Representatives from a broad-based coalition of commercial fishermen, recreational anglers, California Indian Tribes and environmental groups will hold a news conference proposing solutions to the salmon crisis on Friday, March 14, at 10 a.m. at the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) meeting at the Double Tree Hotel in Sacramento.

The population of Central Valley chinook salmon, the "work horse" of West Coast salmon stocks, plummeted from a record abundance of 804,401 fish in 2002 to a record low of only 90,414 salmon in 2007. While the state and federal governments claim that the cause of the collapse is "unfavorable ocean conditions," fishing, tribal and environmental groups point to the role of record water exports out of the California Delta in recent years in the decline.

Delta exports increased from 5 million acre feet to peaks over 6.3 million acre feet from 2001 to 2007, according to John Beuttler, conservation director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. The collapse of Sacramento River salmon stocks has coincided with the Pelagic Organism Decline (POD) in which four species of fish - delta smelt, longfin smelt, juvenile striped bass and threadfin shad - have crashed to record low populations. The number one cause of the Delta fish decline is increases in water exports, followed by invasive species and toxics.

In the DFG "information exchange" meeting regarding salmon stocks in Santa Rosa on Wednesday, I proposed that the state and federal governments hold an emergency meeting or conference exploring the relation between ocean conditions and Bay-Delta estuary conditions - and between the salmon collapse and the Pelagic Organism Decline.

It is my contention that you can't separate ocean conditions from conditions in the Bay-Delta Estuary. Ocean productivity is as reliant on freshwater flows from the largest estuary on the West Coast, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, as it is upon upwelling, water temperatures, wind and currents.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, in a press release on Monday, March 3, said an "environmental anomaly" was believed to be responsible for the salmon collapse.

“The cold waters of the California Current flow southward from the northern Pacific along the West Coast and are associated with upwelling, an ocean condition caused by winds that bring nutrients to the ocean’s surface and is the main source of nourishment for the ocean’s food web,” the agency said. “In 2005 a southward shift in the jet stream, delayed favorable winds and upwelling for the California Current, which normally begins in spring. The winds instead arrived in mid-July, causing high surface water temperatures and very low nutrient production within the nearshore marine ecosystem.”

However, in the press release and an accompanying "study" the federal agency's completely avoids discussing the impact of declining habitat and water conditions on many salmon spawning rivers, as well as the impact of record exports out of the Delta. This is obviously done so they can avoid any responsibility for the years of state and federal mismanagement of salmon and other species that have led to the current collapse.

The sharp decline of the Central Valley king salmon is expected to result in an economic disaster for the commercial and recreational sportfishing industry, an industry already hammered by groundfish restrictions resulting from decades of federal and state mismanagement. Commercial fishermen, anglers, tribes and environmental groups will outline their proposed solutions to the unprecedented collapse of Central Valley salmon, until recently the most robust run of chinook salmon south of the Columbia River, in this news conference.