You may have heard about the situation for the salmon fishing season this year. You may have not. Read this, click on a few links and listen to the interview and hopefully you will come away more informed.
The dates for the 2006 salmon season are still being decided. In years past the opening day would have already happened, the party boats would be full, and the commercial fishermen would be ready to go. Not so this year.
Overfishing? No that's not it. Then why?
Remember the water fight up in Oregon a few years ago? There was a drought that year and the farmers needed water, and those concerned with the salmon in the Klamath river (biologists, fishermen and more) wanted the same water. The problem was that because of the drought there wasn't enough to go around.
It all led to the flows of clean cold water being cut off from the river. When the salmon came to spawn they died in huge numbers. The water was too warm, it wasn't clean, and it was just a mess.
Fast forward to now when these salmon would have been heading back to spawn, no surprise there were really low counts of fish on the river. So to protect the fish those in charge are considering closing down all ocean salmon fishing for salmon this year, and some say in the next few years as well.
The catch 22 is that the people in charge of fishing regulations and the people in charge of the water flows on the river are (you guessed it) different people.
Due to a loophole in the fishing regulations the season will open on April 1st 3 miles out from the coast. That's a pretty tight area. If you are headed out the Golden Gate and want to just turn left check your charts. You can get into some pretty rough water heading over the south bar. Depending on the conditions you might want to head out the shipping channel then turn left. Same thing for coming back. How long this April 1st 3 mile limit will stay open is currently unknown.
Indeed it is a big mess. Tom Stienstra in the San Francisco Chronicle has more.
To get some more information on this I interviewed Mike Augney, he runs USAFishing.com and has grown up fishing the Klamath and was a deckhand on party boats and fished with a commercial boat as well. Mike really knows his stuff. Listen to the audio link for a 30 minute interview as he tells us about his history on the river, what he saw when he fished there with his son when the salmon die off happened, and what he thinks should be done to fix the problem.
Click here for the interview with Mike in MP3 format.
In the interview Mike talks about federal biologist Michael Kelly who resigned over the issue. Here is an MSNBC article on his resignation.
You can also get the interview from the KFOG Podcast at our Fogcast page. It might scroll off that page but the first link will always work.
Check these links as well:
The good people at Coastside Fishing Club have a great website with lots of information, people to contact, sample letters, dates for meetings for public input, and so much more. Go here to see it all. Good job Coastside and check their homepage as well.
The other side of the story? Here is a Google search result for oregon farms water rights klamath
For a photo of the drought impact of 2001 on the farmers and the Klamath basin look here. It is a NASA space photo with the story of what happened. The brown farms in the second photo are easy to see.
There is a series of articles at U.S. Waternews.com about the Klamath water issue. Here are the links.
September 2005
Judge rejects Klamath farmers' water claim
April 2005
Farmers, government face off over Klamath River water
Oregon's governor tries to lessen impact of continuing drought
August 2003
Judge rules Klamath Basin plan violates Endangered Species Act
March 2003
Feds offer money to Klamath farmers not to irrigate
November 2002
Klamath Basin report riddled with errors, OSU researchers say
March 2002
Judge affirms Klamath Tribes' water right of time immemorial
January 2002
Security fence and cameras guard headgates on Klamath project
August 2001
Rationing of scarce Klamath water will test farmers' patience
April 2001
Klamath Basin irrigation conflict could go to God Squad
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