North Coast state Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), chair of the state Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture, led the 48th annual Zeke Grader Fisheries Forum on Thursday. The nearly six-hour discussion focused on California fisheries’ most pertinent challenges, ranging from drought impacts, threatened salmon species, and the upcoming Dungeness crab fishing season.
“For 48 years, each of California’s fisheries specific committees, organizations, associations councils, and most importantly, our fishermen and women have attended this forum to provide the Legislature and the people of California an annual report on their needs, their goals, yearly activities and accomplishments,” McGuire said. “There is no doubt that since last year’s fisheries forum, our state’s fisheries have been through a lot, and that is an understatement. … It’s bleak.”
Ongoing drought conditions have only exacerbated the impacts to already strained fisheries. Charlton Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the current drought is “the worst I have seen in my career.”
“It’s grim,” he said. “The 2020-2021 (years) are the second driest two-year periods in the historical record in California. Forget about the 1970 drought, this is much worse than that. …We have such a hydrologic hole to dig out of, we would need biblical Noah’s Ark levels of rain to get out of the drought we’re in.”
Saving salmon
Water scarcity across the state, specifically in the Klamath Basin and Sacramento River, will likely produce “very bad salmon returns three to four years from now,” Bonham said.
“Salmon face a series of threats,” he said. “You’ve got the ongoing drought conditions, you’ve got a long-term decline of populations, we’ve had consecutive dry years of 2007-09 and 2013-15, we have competing interests for scarce water — including how we manage those scarce resources — and increased deficiency in salmon diets out in the ocean. We cannot get recovered salmon populations if every several years we experience a dynamic where we have survivals in the single digits. The population is on a long, slow decline.”
Doug Orbegi, director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, “Like all of us, salmon need water, not magical thinking.”
Bonham was hopeful that the decades-long effort to remove four dams along the Klamath River could save Klamath salmon.
“This is the world’s biggest dam removal and restoration project. It would open up about 300-plus miles of historical habitat to salmon and steelhead,” he said. “If we give nature and these fish a chance, they will survive.”
If all goes according to plan, demolition of the four Klamath dams is slated to begin in 2023.
“The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is preparing its final National Environmental Policy Act environmental document approving, we hope, removal,” Bonham said. “We expect that next spring and summer that we will complete all of the relevant state and federal permitting at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, Army Corps of Engineers, and the State Water Board.”
McGuire praised the work of conservationists and state agencies who trucked in millions of hatchery-raised salmon to estuaries to ensure their survival but said it was “a Band-Aid approach.”
“It is not a long-term strategy for success and that’s why we need to be able to look at long-term policy changes — obviously looking at health and safety of residents first — but then also focusing on this iconic fish species here in the Golden State,” he said.
Dungeness crab
Thanksgiving crab will likely be a no-go this year following the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s decision to delay the commercial Dungeness crab fishing season from Monterey to Point Arena along the Mendocino County coast just days before the holiday. Everything north of Point Arena is anticipated to open on Dec. 1.
Bonham said recreational fisherman north of Sonoma County “can go ahead and recreationally fish for Dungeness crab.”
The 2021 Dungeness crab fishing season follows several years of delays to the season opener, generally associated with high levels of domoic acid in crab meat in addition to the presence of southbound migrating whales.
“It’s possible that we should hold out hope, but hope is not a strategy,” Bonham said. “We have tried this several times in the last several years, the department figures out a MacGyver way to balance whales and get the fleets open. Occasionally, the fleet has decided they don’t want to go fish. So I’m super nervous that we’ll try this again and then the fleet will stick us in the eye with a finger at the end of the day. We’ve got to work through it together to have any chance of getting boats out commercially in time for the end of the year holidays, let alone Thanksgiving.”
Ben Platt is the president of the California Coast Crab Association and a crab fisherman based out of Crescent City. Platt said the fishermen and crew shortage, high fuel prices, and several years of poor fishing seasons have brought on “tough times.” He called for a tailored approach.
“If Fish and Wildlife truly want to help maintain a viable crab fishing industry, measures can be targeted in only the fishing zones where elevated risk has been identified. There could be a depth restriction instead of a closure or a simple fleet advisory,” he said. “… We request the state conduct detailed assessments of the potential threat to marine life, to vessel safety, and also assess the likely economic impacts to the affected fisheries and coastal communities.”
McGuire emphasized the need “to keep California’s fisheries and coastal communities thriving” as it is “absolutely critical to the future of this state and the future of rural coastal California.”
This reporter was unable to tune into the duration of the discussion, including the public comment portion of the forum, due to the Times-Standard’s print deadline.
Isabella Vanderheiden can be reached at 707-441-0504.
