Amid low stocks, West Coast faces salmon fishing ban

As drought dried up rivers that carry California's newly hatched Chinook salmon to the ocean, state officials in recent years resorted to loading up the fish by the millions onto trucks and barges to take them to the Pacific.

The surreal and desperate scramble boosted the survival rate of the hatcheryraised fish, but still it was not enough to reverse the declining stocks in the face of added challenges. River water temperatures rose with warm weather, and a

Trump-era rollback of federal protections for waterways allowed more water to be diverted to farms. Climate change, meanwhile, threatens food sources for the young Chinook maturing in the Pacific.

Now, ocean salmon fishing season is set to be prohibited this year off California and much of Oregon for the second time in 15 years after adult fall-run Chinook, often known as king salmon, returned to California's rivers in near record-low numbers in 2022.

“There will be no wildcaught California salmon to eat unless someone has still got some vacuum sealed last year in their freezer,” said John McManus of the Golden State Salmon Association.

Experts fear native California salmon, which make up a significant portion of the Pacific Northwest's fishing industry, are in a spiral toward extinction. Much of the salmon caught off Oregon originate in California's Klamath and Sacramento rivers. After hatching in freshwater, they spend three years on average maturing in the Pacific, where many are snagged by commercial fishermen, before migrating back to their spawning grounds, where conditions are more ideal to give birth.

After laying eggs, they die.

California's spring-run Chinook are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, while winterrun Chinook are endangered along with the Central California Coast coho salmon, which has been off-limits since the 1990s.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, the authority responsible for setting ocean salmon seasons off the Pacific coast, is expected in early April to formally approve its proposed closure of Chinook fishing along the coast from northern Oregon to the CaliforniaMexico border.

Recreational fishing is expected to be allowed in Oregon only for coho salmon during the summer and for Chinook after Sept. 1. Salmon season is expected to open as usual north of Cape Falcon, including in the Columbia River and off Washington's coast.

Though the closure will deal a blow to the industry that supports tens of thousands of jobs, few are disputing it.

“We want to make sure they are here for the future,” said third-generation fisherman Garin McCarthy, who described catching a Chinook as “magical.”

McCarthy, whose entire income last year came from salmon fishing off both California and Oregon, has had to invest thousands of dollars in equipment to fish other species like rockfish, halibut and black cod.

“We're all scrambling to try to make our boats do something different,” he said. “We're all salmon trollers. That's what we do. That's what we live for.”

Glen Spain, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, said he believes the ban might need to be in place for two or three years to bring back sustainable stocks after many fish died in 2020, the start of a record-dry period.