Chinook ban would hit local fleet hard

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Federal regulators are considering an unprecedented ocean fishing ban on Chinook salmon along 700 miles of California and Oregon coast, threatening to spread distress from beleaguered commercial fleets to family dinner tables.

The impact on Washington salmon trollers could be economically devastating, warns the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

"A lot of people are going to lose their jobs. It will mean ocean-catch salmon will be much harder to get. And it will be much more expensive," said Glen Spain, northwest regional director for the federation, a diverse trade organization that represents port and fishermen's marketing associations.

Up to 15 percent of Washington's salmon fleet depends on catches from the troubled Klamath River, which emerges from the snowmelt of the Cascade Range in Oregon and runs south into California, said Spain.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council begins a weeklong meeting today at the Seattle Marriott Sea-Tac Airport Hotel to recommend how the federal government should tackle a problem caused by plummeting commercial salmon stocks on the troubled Klamath River.

Biologists have warned for years that a combination of warm and low-flowing waters in the once-mighty Klamath — formerly among the nation's most productive salmon-producing rivers — would cause the highly prized Chinook runs to plummet.

Commercial fishermen heaped blame Friday on the Bush administration for managing the river in a way they contend favors farmers, dam operators and timber companies at the expense of fish.

"The federal government has done absolutely nothing to help, and fishermen are angry," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the fishermen federation. "It's almost like they created this Klamath situation to make them look competent on Katrina."

Troll fisheries off the West Coast have developed a small but important niche for high-quality salmon that are hooked — rather than netted — and delivered to markets all over the region.

While any Klamath restrictions will have dire consequences, the vast majority of the nation's wild salmon comes from Alaska, where the average catch in recent years has topped more than 150 million fish, which are canned or sold fresh or frozen, according to industry reports.

By comparison, the Klamath and other river systems contributed to a catch of less than 700,000 salmon last year along the West Coast.

Nonetheless, even temporary reductions in the number of wild-caught salmon exacerbates the market battle with farm-raised salmon producers — fierce competitors to fishing fleets.

Northwest fleets rely on massive catches during seasonal periods to maintain profits. Commercial fish farms, which operate year-round, have seized more than half the salmon market nationally, Washington wildlife studies show.

Jason Peltier, a U.S. Interior Department deputy assistant secretary, called the potential fishing curtailment "devastating news" but defended the Bush administration's stewardship of the Klamath.

"There [has] been an awful lot of mud thrown at us [over the Klamath River]," Peltier said, suggesting that a turnaround will not be produced by "that sort of finger-pointing," and that U.S. officials remain hopeful the river's ills can be healed.

During an average year, salmon fishing in California and Oregon is a $150 million industry. The commercial mainstay is the silver-sided Chinook that return each fall from the sea to spawn and are sold in supermarkets as king salmon.

Experts say a commercial ban, one of three options the Pacific Fishery Management Council will weigh, could put hard-hit coastal fishing fleets financially underwater and prompt consumer price jumps and scrawny inventories.

The targeted area stretches from northern Oregon to California's historic Point Sur lighthouse, just south of Carmel.

Fishermen, who normally harvest salmon six months of the year beginning in the spring, say they expect at the very least to see their season shortened to just a few weeks because of the latest troubles on the Klamath.

The river has long been a trouble spot for salmon.

While the Sacramento River last year rebounded to produce one of its biggest salmon returns in decades, the Klamath has endured an epic drought and fiery water war between farmers and environmentalists in 2001, and a massive die-off of returning adult Chinook in fall 2002, when by some counts more than 70,000 fish rotted on the banks.

But an ecological tragedy that didn't hit the headlines has caused the current rash of problems, biologists say. During spring 2002 and again the following year, more than 80 percent of the juvenile fish returning to sea from the Klamath succumbed to a parasite scientists blame on a combination of low river flows, pollution and warmer water.

Part of the problem is less springtime water because of upstream irrigation diversions for farmers, biologists say.

But the biggest factor is a series of about half a dozen dams on the Klamath that have so quieted the natural turbulence of springtime flows that river-bottom gravels aren't being churned up, allowing the growth of algae where the parasite-carrying worms can thrive.

In addition, runoff from farming, ranching and logging have combined with warmer water to fuel the algae proliferation — and thus produce more worms and parasites.

Small fish pick up the parasites on their way out to sea, succumbing silently in the ocean depths.

Aside from angering fishermen, the potential ban could spill over into ongoing discussions on the renewal of federal hydropower licenses for the Klamath River dams.

Environmentalists, Indian tribes that depend on salmon, fishermen and others are engaged in closed-door talks with power generators and the federal government over the possibility of removing at least a few of the dams.

"I'm very optimistic something good is going to emerge," said Ron Reed, a cultural biologist for the Karuk Tribe, whose members fish the Klamath as their ancestors did, with nets made of hooped tree boughs. "All the information being gathered would seem to support dam removal."

Not even the most dramatic steps will help this year.

The fisheries council is expected next week to select three alternatives, ranging from a restricted season to an outright ban, then hold hearings later this month, and in April make a final recommendation to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

A decision to ban fishing would have to be approved by U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

Material from Seattle Times staff reporters Michael J. Berens and Hal Bernton and the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.