Mendocino coast rocked by closure of salmon fishing

FORT BRAGG – Salmon is king here along the Mendocino coast, but the monarch has been dethroned, leaving all the king's men and women in this hard-toiling town fearing for their livelihoods in a way they never have before.

"As of now, I'm broke," says Randy Thornton in the cabin of his 50-foot boat, his face coppered by sun and wind. Overhead, salmon rods with brightly colored lures are racked, idled for the year.

Thornton's charter-fishing business has been killed by an unprecedented yearlong ban on salmon fishing – both commercial and sport.

"My dilemma is I have a boat and I have to make a living," says Thornton, 46 and father of two.

After 10 years of payments, he finally paid off the boat last year. This might have been the year he and his wife would buy a house, he says.

But last week, state Department of Fish and Game officials voted to ban salmon fishing in state waters, which extend out three miles from shore. Five days before, the Pacific Fishery Management Council had banned salmon fishing in the 200-mile-wide swath of federal waters off California and Oregon.

Federal and state biologists believe closing the season for virtually all the West Coast before it even revs up is the only way to boost the number of chinook salmon returning from ocean waters to spawn in the Sacramento River this fall.

Last year was the second-lowest spawning season on record along the Sacramento River and its tributaries. Just 90,000 chinook returned from the sea to complete their life cycle in the freshwater – a 90 percent drop from five years earlier.

For those who hook their hopes on the popular, pink-fleshed fish, the finality of the season is like a death knell for an already struggling way of life.

"Every day I'm not taking people out, I'm losing business," says Thornton, who would be taking out a boatload of anglers at least four times a week about now.

Charter guests fishing for salmon might also dip for crabs, but Thornton says he can't build a charter business around crabs alone. And other fish and abalone don't have as strong a draw as salmon, he says.

In another spot along Noyo Harbor, a smaller boat drifts in, carrying Dirk Ammerman and 1,700 pounds of sea urchins.

"I feel fortunate that I have a fishery," says Ammerman as he wields a giant basket of the burgundy-spiked urchins onto the deck. He has one of just a few permits to fish for the delicacy that is shipped as far as Japan. But at 50, diving into 45-degree water is ruining his shoulders.

He is part owner of a fuel dock in the harbor. He's trying to sell but knows the chances for a buyer narrowed considerably with the ban.

"Times change," he says.

Town was built on lumber and salmon

Fishing and lumber put Fort Bragg on the map, but in the past few years, lumber mills have closed, pulling 500 jobs from this town of about 7,200. Fishing has been buffeted by increasing regulations and restrictions, say people like Thornton.

Thornton, like many of his fellow anglers, has sensed that something out there is diminishing salmon populations that used to roll in each year like a tidal wave. Though the salmon ban is just for this season, Thornton and others worry that it could be years before another season returns.

"It's a big ocean to predict what's out there," Thornton says.

Noyo Harbor is a natural harbor at the mouth of the Noyo River, where it opens to the Pacific south of downtown. Weathered docks filled with eclectic boats bob in turquoise water beneath a highway bridge.

Sportfishing for salmon generally runs from mid-February through early November, with the big months in summer.

Of the 1,400 commercial salmon permits issued by the state this year, about 100 went to fishermen in Fort Bragg. In recent years, the commercial season in Fort Bragg was delayed until August and September, forcing locals to chase the fish down south, where the seasons were longer.

Before 1990, commercial fishing pumped as much as $12 million into the local economy, according to the Pacific Fishery Management Council. Sport-fishing, which draws overnight guests, contributes about $2 million annually to the economy.

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