Collapse Of Salmon Stocks Endangers Pacific Fishery

Federal officials have indicated that they are likely to close the Pacific salmon fishery from northern Oregon to the Mexican border because of the collapse of crucial stocks in California’s major watershed.

That would be the most extensive closing on the West Coast since the federal government started regulating fisheries.

“By far the biggest,” said Dave Bitts, a commercial fisherman from Eureka, Calif., who is at a weeklong meeting of the Pacific Coast Fisheries Management Council in Sacramento.

“The Central Valley fall Chinook salmon are in the worst condition since records began to be kept,” Robert Lohn, regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Portland, Ore., said Wednesday in an interview. “This is the largest collapse of salmon stocks in 40 years.”

Although the Washington and Alaska fisheries are not affected, the California and Oregon ones produce “some of the most valuable fish, ones that are prized from West Coast seaports all the way to East Coast restaurants,” Mr. Lohn said.

The effect on salmon prices is not clear. Mr. Bitts said the effects on commercial and sport fishermen and their communities could run to millions of dollars.

On Wednesday the council closed several minor short-term fishing seasons off California and Oregon in connection with the salmon shortfall.

Counts of young salmon, whose numbers have dwindled sharply for two years, were the first major indication of the problem. The number of fish that survive more than a year in the ocean, or jacks, is a marker for the abundance of full-grown salmon the next year. The 2007 count of the fall Chinook jacks from the Sacramento River was less than 6 percent of the long-term average, Mr. Lohn said.

The Central Valley salmon runs are concentrated in the Sacramento River, the focus of a water struggle between farmers and irrigation districts on one hand and environmental groups and fishermen on the other.

Three years ago, some conservation groups challenged in federal court an advisory opinion by federal fisheries managers that let federal and state officials increase the water drawn from the Sacramento River Delta for farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and cities in Southern California.

The opinion by the National Marine Fisheries Service said the increase would not harm the three salmon species protected under the Endangered Species Act. The fall Chinook salmon were not under the act.

John McManus, a spokesman for Earthjustice, the group handling the suit, said lawyers in the case had been told that the judge would rule by the end of March.

Federal scientists reported this month that abnormal ocean conditions might be affecting the food chain of young salmon.

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