full article at Juneau Empire

ALASKA: Alaska salmon troll fleet under the gun over chinooks and killer whales

February 1, 2023 — Alaska’s Southeast salmon troll fishery is again in the crosshairs with the latest round of legal action threatening the loss of its key chinook fisheries.

In December, a western Washington district court released recommendations to suspend fishing under the Incidental Take Statement, a provision within the Pacific Salmon Treaty that allows Alaska trollers to take wild chinooks throughout the year.

The legal battle began in 2020 with a lawsuit filed by the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy that challenges the biological rationale in setting allocations of Pacific Salmon Treaty chinooks that Southeast trollers catch.

The premise of the case is that when the National Marine Fisheries Service rendered its biological opinion in the formation of the treaty, it did not consider a portion of the commingling stocks as forage fish for the population of 73 killer whales in Puget Sound. The WFC suit rides on the contention that the agency acted out of compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

In a 2021 ruling the same court agreed that NMFS was out of compliance. Since then, the agency has been working on language that it hopes will satisfy mandates within the ESA. But the question remains whether the Alaska troll fishery will be able to operate or not.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Oregon, California coastal Chinook Salmon move closer to Endangered Species Protection

January 27, 2023 — In response to a petition by the Native Fish Society, Center for Biological Diversity and Umpqua Watersheds, the National Marine Fisheries Service determined today that the Oregon Coast and southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Chinook salmon may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.

“I’m pleased that Chinook salmon in Oregon and Northern California are that much closer to being protected under the Endangered Species Act,” said Meg Townsend, freshwater attorney at the Center. “These giants among Pacific salmon are irreplaceable icons of the Pacific Northwest. Chinooks bring important nutrients from the ocean to our forests, feed endangered Southern Resident orcas, and are a source of food and admiration for communities up and down the coast.”

Chinook are anadromous, returning from the ocean to the freshwater streams where they were born to reproduce. The Oregon and California Chinook salmon populations contain both early and late-run variants, otherwise known as spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon.

Spring-run Chinook salmon enter coastal rivers from the ocean in the spring and migrate upstream as they mature, holding in deep pools in rivers through the summer, and spawning in early fall in the upper reaches of watersheds. Conversely, fall-run Chinook enter the rivers in the fall and spawn shortly thereafter.

Read the full story at the Tillamook Headlight Herald

Federal approvals clear way for Klamath River dam removals

January 18, 2023 — A decades-long effort to remove four dams on the lower Klamath River in California and Oregon would be the largest dam removal in the world. The dam removals would reopen access to more than 400 miles of habitat for threatened coho salmon, Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, and other threatened native fish.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Nov. 17 gave final approval for the surrender of utility licensing for the dams, clearing the way for their removal as part of the restoration effort.

NOAA is one of many partners collaborating to build a network of restored habitat that can support these species once the dams are removed. NOAA, the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, and Trout Unlimited have released a detailed plan for restoring habitat in a key portion of the watershed.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Oregon Coast’s Chinook salmon among populations under review for endangered-species listing

January 17, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, is considering a request from several environmental groups seeking to list two types of Chinook salmon as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. One population lives along the Oregon Coast and the other farther south along the Oregon-California border.

Three environmental groups sent the petition last August showing that numerous threats have caused a sharp decline in spring-run Chinook salmon. Those groups are the Center for Biological Diversity, the Native Fish Society and Umpqua Watersheds.

Unlike fall-run Chinook, the spring-run salmon enter rivers still sexually immature and remain there through the summer.

“While they’re in the rivers in the summer there’s a lot more opportunities for factors that threaten the species, like pollution, hot water temperatures, habitat issues, to affect the species,” said Center for Biological Diversity senior attorney Meg Townsend.

Read the full article at OPB

Electronic monitoring technologies help Alaska pollock fisheries

January 17, 2023 — The challenge to get observers for the pollock fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea led to the use of electronic  monitoring technologies, which are empowering the pollock fleet.

The Alaska pollock fishery is one of the most valuable in the world, and that may explain why it has been at the core of some experimental projects that aim to allow for better management of resources while minimizing impacts to other species, like the Chinook salmon, that are commercially and culturally valuable species. According to NOAA, “the pollock fishery has a very low rate of bycatch (less than 1 percent)” but, still, there is, says the agency, “a cap on Chinook bycatch. When it’s met, the fishery for pollock is closed.”

The system has worked well. NOAA noted, recently, that “the pollock fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea is rationalized, which means each vessel/permit holder is allocated a certain amount of catch for the season. But the Gulf of Alaska pollock fishery is open access, with every vessel racing against the others for catch.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman