\n<\/p>\n
Commercial fishing crews will be allowed to catch salmon off the California coast this year for the first time since 2022 as regulators plan to end a three-year shutdown after seeing a surge in struggling salmon populations.<\/p>\n
The Pacific Fisheries Management Council, a body established by Congress that manages marine fishing along the West Coast, is expected to vote Sunday. Plan<\/u><\/a> It would reopen the salmon fishing season in California under strict limits.<\/p>\n A severe decline in the Chinook salmon population led to a ban on commercial fishing in 2023, 2024, and 2025, the longest closure in state history.<\/p>\n The state’s fishing industry has been badly hit by the shutdown, forcing many people to abandon their boats and look for other work. The planned resumption of fishing this spring will allow crews to catch a limited number of Chinook salmon on certain dates. <\/p>\n “Limited reopenings are a lifeline. It gives you a little bit of money,” said Vance Steplin, executive director of the nonprofit Golden State Salmon Association. “There’s no way they’re getting enough money to keep their business the way it was before this shutdown.” <\/p>\n Fishermen in the San Francisco area will be allowed to catch a maximum of 160 Chinook per vessel during several open periods in May and August and 100 Chinook on additional dates in September. Anglers in other areas will be given different dates.<\/p>\n The plan also includes a limit on the total number of fall-run Chinook salmon that can be caught during the season.<\/p>\n The suspension of commercial fishing means a major loss of income for many in the business. Some people have managed to get out of there catching crabs or other types of fish<\/u>While others have left the state.<\/p>\n Fisherman Chris Pedersen walks on a dock in Half Moon Bay in 2024. After salmon fishing closed he left California, saying he could no longer make a living.<\/p>\n (Lauren Elliot\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Fisherman Chris Pederson, 66, said he can no longer make a living fishing from Half Moon Bay after the closure in 2023, so he moved to Arizona and is traveling to the Oregon coast to fish for salmon and tuna.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one can afford to go fishing in California,\u201d Pedersen said. “A lot of good fishermen are gone.”<\/p>\n The federal government provided $20.6 million in disaster relief funds<\/u><\/a> For California fishing communities affected by the 2023 closure. But for Pedersen, the amount was $8,000, which he said was not enough to cover his losses. <\/p>\n “It was horrible,” Pederson said. “I put everything I had into my boat, and we didn’t get a chance to fish.”<\/p>\n Some have put their boats up for sale. Others who can no longer afford the maintenance and fees have abandoned the boats or taken them away for demolition.<\/p>\n Sarah Bates, who runs a commercial fishing boat out of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, said the port has become “quite a sad place” as many people have moved on to other work.<\/p>\n Bates said, “We lost a lot of people. And given a number of factors in the industry, I’m not sure those people will ever come back.” \u201cIn the big scheme of things, I’m quite concerned that we’re losing our coastal communities, and we’re losing our ability to deliver marine protein to the people of California.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, he’s hopeful the limited salmon season might provide a slight boost to the fishing business.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will definitely help, and a lot of us are really excited to get fishing again,\u201d Bates said. “But it’s not the ‘we’re back, everything is golden again’ kind of season that we would really like to see.”<\/p>\n The closure also affected recreational fishermen and businesses operating sportfishing charter boats. After being closed for two years, the marine recreational fishing season was allowed to reopen for several days last year under strict limits. <\/p>\n Biologists say salmon populations are in decline combination of factors<\/u> including dams that have blocked breeding areas, loss of critical floodplain habitats, and global warming, which has deepening drought<\/u> And causing warmer temperatures in rivers.<\/p>\n The fish suffered their latest decline during the severe drought of 2020-22, when the water flowing from the dams sometimes became so hot that Dangerous for salmon eggs<\/u>.<\/p>\n Salmon typically feed in the ocean for about three years and then return to their birthplace to spawn. During the past three years, the fishery has benefited from wet winters and large river flows. The wet winter of 2023 in particular was a big help.<\/p>\n California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said the anticipated reopening of the fishing season is a good sign that the health of the state’s rivers is improving. “It shows that nature is resilient and that it can bounce back.”<\/p>\n For decades, government-run hatcheries in the Central Valley have raised and released millions of salmon each year to help boost their numbers. Crowfoot said of the state ongoing efforts<\/u><\/a> They are also helping to restore important tidal habitats and remove barriers that hinder fish migration.<\/p>\n The latest data shows that “the population is growing really strongly,” Crowfoot said. \u201cThis is a huge blow to all of us who are working to recover salmon across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the Chinook population in decline is much lower than it was in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n Steplin, of the Golden State Salmon Association, said the long-term fishing closures were a “man-made problem” and blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and the federal government for not ensuring adequate river flows for salmon.<\/p>\n “Water is being given priority over fish for agriculture. It’s very simple,” he said.<\/p>\n As salmon have declined, California’s agriculture industry is planting more nut orchards in place of other field crops, which are easier to leave fallow when water is scarce, he said.<\/p>\n The state’s almond orchards have expanded dramatically since 2002<\/a> And now let’s cover about it 1.5 million acres<\/a>While pistachio has increased from about 100,000 acres in 2002 to more than 200 acres. 600,000 acres<\/a> Today.<\/p>\n “To me, we’re destroying our natural habitat to grow snack foods for export,” Steplin said. <\/p>\n He said the state should adopt stronger regulations to protect river flows so salmon and other fish can recover.<\/p>\n Some people who depend on fishing for their livelihood are hoping this year could be the beginning of a long way toward recovering what they have lost. For example, Bates said he thinks California should be able to rebuild healthy salmon populations.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is still a lot of work to be done,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope this is the beginning of an increasing trend of fish coming out of the Sacramento River.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Commercial fishing crews will be allowed to catch salmon off the California coast this year for the first time since 2022 as regulators plan to end a three-year shutdown after seeing a surge in struggling salmon populations. The Pacific Fisheries Management Council, a body established by Congress that manages marine fishing along the West Coast,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[747,2347,12136,10078,2113],"class_list":["post-58499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bible-verse","tag-california","tag-coast","tag-fishing","tag-resume","tag-salmon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58505,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58499\/revisions\/58505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}