I was watching TV the other day when I saw an interview with a California fisherman. He was discussing the impacts of the cancellation of Salmon fishing season on his livelihood. First off, I didn’t actually know that Salmon season was canceled. Apparently this has been an ongoing thing (nobody tells me these things).
The SFGate reported U.S. to ban commercial salmon season:
Lovers of king salmon will have to settle for fish hooked in the Pacific Northwest this year under a federal agency’s recommendation Wednesday to ban the commercial catching of salmon off California and much of Oregon in an attempt to save the fabled fish.
The move, which the National Marine Fisheries Service is expected to make final by May 1, comes after the fewest chinook salmon ever recorded made their way up the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers last fall.
“There are just no fish,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “If they allowed any fishing, they would be putting at risk future fishing.”
Wednesday’s decision by the 14-member Pacific Fishery Management Council, meeting in Millbrae, marks the second year in a row that commercial fishermen will not be allowed to reel in chinook.
… more than 2,200 fishermen and fishing industry workers lost their jobs as a result of last year’s ban. While they received federal disaster aid, fishing communities and fishing-related businesses lost more than $250 million.
It appears as if the cause is largely due to habitat destruction in rivers, but poor ocean conditions may have contributed. The ban has now gone into effect (the article was from April).
The problem moves up the coast. Anchorage Daily News reports Deshka River closed to king salmon fishing for summer:
Southcentral king salmon anglers got news they both anticipated and dreaded Thursday morning.
Starting Saturday, the popular Deshka River will be off limits to king salmon fishing for the rest of the season because of poor returns, state fish and game officials announced.
The ban comes on the heels of an already-limited season in which fishing had been restricted to catch and release much of the week.
Last year, the state closed the fishery on June 20.
The reason for the all-out ban is a dismal return of kings to the river, located near Willow about 35 miles northwest of Anchorage.
As of Wednesday, only 865 kings had been counted passing through a weir located at Mile 7 of the stream, far less than the normal average of about 5,400 kings for this time of year.
Even with the ban in place, the state projects only about 5,600 kings will reach the spawning grounds, far fewer than the minimum escapement goal of 13,000 that biologists would like to see to ensure healthy future returns.
The article goes on to describe how widespread the problem is (listing many other rivers I’ve never heard of, but the included numbers are quite depressing). Speculation as to the causes abounds.
The west coast isn’t the only one having problems. Bangor Daily News reports Feds to list Penobscot salmon as endangered:
Federal officials announced Monday that they plan to add all Atlantic salmon populations in the Penobscot, Kennebec and Androscoggin rivers to the Endangered Species List.
The decision significantly expands the previous “endangered” designation for Gulf of Maine salmon from eight smaller Maine rivers and the lower stretches of the Penobscot and Kennebec to the entire watersheds of the state’s three largest rivers. Salmon reared at two federal fish hatcheries will also be protected when the designation takes effect, likely some time next month.
But, as conservation efforts pick up in the US (and are quite effective, potentially doubling the salmon population in areas on the west coast according to the first article), new threats emerge across the Atlantic. I just saw this in my RSS feed, which caused me to finish this post in the first place. Via PhysOrg, Deadly Parasite Could Endanger Salmon and Trout Populations:
Stocks of the UK’s Atlantic salmon along with varieties of domestic Brown trout could be under threat from a deadly parasite according to research led Bournemouth University (BU) published in the International Journal of Parasitology.
Lead author of the paper Dr Rodolphe Gozlan believes the disease is a rosette agent or parasite first identified in the UK in 2005. The agent - Sphaerothecum destruens - was originally found in the US and is closely associated with ‘invasive’ fish species including topmouth gudgeon and could prove deadly to native salmonids (Atlantic salmon, brown trout).
Dr Gozlan and his colleagues from the University of California-Davis, State University of New York, the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and Cardiff University have found the first record of the new infective parasite rosette agent outside North America.
I’m no salmonologist, but that sounds bad.
PS: While searching for articles I also found this. It’s about over-fishing, not about salmon. Still found it somewhat interesting. I was originally going to draw some parallels to the down economy and overfishing in Iceland. Incidentally, from what I’ve read, there are more differences than similarities between the salmon problem and other over-fishing problems.
