California Salmon Fishing Update
March 21, 2008
Emergency action has been taken by the federal Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to close the ocean sport fishery between Horse Mountain and Point Arena on April 1, 2008.
In addition, emergency action was taken to close the April 5 sportfishing openers in San Francisco and Monterey port areas (south of Point Arena to the U.S.-Mexico Border).
The Fish and Game Commission will consider emergency action on March 28, to conform to the PFMC actions affecting state waters.
These actions are being taken to protect Sacramento River fall Chinook salmon which returned to the Central Valley in 2007 at record low numbers. Even if all ocean sport and commercial fisheries are closed throughout California, salmon returns are not projected to meet the escapement goals required by the PFMC Salmon Fishery Management Plan.
The PFMC has produced three ocean salmon fishing season options (effective May 1, 2008 through April 30, 2009) for public comment.
* Option 1 provides very limited commercial and sport fishing after May 18.
* Option 2 provides no commercial or sport fishing after March 31 but allows a non-retention research project to collect tissue samples for genetic stock identification analyses.
* Option 3 provides no fishing between Cape Falcon, Oregon and the U.S.-Mexico border.
On April 1, the PFMC will hold a public hearing meeting in Eureka to receive comments on the proposed ocean salmon fishery management options adopted by the PFMC. The PFMC will then meet April 7-11 in Seattle to adopt a final regulatory packet from the three options listed above. More information regarding the PFMC meetings and options can be found here: PFMC
Why arn’t people in CA looking at the sarine fishery? Do you know that NOAA fisheries and the PFMC allow a harvest of over 2 billion sardines in CA waters. I have fished in the Pacific North West for thirty-five years mostly, tuna and salmon. Since 1998 the waters around the Columbia River, where I fish, have been considerably warmer. Sardines moved in (in the 1990’s) and the salmon and tuna in our waters flourished in numbers and in size. Since then the water temperature, which we monitor closely for tuna fishing success, has been consistently warmer than in the past. I noticed the sardine boats mostly because there location, where I caught my salmon. As the salmon from CA, OR and WA went from boom to bust, I looked at this sardine fishery, online and I visited the processing plants in Astoria OR. My question, how can we remove billions of sardines from the ocean during warm water conditions (when sardines are the main food for adult and young salmon) and not cause or at least contribute to a salmon problem? If one looks a the increase in salmon, Chinook and Coho, after the sardines moved in and the present decline which started in 2002, and the ramping up of the sardine fishery, common sense tell you there is a correlation. In addition the 2006 age samplings taken by WDFW shows over 70% are 3 year olds. This is very alarming, as you may know 3-year-old sardine or only spawn 3 to 4 times a year. The older sardine spawn 80% more often, over 40 times a year. Given the smaller number of mature fish, if harvest is continued this could trigger a collapse of the sardine biomass and extinction of many more salmon stocks. Warm water conditions are actually becoming more of a factor every year. For the last 3 or 4 years we have had tuna show on the Astoria Canyon in June. Before 1999 we rarely got to fish tuna before august. Along with this salmon collapse, I have noticed a decline in the size of the tuna. Respectfully, Rick Andersen