California salmon fishermen, at best, will be allowed to chase a tiny number of treasured chinook on just a few days this year.
Under one of three preliminary options adopted Friday by fisheries managers meeting in Sacramento, commercial fishermen would be allotted just 9,000 fish to catch in one month, and only north of Pigeon Point, near San Francisco. South of there, no commercial catch is allowed under any scenario.
With about 565 salmon boats working in California last year, that's just 15 fish per boat. Oregon would fare slightly better.
The other two options are worse in both states. One closes commercial fishing entirely. The other creates a government-subsidized program that allows fishermen to catch salmon for a genetic study, but the fish would have to be released alive.
Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations said some fishermen could survive by catching other species, such as crab. Others won't survive.
"It's going to have a big effect on our coastal communities," he said. "Our economies in places like Fort Bragg were built upon salmon, not slime eels. They were built upon working, not handouts."
The Pacific Fisheries Management Council will choose one of the three options to set rules for the 2008 salmon season when it meets next month in Seattle.
Recreational fishing would be closed in both states under two options. The third would allow anglers to catch salmon in the ocean on just nine days. In the Central Valley's rivers, only 1,000 chinook could be caught for the entire year.
The drastic options are needed because the fall chinook run in the Sacramento River and its tributaries last year was the second-lowest on record. Just 90,000 chinook returned to spawn, a 90 percent drop from five years earlier.
The Sacramento River fall chinook is the most important salmon run on the West Coast, supporting 90 percent of the ocean fishery off California and about 50 percent off Oregon and Washington.
Most of the season starts May 1, but on Wednesday officials closed seven early opening seasons as a precaution.
The 2008 salmon run is projected to be abysmal, with just 58,200 chinook spawners expected. This doesn't come close to the minimum conservation goal of 122,000 fish, essentially forcing the council to close the fishery.
To allow any fishing, even for genetic studies, the council must obtain an emergency order from U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Frank Lockhart, assistant regional administrator for the service, said getting that order will be hard because the Sacramento River run is so low and there is no other run to fall back on.
Last year was terrible, he said, but "this year could be worse."
Salmon fishing has never been closed entirely on the coast.
"It's very discouraging," said Kathy Fosmark, a commercial fisherman in Moss Landing and a council member. "You can rebuild a run of fish, but you can't really restore a culture."
The governors of California, Oregon and Washington asked Gutierrez to declare a fishery disaster to obtain economic aid.
Government biologists blame poor ocean conditions for the decline. But other theories abound, including poor habitat and excessive water diversions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Poaching is another concern. Thursday night, state game wardens cited a poacher on the Sacramento River for netting juvenile chinook as the fish migrated out to sea. Warden Steven Stiehr, based in Stockton, said poachers use the young fish as bait to catch sturgeon, whose eggs are then illegally sold as caviar.
It happens nightly on Central Valley rivers, he said, and only about 5 percent of poachers get caught. Yet the governor wants to cut 38 vacant warden positions in his budget for the coming year.
"There are thousands of salmon fry taken every season for use as bait," Stiehr said. "... The activity seems to be increasing."
Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264.
