Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
January 30, 2008
1. Top Item
Salmon supply is collapsing, officials say; Number of fish that returned to spawn in the Sacramento River this past year is down by 67 percent - Associated Press
Salmon run verges on a collapse; Sport and commercial fishing are in jeopardy - Sacramento Bee
Salmon arriving in record low numbers - San Francisco Chronicle
Salmon collapse could force fishing restrictions; Regulators issue the warning as the number of chinook in the Sacramento River falls to historic lows - Los Angeles Times
Salmon run in big trouble, fish counts show; Those who fish may face stiff restrictions - Modesto Bee
AP: Officials Warn Of Salmon Population 'Collapse'; Regulators Could Close West Coast Salmon Fishing This Year - CBS Channel 13
Salmon supply is collapsing, officials say; Number of fish that returned to spawn in the
Associated Press – 1/30/08
By Terence Chea, staff writer
The number of chinook, or king, salmon returning from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the
The Central Valley salmon population has fallen by more than 88 percent from its high five years ago, when salmon restoration efforts in the
However, recent years have seen salmon populations steadily dwindle in the
Some say they believe it's related to changes in the ocean linked to global warming. Others blame the troubles in
In his e-mail to members of the fishery management council, Executive Director Donald McIsaac offered "an early alert to what at this point appears to be an unprecedented collapse in the abundance of adult California Central Valley ... fall Chinook salmon stocks."
"The magnitude of the low abundance ... is such that the opening of all marine and freshwater fisheries impacting this important salmon stock will be questioned," he said.
About 90,000 returning adult salmon were counted in the
It's the second time in 35 years that the Central Valley has not met the agency's conservation goal of 122,000 to 180,000 returning fish, according to the council, which regulates
More worrisome is that only about 2,000 2-year-old juvenile chinooks returned to the
The low number of juvenile salmon means this year's runs are likely to be even smaller.
Complete statistics on other key salmon runs won't be available for two weeks, but experts said it looks like a bad year for salmon elsewhere in the West.
Ron Boyce, a salmon program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the
Coastal rivers farther north are in even bigger trouble.
"This is a large-scale phenomenon affecting chinook stocks and other species coastwide," Boyce said. "It appears for those northern
It is difficult to point to a cause, but the fact that both hatchery and wild fish are showing low returns points to the ocean and estuaries, where salmon spend most of their lives, said Curt Melcher, deputy director of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Last year there were very unusual conditions in the ocean, Boyce said. Southwesterly winds blew all summer, driving warm waters near shore and disrupting the marine food chain.
Some fishers and environmentalists say they believe the sharp decline in Central Valley chinook is related to increased water exports from the Delta, which supplies drinking water to millions of people in drought-stricken Southern California, as well as irrigation for
"It's time to reduce pumping of Delta waters before we destroy the fish and wildlife species we appreciate so much in California," said Mike Sherwood, an attorney for Oakland-based Earthjustice.
Salmon that spawn in Central Valley rivers form the backbone of the West Coast's commercial and recreational salmon fishery and are caught by fishers from Southern California to
More than 90 percent of the wild salmon harvested in
"
The council plans to meet in
"Even if they have a salmon fishing season, there won't be very much salmon to catch without a strong
Duncan MacLean, a Half Moon Bay fisher who is on a team that advises the fishery council, said he's bracing for hard times.
"It's probably going to be worse than anything we've experienced before," said MacLean, 58, who relies on salmon fishing for as much as 70 percent of his income. "It's going to put a lot of us out of business. I don't know how I am going to be paying my bills through the summer."
Dick Pool, who owns Concord-based fishing gear manufacturer Pro-Troll, said the salmon collapse will be felt in fishing communities all along the coast, noting that a recent study found that recreational anglers spend more than $2 billion annually in
"The impact is going to be huge," said Pool, a former board member of the American Sportfishing Association. "It will take its toll on manufacturing, retailers, wholesalers, fishermen and the charter fleet."
The salmon fishing industry is still reeling from severe limits on West Coast salmon fishing in 2006 to protect dwindling populations on the Klamath River in Northern California and
After three years of poor returns, the number of returning Klamath chinook in 2007 exceeded minimums set by federal fishery managers. Preliminary counts showed about 50,000 spawners, though low numbers of juvenile fish indicate there may be poor returns of adult salmon this year.
The precipitous decline of
After hitting a record low of 83,000 returning adult salmon in 1992,
Salmon run verges on a collapse; Sport and commercial fishing are in jeopardy
Sacramento
By Matt Weiser, staff writer
The
The fall chinook run in the
But in fall 2007, the number of spawners suddenly fell to just 90,414 fish, the second-lowest total since 1973. That includes wild and hatchery-raised fish.
The news came in a memo e-mailed Monday from the director of the Pacific Fishery Management Council to council board members.
The numbers are preliminary and normally are not made public until February. But they represent a steep drop from the 2006 return of about 270,000 chinook.
"It's frightening to think how far we've fallen so quickly," said J.D. Richey, a salmon fishing guide on the American River, a key tributary that contributes to the Valley's chinook run. "It's pretty bleak."
Even more worrisome, the count of 2-year-old chinook returning to spawn in 2007 was just 2,021 fish. That is not just a record low, but also a mere fraction of 36-year average of about 40,000 fish. Early spawners, also called "jacks," are considered a reliable indicator of the number of 3-year-old fish expected to spawn in the following year.
In addition, the 90,414 total falls below the council's minimum conservation target of 122,000 fish, which may compel officials to shorten the 2008 fishing season both in the ocean and in
"The magnitude of the low abundance … is such that the opening of all marine and freshwater fisheries impacting this important salmon stock will be questioned," Donald McIsaac, the council's executive director, wrote in the memo. He called the numbers "an early alert to what at this point appears to be an unprecedented collapse."
The Central Valley run includes fish that spawn on the
In 2006, the salmon season was drastically curtailed to protect the smaller
"It's going to be devastating," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "It could mean no fishing at all."
It remains unclear why the run fell off so sharply in 2007. But many indicators point to poor ocean health, which may, in turn, be caused by factors linked to global warming, according to researchers.
For several years, changes in wind patterns have halted or delayed deep upwelling currents in the ocean. The upwelling drives a food cycle that produces plankton, which in turn feed tiny shrimp-like krill. The krill, in turn, are the primary food for young salmon spending their first year in the ocean.
The upwelling disruptions may have contributed to a decline in krill along with their salmon predators. Krill also feed a variety of seabirds, many of which also have declined in number.
Other experts said they believe poor environmental conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are to blame. Six other fish species are declining there due to a combination of near-record water exports, poor water quality and competition for food from invasive species.
"It's just another piece of evidence that our management of the rivers and the estuary are insufficient to support these species," said Tina Swanson, senior scientist at the Bay Institute. "We need to do better, and really quickly."
Many anglers fear a reduced season in 2008, but it may not be much worse than what they just went through because of the poor chinook return.
Richey, for example, had only 10 percent of the usual number of clients booking salmon trips on the
"I basically just stopped offering salmon (trips) because there wasn't anything to catch," he said.
"To me, it just felt like there was a void in the Valley. It was odd. I guess having the chinook was something I've taken for granted all these years." #
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/672392.html
Salmon arriving in record low numbers
San Francisco Chronicle – 1/30/08
By Jane Kay, staff writer
The
The bad news for commercial and sport fishermen and the salmon-consuming public surfaced Tuesday when a fisheries-management group warned that the numbers of the bay's biggest wild salmon run had plummeted to near record lows.
In April, the Pacific Fishery Management Council will set restrictions on the salmon season, which typically starts in May. A shortage could drive up the price of West Coast wild salmon. The council's leaders said the news is troubling because normally healthy runs of
"The low returns are particularly distressing since this stock has consistently been the healthy 'workhorse' for salmon fisheries off California and most of Oregon," the council's executive director, Donald McIsaac, said in a statement Tuesday.
At its peak, the fall run has numbered hundreds of thousands of fish, exceeding 800,000 in some years. But this year the preliminary count has put the number at 90,000 adults returning to spawn in the
Through the years, the chinook, or king, salmon that pass through
"We've known that the numbers were going to come in low, but we didn't know they would be this low," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which represents commercial fishermen.
"This could end up closing us," Grader said. "Part of what we're trying to do is put a fish on the table that people can afford."
A few more than 1,000 commercial fishermen who catch the Central Valley salmon in the ocean from
Grader, along with representatives of most sport and environmental groups, attribute the salmon decline primarily to
"Twenty years ago, we identified the amount of additional freshwater we needed for healthy fish," he said. A federal law was passed in 1988 to reserve water to help fish, but the water only makes it as far as the delta - not out to the bay, where it would help migrating fish like salmon, he said.
Pollution that drains off farms also hurts the fish, Grader said.
Heidi Rooks, an environmental program manager in the Department of Water Resources, said the salmon's woes probably are linked to the
"Although there are environmental challenges in the
Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the federal part of
The economic impacts from the loss of salmon also would affect businesses associated with sport fishing, including the boating, hotel and manufacturing industries.
"The last two years have been the worst salmon fishing years in all of
"The main reason has been the collapse of the delta. The tiny little smolts aren't making it the 100 miles from the rivers to the bay. As the water exports have increased over the last five years, the food chain has been significantly affected," he said.
According to the American Sportfishing Association, there are 2.4 million recreational anglers in
The popular chinook salmon is the most recent of the fish that feed in the rivers, delta and the bay to suffer a loss in numbers, said Tina Swanson, senior scientist at the Bay Institute, an environmental group.
Delta smelt, threadfin shad, longfin smelt and striped bass have declined in numbers starting in the early 2000s, she said. "That's the same time that the salmon that returned this year to spawn were going through the delta," she said.
The five highest water-export years have all occurred since 2000, she said.
Today's adult fish were migrating out to the ocean in 2005, the year the delta exports hit a record high, Swanson said.
Salmon are hatched in the rivers and feed in the delta and bay. At three to four months, they move to the ocean, where they feed near shore before they head for the open ocean.
"Dams along the
The pumping system moves the juvenile salmon into large, open areas of the delta, where they are prey for bigger fish.
Scientists studying the decline in fish populations also consider the effect of the ocean environment, although they agree that it is still too early to measure the effects of global warming. They look at the timing of migrations and food availability, said William Sydeman, a biologist with the Farallon Institutes for Advanced Ecosystem Research.
He found that in 2005, 2006 and, to a lesser extent, in 2007, the breeding failures of the Cassin's auklet on the Farallones could be linked to the demise of krill in the marine environment at the time when the birds needed it.
Salmon, too, feed on krill, anchovies and other small aquatic creatures, which are affected in abundance by ocean conditions.
When salmon come through the bay to the ocean, they spend time in the Gulf of the Farallones, the same as the Cassin's auklets, where they need to find sufficient zooplankton and other food.
"The ocean environment has a strong influence on how many survive the initial period at sea and how many come back to spawn three to four years later in the Sacramento River," Sydeman said. #
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/30/MNRIUOE8C.DTL
Salmon collapse could force fishing restrictions; Regulators issue the warning as the number of chinook in the
By Eric Bailey, staff writer
SACRAMENTO -- -- Faced with an "unprecedented collapse" of California's Central Valley salmon population, federal regulators warned Tuesday that the West Coast fishing industry is on course toward steep restrictions this year.
The number of chinook salmon returning to the
Donald McIsaac, director of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, said the reason for the decline remains unclear.
But the numbers of chinook or king salmon returning to many other West Coast rivers were also down last year, and scientists suspect the culprit is ocean conditions linked to global warming.
"The implications of a precipitous decline could be substantial for both commercial and recreational fisheries coastwide," McIsaac said, drawing a comparison to 2006, when plummeting
Some environmentalists blamed the troubles on water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, headwaters of the giant aqueducts that funnel water to
The Sacramento River's "missing salmon" were juveniles migrating to sea in spring 2005, when state and federal water managers "set records for pumping delta water south," said Mike Sherwood, an attorney with Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental legal group that has been jousting with water managers over water exports.
McIsaac sent an e-mail late Monday to members of the Pacific Fishery Management Council outlining the steep salmon decline.
Only about 90,000 returning adult salmon were counted in the Central Valley in 2007, the second-lowest number on record and nearly one-tenth the all-time high of more than 800,000 five years ago.
McIsaac said he wanted to give council members "an early alert to what at this point appears to be an unprecedented collapse." Particularly worrisome, he said, is the historic slump in the number of returning 2-year-old salmon, which are used as an indicator of future adult salmon returns. Just 2,000 of the young fish returned to the
The fishery council, which sets annual federal fishing limits on the West Coast, is slated to meet in
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-salmon30jan30,1,5329114.story
Salmon run in big trouble, fish counts show; Those who fish may face stiff restrictions
By Mike Mooney, staff writer
A dramatic decline in the number of chinook salmon returning to spawn in the
As of Tuesday, only 1,100 chinook, also known as king salmon, had been counted on the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and
That's about an 80 percent drop from the previous year, when about 5,800 returning salmon were reported in the three rivers.
"These numbers, while still preliminary, are very disappointing. There is nothing in particular that we can point to at this stage to explain it." said Kate Hora, Modesto Irrigation District spokeswoman.
In the
Experts say the dwindling chinook population is part of a broader decline in wild salmon runs across the West.
The number of chinook returning to the
About 90,000 returning adult salmon were counted in the
The population was at 277,000 in 2006 and 804,000 five years ago.
In an e-mail to fishery council members, Donald McIsaac, the agency's executive director, said he wanted to give them "an early alert to what at this point appears to be an unprecedented collapse in the abundance of adult California Central Valley ... fall chinook salmon stocks."
"The magnitude of the low abundance," he wrote, "is such that the opening of all marine and freshwater fisheries impacting this important salmon stock will be questioned."
Last fall, Doug Demko of FishBIO, a consulting firm with offices in Oakdale and
Why? Demko and other experts believe changing climate conditions, including warmer water temperatures in the northern
Salmon thrive in colder water.
For years, conventional wisdom in the
MID officials have speculated that a host of problems could be making life difficult for the fish, including predatory striped bass, declining water quality, warmer water temperatures and delta pumping.
It's only the second time in 35 years that the Central Valley has not met the agency's conservation goal of 122,000 to 180,000 returning fish, according to the council, which regulates
More worrisome is that only about 2,000 2-year-old juvenile chinooks -- used to predict returns of adult spawners in the coming season -- returned to the
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/195895.html
AP: Officials Warn Of Salmon Population 'Collapse'; Regulators Could Close West Coast Salmon Fishing This Year
CBS Channel 13 – 1/29/08
The number of chinook salmon returning to
The sharp drop in chinook or "king" salmon returning from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the
Regulators are still trying to understand the reasons for the shrinking number of spawners; some scientists believe it's related to changes in the ocean linked to global warming.
Only about 90,000 returning adult salmon were counted in the
In an e-mail to council members, Donald McIsaac, the agency's executive director, said he wanted to give them "an early alert to what at this point appears to be an unprecedented collapse in the abundance of adult California Central Valley ... fall Chinook salmon stocks."
"The magnitude of the low abundance ... is such that the opening of all marine and freshwater fisheries impacting this important salmon stock will be questioned," he said.
It's only the second time in 35 years that the Central Valley has not met the council's conservation goal of 122,000 returning fish, according to the council, which regulates
More worrisome is that only about 2,000 2-year-old juvenile chinooks -- an important indicator for the coming salmon season -- reached an all-time low in 2007, compared to a long-term average of about 40,000.
Salmon that spawn in Central Valley rivers form the backbone of the West Coast's commercial and recreational salmon fishery and are caught by fisherman as far north as
"
The council plans to meet in
http://cbs13.com/local/salmon.population.collapse.2.640632.html
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