Contact: Brian Gorman FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
3/11/96
The Commerce Department's National Marine Fisheries Service said today that the number of California's federally protected winter-run chinook must be substantially increased, and issued a biological opinion designed to protect the fish from extinction.
A biological opinion is a scientific assessment of what dangers lie ahead for a federally protected species and what steps must be taken to avoid those dangers. In the case of California's winter- run chinook, the threat stems from the fact that these fish are caught incidentally as part of a mixed-stock ocean salmon fishery operating under the Pacific Fishery Management Council's salmon management plan, in place since 1978.
The fisheries service says that the continued harvest of winter-run chinook permitted under the plan is preventing recovery of the species. In order to allow an increase from the perilously low population levels, their ocean harvest needs to be reduced by 50 percent.
The harvest reduction would have the greatest effect on commercial and recreational salmon fishing in the ocean south of Point Arena, 100 miles north of San Francisco.
"Right now about half of the winter-run chinook stocks are being caught by fishermen before these fish ever get a chance to make it up the Sacramento River to spawn," said Hilda Diaz-Soltero, head of the fisheries service's Southwest regional office in Long Beach, Calif.
Diaz-Soltero said that without at least 500 adult chinook returning to their spawning grounds each year to reproduce, the run is at a significantly increased risk of extinction.
"These are drastic measures we're proposing, but the alternative -- the extinction of this run -- is unacceptable," she said.
Winter-run chinook have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1989. California banned in-river sport fishing for winter-run chinook the following year. In addition, California and the fisheries service have implemented changes in the operations of large water diversions along the Sacramento River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and have improved conditions at dams for adults returning to spawn.
It was expected that these changes would lead to larger numbers of returning spawners. However, the fisheries service says that in 1993 only 341 adults returned to their spawning grounds. In 1994, the news was even worse: 189 spawners returned to reproduce.
Fishing this year will affect the offspring of those two very weak runs.
Because fishermen have no way to avoid catching protected chinook when they are harvesting other salmon that mingle with them, the practical effect of the fisheries service's decision may be to cut by 50 percent all ocean salmon fishing off California where winter-run chinook are found.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council, an independent, federally funded management group that proposes plans for fish harvests off California, Oregon and Washington, will meet in mid- March to consider the fisheries service's biological opinion. By April 15, it is expected to submit management measures for the 1996 fishing season to the fisheries agency for its approval. The ocean salmon season begins in early May.