Local Fishermen Face Dismal Salmon Season, Starting Monday

By David Sneed, The Tribune, San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Apr. 25–Drastic cutbacks in the number of salmon that fishermen can catch this year are likely to make this season the worst in memory at Morro Bay’s commercial fishing docks.

“It’s a pretty dismal scene,” said Marlyse Battistella, who operates the 54-foot-long Preamble with her husband, Craig Barbre, out of Morro Bay.

Despite the gloomy outlook, they and other commercial fishermen are now busy on the docks — checking their gear, weatherproofing their boats and making repairs in preparation for the Monday opening of the Chinook salmon season.

Earlier this month, the federal Pacific Fishery Management Council stopped just short of closing all salmon fishing north of Point Sur to protect struggling salmon stocks from the Klamath River.

Like many local fishermen, Battistella and Barbre rely on salmon for more than half their income.

A closure would have been disastrous for them and the area’s entire fishing fleet.

In an effort to save the fleet, the council recommended that commercial fishermen around Monterey be allowed to catch 75 fish per boat, per week, with no fishing allowed in June.

A boat can catch 75 salmon on a good day. In years past, fishermen have been able to fish continuously from May through September.

The situation is fraught with irony and uncertainty for those who make their living from the sea.

There are plenty of salmon in the ocean. The Sacramento River salmon fishery is doing well.

In contrast, drought, irrigation withdrawals and dams have caused water temperatures in the Klamath to rise, creating poor conditions for salmon survival.

In 2002, more than 30,000 adult Chinook salmon died in the lower Klamath River.

Fish from both river basins mix in the ocean, and fishermen have no way of selectively catching only Sacramento River salmon.

Fishermen are frustrated by decisions by federal resource managers that have hurt salmon stocks to the point where the fishermen’s livelihoods are in jeopardy.

“They could take every fisherman off the water — commercial, recreational and Indian — and that fishery (the Klamath) would still fail,” Barbre said.

Battistella recently returned from a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., where she urged 34 members of the House of Representatives and three senators to remove four downstream dams to improve the fishery in the Klamath.

“The Klamath impacts us and that’s it,” she said. “We just want the government to fix it.”

Fishermen face uncertainty because the federal government could still decide to shut most of the salmon fishery down.

This month’s catch limits set by the council are only recommendations.

The National Marine Fisheries Service could still decide that no fishing should be allowed north of Big Sur, where most of the salmon is found.

Todd Ungerecht, a policy adviser for the fisheries service, said his agency’s goal is to make a decision before the start of the season next week.

“I would say that there was a generally favorable response to what the council came up with,” he said.

In another layer of irony, boats will be able to fish for salmon in local waters no matter what federal fish managers decide.

A regular season is planned from Big Sur to the Mexican border. However, salmon fishing in the waters south of Point Sur is spotty at best.

Salmon need cold temperatures and plenty of bait fish to be attracted here in large numbers, said Jay Elder, Port San Luis harbor manager.

Many fishing boats start the season locally, but must head north into Monterey Bay by June because that’s where the fish are. It is unlikely that there will be enough salmon below Point Sur to save the season.

“I have a feeling quite a few boats will come down here for the first few weeks at least,” said Wayne Moody, who fishes with his wife, Diane, out of Morro Bay aboard the Capriccio.

Many fishermen fear that a disastrous season would do irreparable harm to an industry that is already struggling to survive.

The county’s once-vibrant fishing industry has shrunk so much in recent years because of increased regulation that many of the businesses that service it — ice and fuel vendors, fish buyers and port facilities — are going out of business.

The most recent casualty is Giannini’s Marine Service in Morro Bay, which supplied local boats with fishing supplies. The shop will close this year because there’s just not enough business to keep it going.

The situation has gotten so dire that it has attracted the attention of the county’s grand jury.

In a recent report, the grand jury concluded that much of the local fishing fleet is dying out to the detriment of the entire county.

“The decline of commercial fishing has forced a change in the character of the harbors,” according to the watchdog panel’s report. “It has removed what many tourists, and many locals, have come to appreciate as the ‘quaint’ nature of these ‘fishing villages.’ ” Consumers will also suffer if the salmon season is a disaster.

Wild salmon is a popular and healthy form of seafood that would be in short supply. Fishermen say they are proud of their role in providing it to consumers.

On Monday, fishing boats in Morro Bay and Port San Luis will cast off their lines, head out to sea and hope for the best.

For many, fishing is the only profession they have ever known. If the salmon season is a bust, those with the proper permits will turn to albacore and rockfish in an attempt to eke out another year on the ocean.

“We are going to try,” Moody said.

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