Klamath Salmon

 

The fish kill of 2002.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted last week to practically shut down commercial salmon fishing along 700 miles of coast off Oregon and California for May, June, and July. There will be no commercial salmon fishing within the 400 miles between Florence and Fort Bragg with limited openings south to Point Sur and north to Cape Falcon. Recreational fishing also was cut back, but not so severely.

Many blame the low numbers of Klamath Salmon on the Bush’s administration’s 2002 decision to ignore their own federal biologists and divert water from the Klamath for farm irrigation, placing the salmon in danger. Salmon swim upriver to spawn, intent on finding the place where they themselves were born, but need a constant supply of fresh, cold, and clean water to successfully reproduce. Four dams in the Klamath block access for about 300 miles for the salmon and the decision to divert water from the Klamath for agriculture lowered the water to unsafe levels.

An estimated 70,000 fish were killed in stagnant pools on the lower Klamath in 2002, killed by disease and suffocation in the overcrowded conditions. About half of the 70,000 fish (called the worst die off in history according to a 2003 US Fish and Wildlife report) were Chinook salmon. In 2004 24,000 fall Chinook salmon spawned naturally in the Klamath, well below the conservation plan “floor” of 35,000. The Klamath “floor” of 35,000 natural-spawning fall-run chinook is a number determined by scientists required to gain the maximum production of salmon over time under normal conditions in the Klamath. It is not a minimum number needed for survival of the fish, which would be far less. Indeed, in many of the years when the floor was not reached the returning spawners of that year produced some of the largest runs ever, indicating that conditions in the river are essential to successful reproduction. But in 2005 27,000 spawned naturally, and only 29,000 were predicted for this year. Three straight years of falling below the management threshold of 35,000 triggers a federal conservation alert, and conservation measures begin.

Fishermen blame government officials for failing to solve the Klamath’s river’s problems early on. Commercial fishing organizations and environmental groups sued the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 2002, charging that the government’s plan to wait eight years was insufficient to ensure the salmon’s survival. U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong ruled in March that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had an obligation to send enough water down the Klamath River for threatened coho salmon this year that overruled agriculture's water rights. The Justice Department plans to ask Judge Armstrong to reconsider her decision, members of Congress learned on Monday, April 10, much to the dismay of the fishing and environmental groups which initiated the lawsuit.

"Fishermen learn to live with the vagaries of nature including cycles of fish production and regulatory restraint to avoid overfishing, but what they can't live with is a government that deprives a salmon river of its water and does nothing for four years but watch fish die in the parasite infested cesspool the Klamath became," said Zeke Grader, the executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations, an organization of commercial fishing groups throughout California. "This unconscionable response of the Bush Administration to shut down fishing after government policy destroyed the fish is going to cost fishing men and women their livelihoods, hurt fishing communities and deprive consumers access to one of the finest foods anywhere."

The commercial salmon industry from California’s Point Sur to Oregon’s Falcon Point is valued at $150 million dollars, and commercial fishermen and their supporting industries will be hit hard by a shortened salmon season. The Sacramento river and its tributaries will enjoy very abundant healthy runs of salmon, but since the salmon mix together in the open ocean, there is no way to control the catch of Klamath river without affecting the Sacramento river population.

The National Marine Fisheries Service proposed a total ban to protect the few remaining Klamath fish and affirmed the Pacific Fishery Management Council's decision to shut down the commercial salmon season, prompting fishermen to apply for federal aid to get them through the year. The closure could wipe out the local Salmon industry and still not actually save the Klamath salmon. If the fishermen catch no salmon at all this year, the parasite in the river still has a 100% mortality rate and salmon will still be fighting for their lives.

 

Read more!

Fact sheet on the 2006 Salmon Season >>

Decision to supply water to the Klamath salmon >>

Rally for salmon fishermen in Coos Bay >>

The owner of the Klamath river dams faces a decision: demolition or fish ladders? >>