CA salmon population near 'unprecedented collapse'

Faced with an "unprecedented collapse" of California's Central Valley salmon population, federal regulators warned on Jan. 29 that the West Coast fishing industry is on course toward steep restrictions this year. The number of chinook salmon returning to the Sacramento River plummeted to near historic lows last year, and fishery experts are predicting similarly light returns this year. The stark decline of the California chinook was laid out in an internal memo to members of the Pacific Fishery Management Council from the agency's executive director, Donald McIsaac, who said he wanted to give council members "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 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 bad news came hard on the heels of the revelation that orcas known to frequent Seattle, WA's Puget Sound have shown up in California for the sixth consecutive winter -- probably in search of the very chinook salmon whose numbers are plummeting there. The population dropped more than 88 percent from its all-time high five years ago. Only about 90,000 adult salmon returned to the Central Valley in 2007, the second-lowest number on record, according to the memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press. That's down from about 277,000 in 2006 and a record high of 804,000 just five years ago. "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," McIsaac's memo said. It is 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. "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 Klamath River salmon stocks prompted major fishing cutbacks. Some environmentalists blamed the troubles on water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, headwaters of the giant aqueducts that funnel water to Southern California. 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. The fishery council, which sets annual federal fishing limits on the West Coast, is slated to meet in Sacramento in March to discuss potential restrictions, with a final decision in April. The salmon season typically begins in May. Duncan MacLean, a Half Moon Bay fisherman 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 or business."