Next month, the National Marine Fisheries Service is all-but-certain to officially close the California ocean salmon season due to what’s forecast to be near record-low returns of Chinook to the Klamath and Sacramento rivers.
The shuttering of the multi-million dollar industry will come with wide-ranging implications for those who depend on the fishery that has been devastated by prolonged drought and decades of water management practices that compromised the river habitats on which the salmon depend and cut off the fish from their historic spawning grounds.
On Tuesday, North Coast Congressmember Jared Huffman and California Sen. Alex Padilla sent a letter also signed by 18 of their colleagues urging President Joe Biden and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to immediately issue the federal fishing disaster declaration needed to release aid to those in need.
“The closure of the California salmon fishery is a crisis. It remains unclear how long the salmon fishery will need to be closed, and we know there is much work ahead of us,” the letter states.
“The long-term solutions will include improving our drought resiliency, restoring salmon habitat, and of course, addressing the climate crisis. We look forward to continuing our work with your administration on these goals. However, Californians who depend on the fishery will be immediately affected and have no time to wait for these long-term objectives to be achieved. A federal fishery disaster declaration will help our commercial and charter fisheries, tribes and communities survive the difficult times ahead.”
The letter echoes calls made during an April 7 news conference during which Huffman and other officials pledged to work for the expedited release of federal dollars.
“We can’t afford to wait years,” Huffman said. “In fact, we’ve got to bring this disaster relief home in the next few months.”
Huffman was joined on the San Francisco waterfront by fellow Congressmembers Nancy Pelosi — the former Speaker of the House — and Kevin Mullin, California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, and representatives of the fishing community and affiliated businesses affected by the closure. They talked not only about the immediate needs of those whose livelihoods are on the line but the long-term solutions necessary to protect salmon into the future.
“That is our two-part challenge,” Huffman said. “An immediate push to bring federal disaster relief to these communities but a longer-term push to challenge state and federal officials to step and do better for our salmon, so we can continue to catch salmon and support the fishing economy that is so important to coastal California.”
The governor’s office took the first step toward bringing in aid money by requesting a federal disaster declaration immediately following the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s April 6 decision to recommend closing the commercial and recreational season.
“Countless families, coastal communities and tribal nations depend on salmon fishing — it’s more than an industry, it’s a way of life. That’s why we’re requesting expedited relief from the federal government,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a news release. “We’re committed to working with the Biden administration and Congress to ensure California’s fisheries aren’t left behind.”
The National Marine Fisheries Service is expected to officially enact the ocean closure recommendation May 16 and the California Fish and Game Commission will look at closing inland salmon fisheries the next day.
Huffman noted legislative changes made by the last Congress streamlined the process for declaring fishery disasters, which he said should “speed things up quite a bit,” as well as the $300 million in aid included in the Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus Appropriations bill that “should give us a head start on trying to secure those funds and get them out the door to folks who need it.”
Several of the speakers, including John McManus, senior policy director of the Golden State Salmon Association, spoke about the devastating financial impacts of the closure, noting he was heartened to hear there was “some reason to believe” federal aid would be coming to those who need it sooner rather than later.
“There’s a lot of fear and panic up and down the coast, with families trying to figure out how they are going to pay the bills this year,” McManus said.
Salmon captain Sarah Bates, who fishes out of the Bay Area, noted the ports should be bustling at this time, with anglers checking their gear and loading up their boats, but instead, she was now one of many whose financial futures have been thrown into uncertainty.
What’s needed, she said, is help from federal and state officials on a number of levels, including hatchery reforms and better water management practices, as well as a disaster declaration, in order for her and others to once again be able to set out and bring back the prized fish, which she described as resilient, for “your tables and your restaurants.”
“They have been coming up these rivers for about as long as humans have been walking on two legs,” Bates said. “They have survived landslides, they have survived huge droughts, they have survived temperature change, they have survived changing ocean conditions, they have survived rivers that changed course. What they can’t survive are some of the water management practices that are putting their breeding habitats at risk.”
While repeating calls for federal assistance, Crowfoot also cited the environmental factors that brought the fishery to this moment, noting eight of the last 10 years have been exceptional drought years, while highlighting some of the efforts underway to protect salmon habitat, adding more can and needs to be done.
“This is obviously a tough day for the men and women who fish out of this harbor, for the families and communities up and down the coast whose livelihoods are now impacted without a salmon season, for the tribes that depend on salmon for both sustenance and their cultural lifeways and, I’ll say, for all Californians who pride ourselves on living in a state with a thriving natural resource,” he said.
He pointed to the need to improve river flows and conditions as well as reconnect salmon to their spawning habitats, stating 90 percent have been lost in the last century due to dams, saying historic efforts like the upcoming removal of the Klamath River dams will help remove some of those barriers.
Crowfoot also noted the nearly $4 million grant awarded to the Yurok Tribe last week by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for a large-scale restoration project on the Trinity River, the largest tributary of the Klamath River, which he said will “really help the salmon.”
“It’s projects like that that give me hope that we’re going to persist through this, that we’re going to get resources to the impacted fishing community, and we’re going to create a more prosperous future for salmon,” he said.
As in many Indigenous cultures, salmon are considered culturally sacred to local tribes that have depended on the fish for sustenance since time immemorial.
“We are extremely grateful for the Newsom administration’s considerable investment in the Oregon Gulch project on the Trinity River,” Yurok Chair Joseph L. James said in a news release announcing the award for work on what the tribe described as “the largest fish habitat construction initiative in the Trinity River’s history.”
“This project is part of our long-term plan to recover our fish runs and preserve an essential part of our culture,” James said.
Rounding out the speakers on April 7 was Pelosi, who said securing rapid disaster relief — which she said is estimated to total $450 million — “is our mission and promise here,” while noting the role climate change and human intervention have played in the current salmon disaster. The current situation, she said, is costing people their jobs and, citing the cultural importance of salmon for Indigenous tribes, their sustenance and way of life.
“We have to make sure … that policies, practices and the rest are not such that they are defying even the evolutionary progress of salmon,” she said.
The shuttering of the salmon season, Pelosi said, needs to be thought of in the long-term and the short-term, thanking those who helped to put a human face on the crisis.
“Let’s see if we can’t get through this in a way that is a model for us here, for the future and for the country,” Pelosi said.
Kimberly Wear (she/her) is the Journal’s digital editor. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 323, or kim@northcoastjournal.com.
This article appears in Undamming (and Restoring) the Klamath.
