Saving Seafood

Big Trouble Looms For California Salmon — And For Fishermen

November 6, 2015 — The West Coast’s historic drought has strained many Californians – from farmers who’ve watched their lands dry up, to rural residents forced to drink and cook with bottled water. Now, thanks to a blazing hot summer and unusually warm water, things are looking pretty bad for salmon, too – and for the fishermen whose livelihoods depend on them.

Preliminary counts of juvenile winter-run Chinook are at extreme low levels. These are salmon that are born during the summer in California’s Sacramento River and begin to swim downstream in the fall.

Unusually warm water in recent months has caused high mortality for the young salmon, which are very temperature sensitive in their early life stages. Most years, about 25 percent of the eggs laid and fertilized by spawning winter-run fish survive. This summer and fall, the survival rate may be as low as 5 percent, according to Jim Smith, project leader with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Bluff office.

“That’s not good,” Smith tells The Salt.

Worse, it’s the second year in a row this has happened. Most Chinook salmon live on a three-year life cycle, which means one more year like the last two could essentially wipe out the winter run. To protect them, fishing for Chinook in the ocean may be restricted in the years ahead, when winter-run fish born in 2014 and 2015 have become big enough to bite a baited hook. The hope is that the few young fish that survived the recent warm-water die-offs will make it through adulthood and eventually return to the river to spawn.

Read the full story at New York Now

 

Lingering drought heightens worries of extinction for salmon

October 28, 2015 — SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Another deadly summer of drought has heightened fears of extinction in the wild for an iconic California salmon, federal officials said Wednesday.

Officials with the National Marine Fisheries Service said preliminary counts indicate that hot, shallow waters caused by the drought killed most of this year’s juvenile winter-run Chinook before they made it out to the Pacific Ocean.

It “doesn’t look very good,” said Garwin Yip, a federal fisheries spokesman.

If a final count this winter confirms the bad news, it would mean a second straight summer in which 5 percent or less of the young fish survived California’s drought.

Since the fish spawn on a three-year cycle, the die-off would make management of next year’s water critical for the salmon’s survival in the wild.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at New Jersey Herald

 

Gulf of Alaska Groundfish to Reopen After NMFS Allocates 1600 Additional Chinook Salmon as Bycatch

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews] — August 10, 2015 — NMFS has given Gulf of Alaska groundfish trawlers in the non-rockfish program Sector an additional 1,600 Chinook salmon to their prohibited species catch (PSC) allowance in an emergency ruling.

The implementation of the emergency decision was done after the North Pacific Management Council (NPFMC) recommended an emergency rule in a 10-1 vote during its June meeting. On May 3, the Gulf of Alaska groundfish sector was forced to close after fishermen unexpectedly reached its annual 2,700 Chinook salmon allowance in the Western and Central Gulf of fishery.

According to NMFS the additional limit of 1,600 Chinook salmon PSC is likely to restore a substantial portion of the forgone groundfish harvest and associated revenue made unavailable by the closure. It will allow the sector to harvest its recent average amount of groundfish for the remainder of 2015, while keeping the total Chinook salmon PSC well below the annual threshold for all Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries.

“NOAA Fisheries has determined that an emergency exists because the early closure of the Non-Rockfish Program CV Sector’s groundfish fisheries is causing significant economic detriment to harvesters, processors and the community of Kodiak,” NMFS said in a press release on Friday.

A previous PSC management action, Amendment 93 to the FM was approved in June 2011 to limit Chinook salmon PSC to 25,000 Chinook salmon in the Western and Central GOA pollock trawl fisheries.

Because the Western and Central GOA non-pollock trawl fisheries were without a Chinook salmon PSC limit prior to 2014, the Council recommended that Chinook salmon PSC limits be extended to these fisheries under Amendment 97 to the FMP.

Amendment 97 to the FMP limits Chinook salmon PSC to a total of 7,500 Chinook salmon for the Western and Central GOA non-pollock trawl fisheries – 2,700 for the Non-Rockfish Program CV Sector, 3,600 for the Catcher/processor Sector, and 1,200 for the Rockfish Program CV Sector.

New data has shown that previous estimates of PSC for this sector were not representative of recent PSC use.

The additional allocation of 1,600 Chinook salmon would be consistent with the overall goals of Chinook salmon PSC management in the GOA trawl fisheries and would not substantially increase Chinook salmon PSC use relative to established limits NMFS said.

Based on current and anticipated incidental catch of Chinook salmon in the GOA trawl fisheries, NMFS anticipates that total Chinook salmon PSC by GOA trawl vessels is unlikely to exceed 32,500 Chinook salmon, well below the annual threshold of 40,000.

This temporary rule will mitigate the costs of the closure to participants in the fishery while the Council develops an FMP amendment to permanently address this situation.

This emergency rule is effective upon publication in the Federal Register today and will last until December 31, 2015, or until the new PSC limit of 1,600 Chinook salmon is reached by the Non-Rockfish Program CV Sector.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.