APRIL 2008: FISHING INDUSTRY
Some commercial salmon fishermen will survive the next few
years. Many more will not.
End of the line?
By Abraham Hyatt
Newport is home to
part of Oregon's salmon fleet. Owners of boats
between 30 and 45 feet make up almost 50% of the
fleet.
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Start with a basic fact: Oregon’s coastal commercial
salmon industry is not dead, nor will it — probably
— ever be.
But define “industry.” What if in the future every
season is measured in days, not weeks or months? What if the
number of commercial fishing boats drops below 100? Could it be
called a “salmon industry” if fishermen spend most
of their time working other fisheries and only a fraction of
their time catching salmon?
These aren’t hypothetical questions. The 2008 coastal
commercial season is shaping up to be the third terrible year
in a row. That’s not necessarily news: Low salmon runs
several years in a row aren’t unusual; 1983 was as bad as
2007 and 1994 was far worse.
But the 2007 fall run of Chinook on the Sacramento River in
California — which is where 60% to 80% of Oregon’s
salmon come from — was the second-smallest ever recorded.
In mid March, early season ocean fishing for Chinook was
canceled. Fish managers have also proposed canceling the entire
West Coast salmon season; the final decision will be made in
mid April.
What’s even more alarming is the low number of
2-year-old Chinook that returned to the Sacramento. Those
2-year-olds, or jacks, are how scientists predict future
spawning trends. In the last four years the average number of
returning jacks has been 35,000. Last fall it was a
record-shattering low of 2,000.
If the future holds fewer and fewer salmon, the effect on the
commercial fleet is clear: Bigger boats, which can travel
farther offshore and have permits to catch more than salmon
— crab or tuna for instance — will have enough
work, say some salmon fishermen. But smaller boats, or those
that don’t have permits for other fisheries, won’t
be able pay for maintenance, loan payments or gear.
And so the fleet will shrink year by year. The salmon will
come back; up until this point they always have. Eric
Schindler, supervising biologist for the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife, predicts the dry spell may last two to four
years. But how many boats will there when the salmon
return?
Mark Newell is a commercial fisherman out of Newport and sits
on the Oregon Salmon Commission. “Things look pretty grim
for the salmon fleet for the next couple of years,” he
says. “I wish I could paint a good picture, but I
can’t.”
TRYING TO PREDICT HOW SALMON in the Pacific Northwest will run
is not unique to this decade, nor to the last century. In 1880
two naturalists, David Jordan and Chas Gilbert, traveled
through Oregon studying the salmon stocks for the federal
government.
In an article in the March 1881 issue of The American
Naturalist, the men identified some obvious things that were
impacting the population. They wrote about how mining on the
Sacramento River was destroying spawning grounds for the
Chinook, and about the threat of over-fishing along the
Columbia River, where canners packed 26 million pounds of
salmon in 1880.
And they also did some guessing as to how river flow, high
water temperatures and the ocean influenced runs. Over the next
127 years science has discovered the answers to some of those
questions. One lesson came in September 2002 on the Klamath
River, when — in a highly controversial move — the
federal government diverted a large amount of river water to
farmers suffering from a drought. At least 34,000 salmon
returning to the river died from a disease caused by the low
volume and high water temperatures in the river. None were able
to spawn.
The reverberations from that year made predicting salmon runs
along the coast more difficult. And it required a juggling act
with other stock. Oregon fishermen were limited in what they
were allowed to catch since they could potentially catch some
of the recovering Klamath River stock along with Sacramento
River stock.
Since then, biologists’ crystal balls have been just as
clouded. It’s not for a lack of data from coastal rivers
where poor management has long been blamed for fish deaths.
This year is particularly puzzling. Biologists know adult
salmon are dying at a high rate, but they don’t know why
or where.
“There’s something new happening so that
we’re not on the mark,” he says. “We’re
scratching our heads. It’s likely something we will never
know.”
That “something” is taking place somewhere out in
the ocean, a place Schindler refers to as the wild card in
making predictions. Maybe global warming is raising the water
temperature and killing fish. Maybe they can’t find food.
The answer may never be found.
“WE’VE HAD A DISASTER BEFORE. The trouble is a lot
of guys don’t have many options. If we have a another
poor year, next year doesn’t look so good for
them,” Newell says.
Newell is talking about owners of boats in the 30- to 45-foot
range, which he and other fishermen say make up almost 50% of
the salmon fleet. This keeps them from going further out or in
harsher weather.
Kevin Bastien, who sits on the Oregon Salmon Commission and
has been a commercial fisherman since 1974, owns a 40-foot
trawler. “Every year is a new challenge,” he says.
“But this year is a new, new challenge.”
Bastien is close to retiring from fishing. Three years ago he
sold his crab permit for $70,000; last month he started doing
some part-time work with the state’s Department of Fish
and Wildlife. He says he’s been through two other bad
times in his career and the way he survived was by finding new
ways to branch out, such as crabbing, even with a small boat
that couldn’t go out as often.
In other words, like any other small business, success and
survival lie in the ability to diversify. For many vessel
owners, says Onno Husing, executive director of the Oregon
Coastal Zone Management Association, it boils down to a
case-by-case basis. Is their vessel paid off? What are the
monthly maintenance costs? What other bills need to be paid? Is
there a mortgage payment on a home? How much is salmon going
for?
Newell was in Newport earlier this year when the answers to
those questions came up short for one particular boat. Its
moorage fees were in arrears; it hadn’t been maintained
and was falling apart. Workers from the port had the boat out
of the water and were tearing it apart.
“No one wants to buy a wood trawler. You take it out and
crush it and take it to the dump,” Newell says. “We
going to see quite a few more boats just go away.”
NO ONE THINKS THE INDUSTRY as a whole will simply vaporize in
the coming years. Bastien hopes his grandson will find work as
a commercial fisherman as a way to make good money through
college; other fishermen say there are too many of them that
have it in their blood to ever completely stop.
But the survival of the fleet may be representative of more
than keeping one of Oregon’s oldest industries alive. The
commercial salmon fisherman may be a sort of canary in the coal
mine — an indicator of how the West Coast is managing its
water when it comes to urbanization, agriculture and
environmental restoration.
“If we are smart as a society we will consider this a
wake-up call for a lot of us. If we don’t wrap our minds
around water management in the West, we have huge problems
coming,” says Husing.
“If these folks are the first guys who get pushed off
the cliff, the fundamental question is, who is next?”
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