Fisheries panel may propose no California salmon season

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — A key federal advisory panel is expected to begin considering an unprecedented ban on salmon fishing in California in response to an alarming collapse of a signature fishery.

Salmon populations are depressed from the Bay Area to Washington state, but the problem is particularly acute for California's most productive run — the Sacramento River fall run, which produces more than 80 percent of the salmon caught off the California coast.

Not only did numbers plunge steeply and unexpectedly last year, but a key indicator suggests things could be much worse a year from now.

"The situation is unprecedented and off the charts," said Donald McIsaac, executive director of the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Though many researchers are pointing the finger at adverse ocean conditions, McIsaac and others say fluctuations in the ocean's currents and surface temperatures alone do not explain the problems.

And that is focusing renewed attention on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and California's water-delivery system, which is already being blamed at least partially for the ongoing collapse of several other fish species.

McIsaac cautioned that the cause of the salmon collapse remains a mystery and that researchers have a list of 46 potential factors to investigate.

That list includes everything from disease, hatchery problems and an increase in predators to water diversions and a possible connection between the salmon collapse and the delta's ongoing ecological crisis.

The fishery-management council will likely propose three options for the fishing season by the end of the week. A final decision is expected during its April meeting in Seattle.

It is widely anticipated that one option will be closing the salmon season entirely, a drastic move that has never happened on the West Coast. The closest the council got was two years ago, when the commercial fishing season was cut by two-thirds to protect Klamath River salmon that had been battered by poor habitat and upstream water diversions.

"I don't know if they have any choices," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "As some of my guys have said, even if they give us a season, so what? There's no fish to catch."

So far, most of the blame for the salmon's collapse has been placed on ocean conditions. Specifically, the Pacific Ocean in 2002 entered a warm phase that delays the onset of current "upwelling" off the West Coast and starves the marine ecosystem of nutrients and food.

Up and down the coast, salmon stocks were depressed, with runs doing worse the farther south one looked, said Allen Grover, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

Since the Central Valley runs are the farthest south, it makes sense that they would appear the hardest hit, Grover said.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which was discovered just 10 years ago, is a shifting ocean and atmospheric climate pattern that affects West Coast currents and salmon populations.

Peter Moyle, a leading expert on California's native fish, said a run of years with favorable ocean conditions might have masked problems upstream.

Even during good years in the ocean, baby salmon might have had a tough time as they swam downriver and through the delta while growing strong enough to survive in the ocean. But once they reached the open water, the survivors were able to thrive.

When ocean conditions soured, though, salmon were hit with a double whammy.

"It's quite likely that when ocean conditions got worse, suddenly you got this massive collapse," Moyle said. "That suggests the ocean conditions could no longer compensate for conditions upstream."