Fish Swim In Water, Not Promises!

NEWS RELEASE from the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations
Southwest Regional Office
PO Box 29370 San Francisco, CA 94129-0370
(415)561-5080 Fax:(415)561-5464

Distribution: ALL MEDIA Release No: SF 05-01-08

Contact: Zeke Grader, Executive Director Release Date: May 1, 2008
(415) 561-5080 x 224 or Cell: (415) 606-5140

Glen Spain, NW Regional Director
(541) 689-2000


SECRETARY OF COMMERCE ISSUES WEST COAST FISHERY DISASTER DECLARATION

Fishing Industry Praises Speedy Action By Secretary, But Says Emergency Relief Only The First Of Many Necessary Steps To Avoid Total Collapse


Washington, DC – Today Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez declared a “Fishery Failure,” the equivalent under the Magnuson Act of a Disaster Declaration for U.S. managed fisheries, for the entire west coast salmon fishery in both California and Oregon. This makes this closure the worst fishery disaster in U.S. history, topping even the massive closure in 2006 due to Klamath salmon stock collapses.

This year’s ocean salmon fishery closure will devastate the salmon-dependent fishing economies of coastal ports over nearly 1200 miles of California and Oregon coastline – all the way from the California/Mexican border to the Columbia River. Washington State will also be partially closed to prevent impacts on depressed California stocks that migrate through that state’s waters. Alaska salmon fishermen are not directly affected by these closures.

These west coast closures were directly triggered by unprecedented low projected adult spawner returns to the California Central Valley Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. This year’s Central Valley returns are estimated at less than 60,000, much less than the minimum of 122,000 spawning adults required to replace the current generation under normal circumstances.

Returns to the California Central Valley have been as high as 800,000 as recently as in 2002. Stocks in the Klamath are also still depressed after a Klamath-driven fishery disaster in 2006 that closed down nearly 700 miles of coastline. This makes 2008 the third year in a row where California and Oregon commercial ocean salmon fisheries have been severely restricted or closed entirely, and fishermen have lost all or nearly all of their usual income.

Under the Magnuson Act, this “Declaration of Fishery Failure” opens the door to Congressional disaster assistance through the appropriations process. “This is a much needed first step toward helping our battered coastal communities weather this storm,” said PCFFA’s Executive Director, Zeke Grader. “This will buy the fleet a little valuable time, but the federal and state agencies must take advantage of that time to address the real problems in the California Bay Delta that are killing the fish – massive overdraft of water, unregulated agricultural pollution problems and poor hatchery management practices – that have been the final burden on a naturally variable ocean system.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service has cited poor ocean conditions as a major factor in these declines. While ocean conditions clearly played a role, others, however, including PCFFA, have pointed to record and near-record water diversions from the ecologically fragile Central Valley San Francisco Bay Delta in recent years as adding additional and unnecessary stress on young salmon as they migrate out to the ocean.

“Way too many of these fish died long before they ever got to the ocean,” noted Zeke Grader. “Way too much water is now being taken out of the river, and we are just not getting enough actual water back in the system for salmon to survive -- we only get promises of water. But fish swim in water, not promises.”

Record water withdrawals from the San Francisco Bay Delta since 2004 were allowed under a State Water Plan called “OCAP” (Operating Criteria and Plan) that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) signed off on.

However, on April 16th, just days after the recommendations by the Pacific Fishery Management Council to close the west coast salmon fishery because of the collapse, U.S. Federal Judge Oliver Wanger threw that OCAP state water plan out as “arbitrary and capricious” because of its adverse effects on ESA-listed salmon in the Central Valley Delta.

Judge Wanger found that in August 2004, NMFS federal scientists charged with reviewing the plan to increase pumping to 8 million acre feet concluded that doing so would illegally jeopardize endangered and threatened salmon throughout the system, leading to their extinction. However, after political interference, NMFS flip-flopped and released a final opinion in October 2004 that concluded that the OCAP project operations plan would not harm ESA-listed salmon and steelhead species.

But after several negative independent science reviews and widespread concern over inappropriate political influences on the opinion, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the State Department of Water Resources asked NOAA Fisheries to reconsider the plan in April/May 2006. Yet the agencies continued to implement the new plan without any lawful analysis of its impacts to listed fish species while a new opinion is written. Record water withdrawals in 2005 under this failed OCAP water plan would have been responsible for the death of the juvenile salmon that are supposed to return this year as spawning adults, but are now missing in action.

PCFFA was lead plaintiff in the OCAP case challenging the NMFS approval of this water plan. You can read the Earthjustice Press Release and the Judge Wanger Decision in PCFFA v. Gutierrez online here:

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2008/judge-tosses-biological-opinion-for-salmon-and-steelhead-in-california.html

Poor Central Valley fishery management practices in recent years have also been blamed for this year’s salmon collapse, in particular the termination in 2005 of a successful past program to acclimate hatchery fish in net-pens to more gradually allow them to acclimate to in-river conditions before going out to sea. Several studies have shown that the fish do better when provided this kind of rest stop on their long migration.

There are also serious pollution problems in the California Bay Delta, and agricultural pollution in the Bay Delta is still unregulated by the State of California under a specific exemption that has been extended for more than 20 years. Many of the unregulated agricultural pollutants allowed to run off into the San Francisco Bay Delta even today can harm baby salmon.

More information about the Secretary of Commerce’s Fishery Failure Disaster Declaration can be found on a NOAA web site at: http://www.noaa.gov. For more information about the 2008 coastal salmon disaster, including key documents, see the PCFFA web site at http://www.pcffa.org and click on the link to the 2008 Salmon Disaster.