Salmon may be off-limits

A ban would cut deeply into a $150-million industry already suffering hard times, hitting not just commercial fishing but also the state's recreational angling industry.

The move by the Pacific Fishery Management Council came amid historically low returns of chinook salmon to the Sacramento River, considered the backbone of the West Coast fishing industry.

Fewer than 60,000 chinook, known in fish markets and on menus of swank restaurants as king salmon, are expected to spawn this fall in the river, less than half what regulators say is needed to justify a nominal fishing season and just a fraction of the 800,000 that arrived from the sea during the bumper crop of 2002.

Federal scientists blame the anemic returns on a variety of factors, but have focused on poor ocean conditions, potentially linked to global warming, that have caused the chinook's food sources to plummet.

But anglers also blame troubles in the environmentally fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where fish populations have plummeted because of pollution, predators and increased water exports to the south.

"There's no smoking gun here, but there's a lot of spent shell casings and people who created problems in the delta," said Duncan MacLean, a Half Moon Bay commercial fisherman. "What started out as trouble for little fish like the delta smelt has blossomed into a problem for salmon and the whole state."

The fisheries council voted unanimously to accept three options and to make a final recommendation to federal regulators next month when it meets in Seattle, after hearings in coastal communities. The options ranged from allowing anglers to haul in about 5% of an average year's catch to shutting down the season entirely.

If enacted by the National Marine Fishery Service, the seasonal closure would mark the first time salmon fishing has been banned off California since the first commercial fishermen arrived in 1848, said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Assns.

"It's going to have a big effect on coastal communities," said Grader.