Salmon population headed for collapse, season may be cancelled

Pacific Fishery Management Council said in a report Tuesday that the Sacramento River’s fall chinook salmon population is headed for collapse and suggested that it may be necessary to close the salmon season entirely.

That would spell disaster for both commercial and recreational fishermen at Pillar Point Harbor, who typically depend on the salmon and Dungeness crab seasons for their entire incomes. Poor salmon returns from the Klamath River in 2006 and 2007 previously caused regulators to cut the first month and a half of salmon season, which normally starts on May 1, resulting in untold financial losses for fishermen.
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Fishermen say they knew the Sacramento River runs were weaker than expected last year, but even they were shocked by the low number of chinook returning to the river to spawn. Only about 90,000 returning adult salmon were counted in the Central Valley in 2007, the second lowest number since 1973, according to the report.

More worrisome is that only about 2,000 2-year-old chinooks — whose numbers are used to predict returns of adult spawners in the coming season — returned to the Central Valley last year — by far the lowest number ever counted. On average, about 40,000 juveniles, or "jacks," return each year.

Some believe the losses are related to changes in the ocean linked to global warming. Others blame the troubles in California on increased pumping of fresh water from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, which supplies drinking water to millions of people in drought-stricken Southern California, as well as irrigation for America’s most fertile farming region.

There’s more at the County Times website.