Salmon season is the highlight of summer for Willy Vogler and the recreational fisherman who launch their boats from his Tomales Bay campground. This year, it won’t be cause for joy.
With the Chinook population projected to reach historic lows, state officials announced last week that California’s 2023 commercial and recreational ocean salmon fishing season is canceled.
The shutdown will impact fisherman and businesses like Lawson’s Landing, the campground run by Mr. Vogler’s family that has served as a base for recreational fishermen since 1929.
“Salmon fishing is one of the big draws for us,” Mr. Vogler said. “With fewer people coming out here with boats to go fishing, that’s going to hurt us a bit.”
The economic impact likely will be greater for Jeremy Dierks, a Bolinas fisherman who sometimes earns a third of his income from salmon. “It’s frustrating,” he said. “I want to see the salmon do well, but I also want to be able to conduct a business and have a fishery.”
The Pacific Fishery Management Council, a federal commission that manages West Coast fisheries, last week voted unanimously to approve the shutdown until next spring. It also closed most of Oregon’s salmon fishery. The National Marine Fisheries Service must enact the closure before the season opens, which is typically in April.
Charlton Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, attributed the dwindling salmon numbers to the impacts of drought and wildfire on spawning habitat, and to California’s construction of dams and other infrastructure over the years.
“Climate disruption is causing strings of dry years and hotter temperatures, shrinking salmon habitat and eliminating the space for them to rebound,” Mr. Bonham wrote in a column published on the Cal Matters news website. Cancelling this year’s season was necessary to help the salmon population recover, he said.
The closure will significantly impact California’s $1.4 billion fishing industry, which supports 23,000 jobs in the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested federal aid to help the industry weather the shutdown.
Fishing organizations have blamed the decline of the salmon population on state water-management decisions that favor the agriculture industry over the environment. “This is a direct reflection of California’s water policy and an absolutely devastating blow for the thousands of families that rely on salmon to pay their rent and mortgages,” Scott Artis, executive director of Golden State Salmon Association, said in a statement.
Salmon hatch in freshwater and spend three years maturing in the ocean before returning to their spawning grounds to lay eggs. With water running low in Central Valley rivers, most returning salmon have not survived the trip back, and many newborn salmon haven’t survived the journey to the Pacific. Environmental groups say a rollback of federal protections for salmon under the Trump administration exacerbated the impact of drought by allowing more water to be diverted from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers to Central Valley farms.
Mr. Dierks, who fishes on a 22-foot boat out of Bolinas, said this year’s closure came as no surprise, given the drought. “I understand the wild fish aren’t doing great because of the habitat they have to go back into. They have to go back into warm, low water.”
Yet he questioned whether the Pacific Fishery Management Council could conduct an accurate count of the salmon population. “They say there are 160,000 fish out there,” he said. “I know for a fact that there are far more than that. How do you count those? There’s no way you can count them.”
Mr. Dierks also fishes for several other species, and with the salmon closure, he will fish for more halibut. But so will a lot of other salmon fishermen who don’t typically market halibut. The competition will grow more intense as restaurants and other buyers have more options. “If you close salmon, there are a lot of hungry fishermen who want to make a buck,” Mr. Dierks said. “There are huge side effects. You don’t just lose your salmon season. Everything else gets pressured. And the hardest part of fishing is selling your catch.”
Although the salmon population is currently dwindling, state officials said this year’s record rains could bode well for the salmon season three years from now. With increased water flows, fish that hatch this spring will have a better chance of making it back to the Pacific.
After significant rains, salmon have rebounded in three-year cycles following previous periods of drought. In 2016-2017, the number of Chinook returning to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers was less than 135,000. Three years later, it was over 200,000. After above-average rains in 2010, salmon returns three years later more than doubled from around 163,000 to around 448,000.
Nevertheless, Josh Churchman, another Bolinas fisherman, believes the long-term prospects for California’s salmon population are so bleak that he recently sold his salmon license. “They could ban fishing for salmon forever and they wouldn’t come back,” Mr. Churchman said. “We take all their clean water, dam every river, and expect them to find a way to survive?”
Mr. Churchman was one of the fishermen who sell their catch to the Coast Café in Bolinas, where fresh local seafood is a focus of the menu. Patrick Sullivan, the café manager, said the restaurant is accustomed to dealing with ebbs and flows of its local ingredients. Earlier this year, when atmospheric rivers prevented fishermen from venturing out, the supply of Dungeness crab was inconsistent.
“We’ll take whatever we have and find creative ways of presenting it,” he said. “We’re always at the mercy of mother nature to provide what she will.”