Due to declining numbers, federal fishery managers voted Wednesday to cancel all commercial and recreational salmon fishing off the coast of California for the second year in a row, and only the fourth time in state history.
The unanimous vote by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the institution responsible for determining Pacific salmon seasons, is a blow to the state’s fishing industry, which employs tens of thousands of people and is still recovering from last year’s shutdown. California likewise closed salmon fishing for the 2008 and 2009 seasons.
Approximately 6,100 fall-run Chinook salmon returned to the upper Sacramento River to spawn in 2023
This year’s decision, like 2023’s, was taken to safeguard California’s dwindling salmon populations after drought and water diversions caused river flows to be too warm and slow for Chinook salmon to thrive.
According to a fishery council assessment released in February, approximately 6,100 fall-run Chinook salmon, sometimes known as king salmon, returned to the upper Sacramento River to spawn in 2023. The average between 1996 and 2005 was more than 175,000 fish.
For now, the ban affects commercial and recreational ocean fishing. However, the council has suggested that the California Fish and Game Commission also consider banning river fishing. The state agency is likely to vote in the coming weeks.
The salmon population is encountering numerous challenges
The salmon population faces several obstacles, including rising river water temperatures due to warm weather and a Trump-era rollback of federal waterway protections, which allowed more water to be redirected to farms. Meanwhile, climate change poses a hazard to the food sources of the Pacific’s young Chinook salmon.
According to Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, state water policy under Gov. Gavin Newsom has resulted in “dangerously low river flows, unsustainable water diversions out of our rivers, record high water temperatures because of dam operations, and record numbers of salmon eggs and juveniles killed in our streams.”
“Our water, our natural resources, the resources every Californian and the entire salmon industry rely on, are being stolen on Governor Newsom’s watch,” Artis said in a statement Wednesday after the council’s decision.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment on the shutdown.
Many of the fish taken in the ocean come from California’s Klamath and Sacramento rivers. After hatching in freshwater, they spend an average of three years maturing in the Pacific, where many are captured by commercial fishermen, before migrating back to their spawning grounds, where conditions favor giving birth.
California’s spring-run Chinook are designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, while winter-run Chinook are endangered, as is the Central California Coast coho salmon, which has been off-limits to California commercial fishermen since the 1990s.