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There is no need to repeat the news of the collapse of salmon stocks along the coast and a possible closure of the Oregon and California salmon fishery for 2008. A simple Google search will provide you all the media coverage from the past couple of months and the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s website gives the gory details of the options being proposed.
It is true that this is probably the worst crisis the problem-plagued salmon fishery has ever faced. Bad as the dams have been on the fish, not to mention the droughts of the mid-70’s and early 90’s, the El Niño of 1982-83 or the fish kills in the Klamath in this century, this year we are looking at what could be the first total closure for California and Oregon since commercial salmon fishing began on San Francisco Bay and the Delta in 1848.
Ironically, a collapsing San Francisco Bay and Delta ecosystem likely precipitated the collapse of the Central Valley (Sacramento, San Joaquin Rivers and tributaries) fall-run chinook. In the past, these fall chinook runs have accounted for upwards of ninety percent of California’s salmon production and as much as half or more of Oregon and Washington’s ocean salmon catch.
So what caused this disaster? It appears that two years of a weakened ocean current nutrient-pumping system have combined with longstanding poor in-river conditions-- most notably low or impaired flows, very poor water quality and high water temperatures -- to wreak havoc with salmon survival throughout their lifecycle.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Central Valley river system where salmon migrate through San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from the Pacific to their natal streams, fed by the Sierra snow pack. Diversion of freshwater flows from the Delta watershed and record levels of pumping in the Delta in the past few years (i.e., exporting water to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California) had already decimated resident fish, such as the Delta smelt. It has been clear for years that the rest of the Delta ecosystem was in deep trouble. It should have really been no surprise that outmigrating baby salmon would also be affected.
Salmon evolved to face El Niños and other hostile ocean conditions, and have faced these conditions thousands of times before. But they did not evolve to survive blocked, polluted, and dewatered rivers and trashed wetlands and all the other things mankind has done to their critical habitat.
But now that we are in this mess, through no fault of the fishing fleet, the question is really what to do about it now? The solution must be no whining, no crawling into a hole, no abandoning the fishery, just rolling up our sleeves and going to work on saving both fish and fishermen.
Trying to squeeze the last few fish out of a nearly closed season is probably not the most productive use of our time this year. The few fish there are won’t even pay for fuel costs.
Instead, we propose a two-prong strategy. One prong is aimed at getting fishermen financially through this season, and possibly next, with no salmon fishing. The second prong is aimed at correcting the underlying human-based causes of the fish collapse, most notably the excessive water diversions and poor water quality that has caused a collapse of the San Francisco Bay Delta ecosystem and its resident fish stocks, along with the populations of fish migrating through it.
First, an effort is underway to seek federal disaster relief funds. However, a fishery disaster cannot be declared until a season is formally adopted by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and recommended for final approval by the Secretary of Commerce. This final approval would be around the first of May, and the Secretary has been requested by 46 Members of Congress and all three Governors to make such a declaration immediately after that decision has been made.
Anticipating such a disaster declaration, work has already begun on a Congressional appropriation. Without that special appropriate there is no funding. For this year that request is expected to be for $150 million to cover basic losses in the three states for commercial and recreational and any affected Tribal fisheries.
Salmon fishermen and salmon fishing businesses are being asked to contact their Congressional members and members of the House Appropriations Committee to ask their support. Among the west coast Appropriations members are Norm Dicks (D-WA), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Sam Farr (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Mike Honda (D-CA) and John Doolittle (R-CA).
Unfortunately getting Congressional funding for disaster assistance is not going to be easy. The economy now appears to be in a recession, the federal deficit is exploding and there is increasing concern in DC over the level of federal spending, particularly with the large debt looming from a projected $3 trillion Iraq war.
One thing we can do to help secure this relief is show our support for the fishing industry’s salmon restoration efforts at the upcoming SalmonAid festival, to be held at Oakland’s Jack London Square on May 31st and June 1st, 2008 (see www.salmonaid.org). This event will help educate the public about the importance of productive salmon fisheries to our society and economy, and will also show members of Congress we have the support of the people for a disaster assistance package.
Two other actions are taking place in addition to seeking a financial disaster relief package. One is to continue the Genetic Stock Identification (GSI) research that was begun last year, headed by scientists from Oregon State University and NMFS Santa Cruz Laboratory, and administered by the Oregon Salmon Commission and the California Salmon Council. This can employ some fishermen in what is anticipated as a catch and release fishery to gain genetic samples with minimal mortality on stocks.
A second proposal is for the Pacific Council to reallocate some of the rebuilt rockfish stocks to salmon fishermen who traditionally had small hook-and-line catches of rockfish, before so much of that resource was reallocated to the trawl fleet in the 1980’s and 1990’s. With half of the trawl fleet now gone due to buybacks, and stocks now rebuilding, this would not cause any significant economic hardship on the trawl fleet, could help salmon fishermen weather a season or two of no salmon fishing, would bring a higher price for rockfish, and would right an injustice done to the hook-and-line fishery over the past three decades when their share was allocated to a then-burgeoning trawl fleet.
It’s not going to be good enough just to keep the salmon fleet alive either through disaster relief for the next year or two, or in combination with some research work and alternative fisheries. We’ve also got to address the root causes of this collapse or risk repeats.
The list of problems salmon face is long, even without the list of impaired watersheds from the Columbia, coastal coho, the Klamath, coastal chinook, and the Central Valley system. Unfortunately, the agencies tend to just pick a few of the low hanging fruit -- things that are easy to get consensus on and to throw money at (witness the Columbia and CALFED) -- all the while avoiding the controversial issues, and therefore ignoring the fundamental problems.
To get California and Oregon, and even Washington, back on the water once again requires a focus on the production areas first and the major impediment or impediments to that production. That means looking first at the system producing most of the fish -- the California Central Valley river system.
There the single most important action is to fix the collapsed ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary, starting with the restoration of fresh water inflows, which in recent years have been diverted at record levels. This fix to the California Central Valley is readily apparent but has been ignored by government agencies (and their water contractor, developer and agribusiness friends) for decades. The equation is very simple: when water conditions are good in the Delta salmon thrive, when they’re poor salmon die.
The importance of the Delta and its water inflows has long been recognized by PCFFA. For some other fishermen, however, the Delta and its water problems remained an esoteric issue; instead they fought their battles at the Pacific Council level, apparently believing this body was responsible for creating the fish.
This brings us to where we are today. In 2005 a near-record 6.7 million acre-feet of water was exported south from the Delta and in 2007 that might have been 7.0 million acre-feet save for a judicial ruling to curtail pumping to protect the ESA-listed Delta smelt. A coalition of commercial (including PCFFA), recreational (e.g., American Sportfishing Association, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance), Tribal (e.g., Winnemun Wintu Tribe) fishing and environmental groups (e.g., Sierra Club, NRDC, Planning & Conservation League, etc.) have allied to demand a cap on pumping at 5 million acre-feet and an end to agricultural waste water discharge waivers.
The overdraft of the Bay-Delta was recognized in December 1992 when the State Water Board prepared a Draft Order 1630 to restore 1.6 million acre-feet of fresh water flow back to the system. That overdraft has never been dealt with and, in fact, has gotten worse in the score of years since. A 5 million acre-foot cap on diversions then is reasonable, considering the earlier scientific data developed on flow requirements. An alternative would be to cap diversions at no greater than 35 percent of inflow to better address different year types.
The issue of the waste-water discharge waivers is especially serious. This includes the toxic tail water from irrigated lands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley containing high levels of selenium and pesticides. The State Water Resources Control Board established a Delta Water Quality Plan in 1988, but has granted the west side San Joaquin irrigators “discharge waivers” for 20 years since then, and is now considering a waiver for an additional 10 years. This waste-water is nasty stuff -- it has deformed ducks in a national wildlife refuge and is getting into the San Joaquin River and the Delta where it poisons outmigrating juvenile salmon. They’ve had twenty years to fix the problem; now they should either fix the problem or stop irrigating.
This alliance of fishing and conservation groups has its own long list of things to fix, but is focusing first on some of the core issues, most notably Delta flows and water quality. Fixing these first is fundamental for other actions to be effective.
PCFFA, alarmed at ever higher levels of pumping that have been taking place since 2005, has coordinated with Patrick Porgans & Associates and an organization called NOWWE since 2006 to review actions that could be taken to improve water quantity and quality for salmon in the Central Valley, as well as developing a prototype remote monitoring system to gather salmon watershed information (e.g., flow, temperature, sediment, contaminants). Patrick Porgans has worked on Central Valley water issues for 35 years, and has served as a consultant to numerous agencies concerned with in-stream flows and contaminants.
A third issue that has been identified as having a significant affect on Central Valley salmon production has been the net pen program for acclimating in the Delta and releasing a portion of Central Valley hatchery production into San Francisco Bay. This program greatly increases survival of the young fish and helps avert competition with naturally spawned fish migrating downstream and through the eastern part of the Delta. For a two-year period this program was almost non-existent due to a combination of funding, equipment and administrative problems.
Thanks to the leadership of Monterey fisherman Mike Ricketts, who chairs the California Salmon Stamp Committee, and a generous equipment donation from the Fishermen’s Marketing Association of Bodega Bay, this problem at least appears close to being solved.
This year’s collapse and closure comes at a fortuitous time in dealing with the Delta. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a water plan, encompassing two new reservoirs on the northern and southern end (Sites, and Temperance Flats, respectively) of the Delta watershed to divert even more freshwater from the system, coupled with a new conveyance system (including a “peripheral canal”) that will allow for even more water removal from the Delta. If past pumping decimated native fish populations, this proposal would exterminate them completely.
The Governor also has a “Delta Vision” Blue Ribbon Task Force that is charged with coming up with recommendations for dealing with Delta problems, including the environment. Its recommendations are expected to differ slightly from the Governor’s initial proposal, but it is uncertain by how much. This Task Force should be concentrating on water conservation, which is by far the best as well as cheapest option. California’s agricultural water system is one of the most wasteful in the world.
What this means is that it will be critical for the salmon fishing community to weigh in by asserting the needs of salmon and calling for examination of other water alternatives that will allow for recovery of salmon, not their extinction. Oregon and Washington fishermen can help by contacting their members of Congress requesting they kill any federal appropriation for California water development that does not return more fresh water flows for the fish back to the Central Valley and Bay Delta.
California fishermen can also utilize some of the dock time they’ll be given this year by the Pacific Council to attend Delta Vision Task Force meetings and State Water Resource Control Board hearings. Fishermen’s presence before the SWRCB made a big difference in 2006 when TMDL standards (pollutant, water temperature rules established under the federal Clean Water Act) were being considered for Klamath River salmon tributaries. Our voice needs to be much louder and heard in many more places.
Additionally, two unfortunate events may also work to the advantage of the salmon community. First the budget deficit California is facing makes any water bond act highly unlikely and, thus, any state funding for new reservoirs or new Delta water “conveyances.” Second, the mortgage crisis has cut deeply into new home construction, giving some relief from both new water hook-ups as well as new housing developments in the Delta watershed floodplain.
And, in mid-March two organizations, the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) served notice on the State Water Board of their intent to sue over the level of diversions the Water Board has allowed from the Delta under the theory of “unreasonable use.”
We have no illusions that just assuring better water flows for salmon and the Delta will fix all of the problems in the Central Valley system, nor will just fixing the Central Valley automatically mean fishermen can have unfettered salmon fishing again. We still have to finish our work in the Klamath and in the Columbia, and get on with recovering coastal coho and restoring flows for coastal chinook. But make no mistake -- fixing the flows and water quality issues in the Central Valley is the fundamental building block for restoring fishing offshore California, Oregon and even Washington, as this year’s closure painfully shows.
What we’ve presented above is an outline of a strategy aimed at addressing both the immediate need for keeping salmon fishermen financially solvent in the face of no salmon fishery, as well as addressing long-term fixes. We’d like to hear your thoughts.
To keep appraised of developments along with actions you can take, check the PCFFA website. We’ll likewise try to keep you updated here each month.
We wish our Alaskan brethren best wishes for a productive season. They will help keep our markets filled with wild salmon until such time as Washington is allowed more fishing and Oregon and California trollers put their lines out once again.
Zeke Grader is the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA) Executive Director, and can be reached at PCFFA’s San Francisco Office at PO Box 29370, San Francisco, CA 94129-0370, (415)561-5080 x 224. Glen Spain is PCFFA Northwest Regional Director and can be reached at PCFFA's Northwest Office at PO Box 11170, Eugene, OR 97440-3370, (541)689-2000. PCFFA’s website is at: www.pcffa.org. PCFFA's email address is fish1ifr@aol.com.
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