WASHINGTON -- North California Coast Congressman Mike Thompson, D-St, Helena, with Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and 46 senators and representatives from California, Oregon and Washington called on Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez to give Congress the authorization to distribute disaster funds to Pacific Coast commercial fishers and related businesses.

 In a letter to the Secretary, the bipartisan group wrote that if the salmon season is as bad as it was in 2006, when over 90 percent of the season was closed, the Secretary should quickly declare it a federal fisheries failure so Congress can immediately get aid to affected communities. They also called on the Secretary to work closely with California, Oregon and Washington to assess the financial impacts of a limited salmon season.

 “We've already seen the devastating economic effects a closed season can have on salmon fishers and related businesses, particularly in Northern California” said Congressman Thompson.

 “Another closed season would be an even bigger blow to the North Coast. If stocks are as low as predicted, Secretary Guitierrez must act quickly to declare the season a commercial fisheries failure so Congress can help our communities get back on their feet.” – Bay Area Indymedia, California

JUNEAU -- Federal regulators have issued a new plan aimed at getting the Steller sea lion off the endangered species list.

 One of the plan's major directives is continuing restrictions on commercial fishing in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

 These restrictions, first imposed several years ago, are designed to prevent fishing nets from scooping up fish the sea lions eat near their rookeries and resting rocks.

 Waters around these places are closed up to 20 miles out to sea. And the annual fishing seasons for pollock, cod and mackerel are broken up into pieces spread through the calendar to prevent concentrated catches. -- Pacific Fishing columnist Wesley Loy writing in the Anchorage Daily News

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 

NEWPORT — It hasn’t happened recently.

One part of the fishing industry — salmon, in this case — doesn’t attack another part of the fishing industry — the Pacific whiting fleet — so vehemently as fishermen did Thursday.

Sport and salmon fishermen are stung this year by declining stocks on several rivers that will result in closures or draconian restrictions. Every year during the summer, the fleet that consists mainly of boats under 50 feet and catch high-valued Chinook one at a time, sees 300-foot vessels near the same fishing grounds catching 80 tons or more fish at a whack in big nets and process that fish onboard.

And in those nets are Pacific whiting, also called hake, that are sold as individually frozen filets in supermarkets or ground up and made into imitation crab.

Also in those nets are salmon. Not many, but they’re there. The perception the trawl fleet is taking all the salmon is bigger than what actually takes place.

Commercial trollers in California and Oregon are faced with the option of no fishing at all, so the fact that whiting vessel can catch some Chinook as bycatch is particularly frustrating.

“Zero?” Charleston salmon troller J.D. Evanow said Thursday. “Is that going to stop the 600-foot processors?”

Several salmon fishermen in the room applauded, the same as they did to “Shut down those big corporations. I’m sick of it!” and “What aren’t they telling us?” and similar comments made by others.

But in reality, the at-sea whiting fleet is one of the cleanest fisheries. It uses big nets, but the schooling behavior of the fish allows the fishermen to catch the whiting and few other fish.

Advanced electronics help captains find the big schools.

It’s also one of the mostly closely-regulated fisheries on the West Coast.

The whiting fleet is divided into three sectors:

-- A shoreside fleet of about 40 small trawlers, such as those in Charleston, that deliver to processors on shore;

-- A catcher-processor sector of 10 vessels about 300 feet or less in length, that both catch and process fish on board and stay out at sea for weeks; and

-- A  mother-ship sector, in which there are fewer than a half-dozen vessels that process whiting on board but use small trawl vessels to catch the fish, then deliver the whole trawl net to the big ship. There is only one vessel, the mothership Ocean Phoenix, that is more than 600 feet long.

There also is a tribal mothership and shoreside fishery that takes place off Washington state.

Each catcher-processor and mothership must carry two National Marine Fisheries Service observers on board.

Snouts are collected from each salmon sampled from the hauls so the snouts can be scanned for coded wire tags.

Shore-based trawlers also must carry cameras to monitor the catch, to make sure fishermen are not dumping a net or sorting fish during the whiting season. They also must carry observers some of the time. Each salmon on a shore-based trawler is identified and the snouts also collected.

Observers’ reports and bycatch statistics are available on the Web weekly during the season at http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/Groundfish-Halibut/Groundfish-Fishery-Management/Whiting-Management/index.cfm.

Full-season reports and data are checked and verified and usually made available to the Pacific Fishery Management Council when it meets in March.

The report that will be made to the council next week details how much salmon the whiting fleet caught last year.

-- The mothership sector caught 591 Chinook out of 47,809 metric tons of whiting.

-- The 10-ship fleet of catcher-processors caught 733 Chinook out of 73,263 metric tons of whiting; and

-- The shore-based sector caught 2,462 Chinook out of 72,751 metric tons of whiting.

The whiting fleet as a whole did run into some trouble a few years ago, in 2005, when 11,916 Chinook were caught. The fleet knew it, salmon fishermen knew it and the whiting fleet moved offshore — but not quite soon enough. At the same time, the National Marine Fisheries Service responded with an emergency rule that said the whiting fleet must fish deeper than 100 fathoms for the remainder of the season.

Often, it’s the tribal fleet off northern Washington that has the highest bycatch of salmon and not the fleets fishing off Oregon and northern California.

The tribal fishery is restricted to a single area off the Olympic Peninsula, and most of the salmon it intercepts are of Puget Sound  origin.

In 2003, 2004 and 2005, the tribal fishery caught more than 3,400 Chinook, while the catcher-processor sector caught less than half that.

Salmon fishermen were so concerned that, at an Oregon Salmon Commission meeting also in Newport Thursday, they requested federal lawmakers look into the issue.

“This is a problem for us and it seems to be ignored,” salmon troller Mike Lane said. “Apparently, it has to go to Congressional level.”

At the same time, though, he said: “I hate to pit one fishery against another,” recognizing that even though their vessels are bigger, they’re still fishermen, just like so many others in the room.

The Fishery Management Council will hear a full report of the whiting fleet’s activities when it meets next week in Sacramento. – Coos Bay World

Gov. Sarah Palin's standing up for the Exxon Valdez punitive verdict is laudable. But in so doing, she is stunningly hypocritical in that her administration remains unwilling to do the minimum necessary -- stationing a powerful rescue tug at Unimak Pass -- to prevent an Exxon Valdez or larger spill in the Aleutians, southern Bering Sea and Bristol Bay.

 Thousands of large ships each year transit this region -- one of the richest and most productive marine ecosystems on Earth -- including hundreds of tankers on "innocent passage" between Asia and North America. To date, there is not one adequate rescue tug in the region. We may have learned our lesson in Prince William Sound (where we now have 10 tugs for every loaded tanker a day), but we don't seem to be able to apply that lesson elsewhere.

 The Shipping Safety Partnership has been asking the state (and feds and industry) for many years to charter a powerful rescue tug for the Aleutians, one able to tow a disabled tanker or freighter (a la Selendang Ayu) out of harm's way and prevent major spills and loss of life. But so far, government and industry have simply stuck their heads in the mud, holding their breath in the hopes they'll dodge this bullet until the next election cycle.

 The Palin administration continues to ignore this urgent risk. So as the governor pleads for justice from the Exxon Valdez spill 19 years ago, she clearly needs to do more to prevent such catastrophes across Alaska in the future.  -- Rick Steiner, facilitator, Shipping Safety Partnership, Anchorage

California stream illustrates Chinook crash

Fish and wildlife technicians Mary Serr and Lester Yamaguchi scooped up an ounce of the small fish to check their development. The goal is to keep as many young salmon as possible alive and healthy.

 Those that survive are now being released into the Merced River. The hope is that enough will return eventually in the fall to spawn and begin the process all over. Unfortunately, fewer of them are doing so.

 Surveys taken between October and early January found only 520 salmon in the river, said Tim Heyne, senior biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

Last year, that number was 1,470, and the year before the river had 1,921.

 In 2001 and 2002, about 10,000 fish were counted in the river.

 This drastic decline is causing wildlife managers and fishermen around the Tuolumne, Sacramento, Merced and Stanislaus rivers -- which are all experiencing record-low numbers -- to use words like "crisis" and "disaster."

PORT ANGELES — Coast Guard Group/Air Station Port Angeles flew an injured fisherman from a commercial trawler about 30 miles west of Port Angeles on Saturday night.

The 40-foot fishing boat Puget Sound called the Coast Guard at about 8 p.m. on Saturday when one of the crewmen was injured.

The Puget Sound is a tribal fishing vessel registered to the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, Petty Officer Jeff Pollinger, Coast Guard spokesman, said. The man was taken by helicopter to Olympic Medical Center where he was treated and released.

Neither the hospital nor Coast Guard revealed his name. Pollinger said he did not know the name of the man or the types of injuries he had suffered.

He did say the fisherman was a member of the Lower Elwha tribe. --  Peninsula Daily News

Scientists working with the Oregon Ocean Policy Advisory Council say the state has set an "unreasonable timeline" for establishing a network of marine reserves.

In a memo sent to the Council Thursday, members of OPAC's Science and Technical Advisory Committee said the November deadline to select ocean sites doesn't leave enough time to ensure sound science.

Their concerns echo those of some North Coast leaders who have protested the rapid pace of the selection process, still set to begin April 1.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski has asked OPAC to recommend by November up to nine areas in Oregon's territorial sea that should be roped off as marine reserves and closed to fishing and other extractive activities. They would aim to boost scientific knowledge of nearshore ocean habitats and preserve biodiversity.

Kulongoski plans to allocate state funding for the reserves before the next legislative session.

But scientists advising OPAC say without allocating enough time and money to the scientific review of potential sites, the state runs the risk of making poor choices that could be costly in the long run.

"We are concerned that the pace of the process is precluding the incorporation of adequate scientific information and review, leaving open the potential for inadequately informed decisions and unintended consequences," they said in their memo.

Jay Rasmussen, the associate director of Oregon Sea Grant who chairs the Science and Technical Advisory Committee, said with the April 1 date rapidly approaching, his board doesn't have enough data to grade proposed sites, and it hasn't ruled on the proper size and spacing of the sites yet, either.

A lack of funding makes it difficult to collect information and hold meetings, said Rasmussen.

"Just putting on a size and spacing workshop taxes us to find the resources," he said.

The science committee meets in early April to discuss size and spacing, but that means OPAC won't have its conclusion for the scheduled start of the nomination process.

In a memo sent in November, the science committee said existing data on the state's territorial sea are "inadequate," and in order to evaluate marine reserve sites, "an aggressive program of data collection will have to begin immediately. No evidence of plans for such a program has been provided to the STAC."

Last week's memo renewed the call for a complete, scientific marine reserve development process.

OPAC Chairman Scott McMullen of Astoria called the science committee's memo "a significant development" that his board would address at its March 28 meeting in Newport.

"I would say we have to listen to STAC," he said. "We have STAC for a reason, and we need to respect and weigh what they tell us."

However, the looming question is whether the governor will offer a reprieve from his November deadline.

"One of the big drivers of the timeline is submitting a legislative request," said McMullen. "That's one of the key things we keep hearing form the governor's office is that the Nov. 1 deadline is important so the governor's office can put together a budget request for next legislative session."

Patty Wentz, a spokeswoman for the governor's office, said today her office will need more time to respond to the memo. – Pacific Fishing columnist Cassandra Marie Profita writing in The Daily Astorian

Thursday, March 13, 2008 

State and federal officials Wednesday morning took the pre-emptive step to close seven salmon fishing zones on the California and Oregon coasts earlier than usual to protect Chinook that remain alive in the ocean.

 The action came during a conference of state and federal wildlife officials gathered for the Pacific Fishery Management Council meetings this week in Sacramento, said Peter Dygert, a biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service.

 The agencies decided early closures are needed because the council won't make a final ruling on the 2008 salmon season until mid-April, and seasons that normally open before then could jeopardize the species.

 The seven zones include two commercial fishing areas off the Oregon coast that were set to open Saturday and one California zone near Fort Bragg that would have opened April 7.

 The rest of the commercial season normally begins May 1.

 Opening of the two Oregon zones will be delayed until April 15 at the request of Oregon state officials. But Dygert said subsequent actions probably would keep them closed.

 Four recreational zones also were closed early. They cover the entirety of the Oregon and California coasts except for a zone near the Klamath River and were set to open either March 15 or April 5. One near Fort Bragg has already been open since Feb. 16 and will now be closed April 1. The others will not open as scheduled.

 The actions come amid a steep decline in the California Central Valley fall Chinook salmon run, a normally robust run that underpins the fishery in both states. Last year's run was the second-lowest in 35 years of record-keeping, and this year is likely to be worse. – Sacramento Bee

SACRAMENTO  — We in the fishing industry have a saying, said salmon fisherman Ben Platt of Fort Bragg, Calif.

“Crumbs are bread, too.”

That pretty much sums up the potential salmon fishing opportunity for both sport and commercial fishermen in California, Oregon and Washington for the 2008 season. State and federal fishery managers, along with sport and commercial fishermen, are meeting this week in Sacramento to work through the arduous process of developing three potential season options.

There will be little to no opportunity this year.

The fishing industry has known for a couple months the outlook was dire. Returns of Central Valley fall Chinook were below biologists’ expectations and below the threshold fishery managers have determined is necessary for the stock remain sustainable. The Central Valley stock, primarily those returning to the Sacramento River, is the primary run that keeps West Coast fishermen working and sports anglers with the ability to enjoy ocean and in-river salmon fishing.

Returns of Chinook and coho to many streams and rivers on the West Coast are down, too — a situation that will have a crushing effect fishermen from the Canada to Mexico border, fishermen found out at the Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting.

Fishermen came to California believing there may be as many as 100,000 Chinook available to share between California and Oregon fleets.

But as state and federal scientists began to crunch numbers Monday and report to the council on Tuesday, downright scary figures emerged.

The “floor” — or number of Chinook that must return to the Sacramento to keep the stock sustainable — is 122,000. It’s also called the conservation objective.

In the fall of 2007, only 88,000 fish returned. That’s compared with a recent range of 267,900 in 2006 to 775,500 in 2002.

Biologists say that in 2008, the preliminary number of spawners returning to the Sacramento could be as low as around 59,000 — roughly half of the conservation objective.

And that’s with no commercial season this year, no sport season this year and no in-river sport season this year.

“This is the big hammer,” Newport commercial fisherman Bob Kemp said.

If any in-river sport fishing takes place, that number could drop even lower, to around 50,000.

Kemp, like other Oregon and Northern California fishermen who made it through the 2005 and 2006 disastrous season in which fishing was constrained due to low returns on the Klamath, seems numb. How could it get worse than 2006?

Still, fishermen asked for any opportunity that might be available and worked all day Monday and part of Tuesday to put together three options to take to the public for review.

Council members warned scientists and the fishing industry that one option would have to include zero fishing.

But when the California industry group reported back to the council, there was no zero option proposed for recreational fishermen.

California Department of Fish and Game council representative Marija Vojkovich took one of the options off the table and zeroed it out to no fishing.

“Also, consider in-river fishing in Central Valley as no retention in the fall,” Vojkovich added.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife council representative Phil Anderson had some stern words for the whole West Coast industry.

“We all came here with various understandings,” Anderson said, “but it does not, in my view, represent a realistic range of alternatives. We need to do some more work. We have more cutting to do.”

Washington fishermen are facing constraints due primarily to the Columbia River tule Chinook stock; the Sacramento fish primarily provide opportunity for California and Oregon fleets.

Oregon commercial fleets hoped to have some fish available for ongoing genetic sampling studies. That, too, may be questionable.

But the week is still young.

“We do have some work to do here,” Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife representative Curt Melcher said.

The Salmon Technical Team — tribal, state and federal scientists — will continue to crunch numbers based on new season options such as decreased numbers of fishing days, lower bag limits or time and area closures — while fishermen and others involved in the industry will work on different options at Salmon Advisory Subpanel meetings.

Charleston troller Jeff Reeves traveled to the meeting as an Oregon Salmon Commission representative. He, like Kemp, was shaking his head in disbelief at the disaster that promises to be far worse than the one he just survived.

“This is a salmon collapse that’s unprecedented in my lifetime,” he said. – Coos Bay World

So few salmon are living in the ocean and rivers along the Pacific Coast that salmon fishing in California and Oregon will have to be shut down completely this year unless an emergency exception is granted, Pacific Fishery Management Council representatives said.

 It would mark the first time ever that the federal agency canceled the coast's traditional salmon fishing season from April to mid-November.

 Such a move would jeopardize the livelihoods of close to 1,000 commercial fishermen from Santa Barbara to Washington State and would significantly drive up the price of West Coast wild salmon.

 A decision to shut down the fishery also would kill recreational salmon fishing for some 2.4 million anglers in California, an activity that the American Sportfishing Association has estimated is worth $4 billion.

 The council is expected to make a recommendation in April to the National Marine Fisheries Service, which will make the final decision about what to do about the collapsing salmon fishery.

 The council's salmon management plan, first adopted as part of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and amended several times since then, requires the council to close ocean fishing if the number of spawning salmon do not reach the conservation objectives set for the fishery. – San Francisco Chroncle