Salmon commercial fishing will be canceled again in California this year

Fishing regulators called on Tuesday to close commercial salmon fishing along the Californian coast for an unprecedented third year in order to help the decline in the population of the five -year -old salmon to recover.

The Pacific Fishey Management Council, an organization created by the Congress which manages ocean fishing along the west coast, voted 13 to 1 to recommend the ban on all salmon commercial fishermen off California, a decision that the National Marine Fisheries Service should adopt in May.

As part of the vote, held at a meeting in San Jose, the council called to allow a limited fishing for recreational salmon for the first time since 2022. The ocean recreational fishing season will be limited to several days in summer and in autumn, and total socket will also be strictly limited.

The suspension of fishing over the past two years has led to major income losses for those in the fishing industry, but some salmon boats skippers are suitable that the closure extension is necessary.

“We have to do our best to save the species,” said Kevin Butler, a commercial fisherman from Santa Cruz.

The fishing season generally takes place from May to October, and in recent years, the state commercial fishing fleet has counted approximately 460 ships. But many owners of boats and crew members have recently turned to other work to reach both ends. Some have put their boats on sale.

Butler said that Salmon previously represented about three -quarters of his income. He continued to fish for the Poutan and the Lingcod, winning much less.

“Each fisherman has sacrificed everything for two years,” said Butler. He said that for himself and for others, being unable to catch the salmon meant “crazy financial difficulties, the underlining your family’s relationships, everything”.

“If the majority of your income disappeared, what would you do? Go find a new career? Well, it’s difficult for fishermen. We have fished all our lives,” he said. “It’s a life, it’s a love.”

Although the severe drought of 2020-222 has contributed to the decline, those who work in fishing also blame California water managers and water policies for the low number of salmon, claiming that too much water has been pumped into farms and cities, depriving the rivers of cold water sufficient when the salmon needs to survive.

“This is a problem of poor water management,” said Butler. He blamed the administration of Governor Gavin Newsom, saying that the state had priority to water supply for agricultural industry of $ 59 billion to the detriment of salmon.

The fishing boats leave the port of Santa Cruz.

(Nic COURY / For time)

Biologists say that salmon populations have decreased due to a combination of factors, including dams, which blocked frai areas, the loss of vital habitats in the flood plain and global warming, which intensifies droughts and causes warmer temperatures in the rivers.

During the severe drought in 2020-22, the water flowing from the dams was sometimes so hot that it was Mortal for salmon eggs. And because the salmon generally feeds in the ocean for about three years and then returns to their native streams, the drop in the number of surviving juvenile fish during drought left a reduced population of adult fish.

The policy of the State to strongly pump rivers “kills entire salmon tracks, and it beats the men and women who work hard and try to live fishing,” said Scott Artis, executive director of Golden State Salmon Assn., A non -profit group that represents fishing communities. “This closed commercial and symbolic recreational and symbolic recreational fishing season is a human tragedy, as well as an economic and environmental disaster.”

He said that his group asked “a little cold water to stay in our rivers for baby salmon so that they can survive and return to adulthood”.

State officials said that in addition to drought and global warming, salmon populations are struggling because of forest fires, bad conditions in rivers, algae flowers and thiamal deficiency problems in salmon linked to changes in their oceanic food.

“Salmon populations are always recovering from severe drought and other climatic challenges and have not yet benefited from our consecutive years of wet winters and other actions taken to stimulate populations,” said Charlton “Chuck” Bonham, director of California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “After years of complete closure for salmon fishing, the possibility of fishing for limited recreational salmon fishing brings hope. However, we know that this news brings little relief for California salmon fisheries. ”

Coastal fishing on salmon was prohibited for two consecutive years once before, in 2008 and 2009. This is the first time that the commercial season should be canceled for three years in a row.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council cited the last State estimates Showing the number of quinnat salmon of the Sacramento river at the river in the fall remains very low, with around 166,000 fish in the ocean this year – against a pre -season estimate of 214,000 last year, and similar to the 2023 estimate of 169,000 fish.

These figures represent a much larger drop in salmon, in some years more than a million fish, which reached the Pacific coast in California in the early 2000s.

“It is another unambiguous signal that salmon decreases in California, alongside many other native fish,” said Andrew Rypel, director of the Pêches School of the University of Auburn and former Director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “It’s really very sad. I think it is an indicator of how we have managed the resource over time, and that we fail salmon. ”

The closure of the fishing has wreaked havoc not only on the commercial fishing fleet, but also on operators of charter fishing boats which could not fish for salmon in 2023 and 2024. Under the decision of the council, recreational fishermen are ready to be authorized to open the ocean under the state of June to the State and to allow 7,000.

State regulators have also established rules for interior recreational fishing on rivers, and California Fish and Game Commission will decide this year during meetings this month and in May.

Before the closure, Jared Davis won a large part of his sports fishing visits to the head of Sausalito on his 56 -foot salty lady. Recently, he turned to other types of cruises, leading to whale observation visits and held burials at sea at sea.

“It hurts that salmon fishing has been closed. It really hurts,” said Davis. “I just did my taxes and my bridge has done more than I did in the past two years.”

He said he supported the planned regulations, which he considered a conservative approach to help the population to recover.

The fishing industry depends on Chinook managed by fall, which migrates upstream to appear from July to December.

Other salmon races have undergone more serious drops. Spring quinnat is listed as threatened by the endangered species law, and Chinook managed by winter are threatened.

The scheme that has emerged in successive droughts is a long -term decline “at the staircase stage”, in which the salmon and the other species undergo a drop during the dry years and are revealed a little better during the dotter periods, but their number does not amount to what they were before, said Rypel.

Because fish have a large part of a three -year life cycle, the population should improve somewhat next year due to the increase they received during the historic wet winter of 2023, said Rypel, but in the long term, fish are still in difficulty.

Changes that would help salmon include having larger flows in rivers at the right time to support fish and the opening of more flood plains to support their recovery, said Rypel.

For decades, hatching managed by the government in the central valley have raised and released millions of salmon each year to help increase their number.

State officials say the Newsom administration continuous efforts to help salmon populations to recover include Restore tidal habitatsModernization of the infrastructure, removing the barriers which hinder the migration of fish and the reintroduction of salmon in traditional frai areas upstream of the dams.

Batteries of crab jars are at the port of Santa Cruz.

(Nic COURY / For time)

Despite these efforts, the situation confronted with California salmon remains so disastrous, said Rypel, that agencies should take more likely to prevent fish from suffering even more important.

“It’s a huge emergency,” he said. “We have to try great things at this stage, great experiences.”

Rypel said he felt for people whose livelihoods have been upset by fishing closings.

“It has always been a Californian lifestyle, and it’s really in danger,” he said.