Chinook

Over the last two decades, the use of modern genetic engineering technology to produce pharmaceuticals and new crop plants has given rise to prodigious scientific, humanitarian and financial successes. But its application to animals for food has lagged behind despite the fact that animal protein is expensive and increasingly sought-after worldwide. The reason for the lag is not technical difficulty. Thousands of animals with genes deleted or added have been engineered for scientific purposes; the catalog of available lines resembles the telephone directory of a small city, and these animals have made incalculable contributions to the understanding of mammalian gene function in health and disease.

The West Coast will have a salmon fishing season for the first time in two years, but it will be a far cry from the days when abundant chinook catches drove a multimillion-dollar industry in the region. The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted late Thursday to recommend an abbreviated commercial trolling season for Sacramento Delta chinook. The council, which advises federal regulators, settled on a longer -- but still curtailed -- season for ocean sport fishing of the salmon south of Point Arena.

Even among those who seek to protect wildlife above all, there are moments of great conflict. One of those moments is playing out near Portland, Ore., as sea lions gorge on endangered chinook salmon that gather at the base of the Bonneville Dam, preparing to make their way up the fish ladders to spawn. Last week and this, wildlife officials have killed six of the most incorrigible of the animals, which have refused to be dissuaded by noise, rubber bullets or other harassing techniques.

Despite a historic shutdown of coastal salmon fishing, the number of salmon returning to the Sacramento River is collapsing, according to preliminary data released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council. Returning fall Chinook salmon numbers have dropped to their lowest level since monitoring began in the 1970s, the report said. The finding means it is unlikely that fishing will resume this year, disappointing fishermen who have eked out the last two years on disaster aid, waiting for salmon fishing bans to be lifted.

In March, a couple of plump, 900-pound California sea lions showed up at the Bonneville Dam, which spans the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon, 146 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. Their mission: to gorge themselves on a feast of endangered chinook salmon laboring to get over the dam's fish ladder. The two had been caught before and branded as recidivist malefactors by wildlife officials, who have spent decades and billions of dollars trying to protect the salmon.

Something is about to happen on California's second-longest river that hasn't happened this time of year since Harry Truman was president. Water is going to start flowing down two stretches of the San Joaquin that have been sucked dry since Friant Dam began diverting most of the river into two giant irrigation canals. Today dam managers will crank up releases of water into the San Joaquin as part of an ambitious restoration program intended to return chinook to the once salmon-rich river by late 2012.

The giant factory fishing boats that take billions of pounds of pollock from Alaska's Bering Sea would face major limits on salmon caught accidentally in their nets under controversial regulations recommended Monday. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council endorsed rules intended to protect the steeply plummeting salmon stocks throughout the Pacific Northwest and guarantee more fish for villages across western Alaska.

Field & Stream magazine has declared Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin among its many heroes and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger its biggest villain in 2008. "For the first time in a century we had a candidate for executive office who understood real hunting and fishing," the magazine, in its December issue, said of Palin, who advanced through part of a March Madness-style bracket system past other "heroes," including Kevin Costner (angler) and golfer Boo Weekley (hunter-angler). The finalist on the hero side was country singer Miranda Lambert, an avid deer hunter whose lyrics have reflected her fondness for the outdoors.

This is not a year when you would expect to find a monster chinook salmon in California waters. The salmon runs have been so bad that the commercial and recreational chinook catch was canceled off the California and Oregon coast in spring. But when state Department of Fish and Game biologists conducted their survey of fall-run chinook last month, they came across the carcass of one of the largest chinook ever recorded in California.