Coastal Fishing Faces Ban

All non-Indian salmon fishing would be banned this year off the coast of Washington and northern Oregon under one of the options approved Friday by the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

The council included the no-fishing alternative as one of four salmon options being considered for U.S. coastal waters north of Cape Falcon, near Manzanita, Ore.

The other three options would allow limited commercial and sports fishing for coho and chinook. Last year there was some coho fishing but no chinook fishing off Washington and northern Oregon.

For the third consecutive year, the council decided that there would be no coho fishing allowed in the ocean off most of Oregon and all of California.

Limited chinook fishing would be allowed south of Cape Falcon in all three options being considered.

The council will make its final decision at a meeting April 7-11 in Milbrae, Calif. The recommendation will be forwarded to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which usually follows the council’s choice.

The seasons will be set before the April 25 deadline for the National Marine Fisheries Service to decide whether to list coastal coho from Northern California and Oregon as an endangered species.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber is trying to head off that listing by persuading the state Legislature to approve a coho recovery plan.

The fishery council determines fishing regulations in U.S. coastal waters from three to 200 miles off-shore. States regulate fishing within three miles of the coast but generally follow whatever the council decides.

Concerns about weak coho stocks in Washington coastal rivers and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, combined with uncertainty over how much fishing Canada will allow off Vancouver Island, led the council to add the no-fishing option.

“We’re going to have trouble meeting escapement goals for some of these coastal and Strait of Juan de Fuca runs,” said Larry Six, the council’s executive director. “We won’t know if we’re going to be able to have a fishery until our April meeting.”

Without knowing how many salmon Canada plans to allow to be caught off Vancouver Island, it’s impossible for U.S. regulators to know the impact on Washington runs.

“Sometimes we don’t even know at our April meeting what’s going to happen,” Six said. “Last year we adopted sort of a conditional regime that depended on what Canada did.”

In the meantime, the council’s staff will meet with representatives of Indian tribes, states and fishermen’s groups to determine what fishing might be possible.

Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations in San Francisco, said the continued decline in salmon stocks showed fishing cutbacks alone won’t restore the salmon.

The federal government has to honor its obligations to keep enough water in rivers for spawning fish and the state of California needs to take steps to restore freshwater habitat, he said.

“There’s been a tremendous decline in the numbers of fishermen,” as salmon numbers have declined, Grader added. “The ones that are left are lean and mean and they are going to hang in there.