Salmon fisheries in trouble....

[brewmaster15]

This is a potentially devastating one....

Salmon fishing was banned along the West Coast for the first time in 160 years Thursday, a decision that is expected to have a devastating economic impact on fishermen, dozens of businesses, tourism and boating.
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez immediately declared a commercial fishery disaster, opening the door for Congress to appropriate money for anyone who will be economically harmed.
The closure of commercial and recreational fishing for chinook salmon in the ocean off California and most of Oregon was announced by the National Marine Fishery Service.
It followed the recommendation last month of the Pacific Fishery Management Council after the catastrophic disappearance of California's fabled fall run of the pink fish popularly known as king salmon.
It is the first total closure since commercial fishing started in the Bay Area in 1848.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency last month and sent a letter to President Bush asking for his help in obtaining federal disaster assistance. Schwarzenegger plans to appropriate about $5.3 million for coastal salmon and steelhead fishery restoration projects.
The disaster declaration allows state officials to work with Congress on obtaining appropriations for businesses and fishermen and women, some of whom will lose as much as 80 percent of their annual income.
Although salmon spawning has been in decline all up and down the coast, the biggest problem is in the Sacramento River and its tributaries. So few salmon returned last fall that the fishery council was required under its management plan to halt fishing throughout the salmon habitat, which is all along the California and Oregon coasts.
The commercial salmon season off California and Oregon typically runs from May 1 to Oct. 31. The recreational season was to have begun April 5.
E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com
This article appeared on page B - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle




Anyone out there on the West Coast have any other info on this?

-al

[Greg Richardson]

Washington Coast was added to it. They are trying to get money also. Fact is when sea lions are on protected list it's free lunch 24/7. They sit right in the locks in Ballard WA as well as at the dams fish ladders eating fish after fish for who knows how many years it is going to eventually have an effect. When commercial fishermen are still allowed to troll in all the bad years we've had before it's reached this point what good does it do shutting down the sportsmen? Not much. When Indians have the right to go out and fish anyway and only work with government when it's convenient once again you reap what you sow. Then you have the big corporations who look at pollution fines as the cost of doing business you add all these factors up and you have what we have.

[brewmaster15]

Hi Greg,
Yes its a mess.:( But I wonder if the sealions would have any impact at all if not for the rest of the issues... Honestly...Not sure how big their population is ...but I just think of the Grizzlies in Alaska and their feeding relationship to Salmon... It has little effect if the salmon population is healthy.

From what I can tell here this problem seems to have come to a head when the Salmon failed to return to spawn?... I know they have been in decline for years now...but I wonder what affect the commercial fishing fleets had on the pre-returning population? The pressures must be immense on the Salmon populations.... It is on many marine species these days.

Ironically environmental groups push for people to buy wild caught salmon preferentially over farm raised because of the negative impact of farming practices...and now we have this as well happening... Its a fine line we must walk.

I think the sad fact is we aren't the best stewards of our natural resources ....we have much to learn about the web of life on our planet.

I hope that the powers that be can restructure their management policies in time to save the Salmon...I'd hate to see what happened here in the northeast with fisheries happen to the pacific north West.:(

-al

[Greg Richardson]

But I wonder if the sealions would have any impact at all if not for the rest of the issues... Honestly...Not sure how big their population is ...


You can stand at the Ballard locks and watch the sea lions eat fish after fish. This is only one area. They do it at the dams up and down the coast. The fish have to congregate before going up the ladder. They are easy lunch 24/7 for the sea lions. Sea lions have been on the protected list for years. They have tried everything know to man from carting the sea lions off to firecrackers. Nothing works. They return.

Sitting in the fish ladder waiting at Bonneville Dam..........

http://msnbcmedia2.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/061017/061017_bonneville_dam_vlrg_8a.widec.jpg

http://www.bluefish.org/dealions.jpg

[Greg Richardson]

Here is a HUGE reason why we need to protect our own foods. If you read the stats and really think about them their must be a lot of bank accounts getting fat over here for this to go on. As consumers we really need more then ever to protect ourselves and not trust any one else.


Seafood imports: worries growing
By Bill Lambrecht

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

WASHINGTON — In March, inspectors checking Chinese seafood arriving at U.S. ports made some unsettling discoveries: fish infected with salmonella in Seattle and Baltimore, and shrimp with banned veterinary drugs in Florida.

Meanwhile, a shipment intercepted in Los Angeles on March 19 labeled "channel catfish" wasn't catfish at all, although records don't say what it was.

"A lot of those products coming in from overseas, you have no clue as to what is in them," said Paul Hitchens, an aquaculture specialist in Southern Illinois, where cut-rate Chinese catfish are threatening the livelihood of fish farmers.

China has rapidly become the leading exporter of seafood to the United States, flooding supermarkets and restaurants. And while China agreed late last year to improve the safety of its food exports, the inspectors' March findings were not isolated cases.

According to Food and Drug Administration records examined by the Post-Dispatch, inspectors turned away nearly 400 shipments of tainted seafood in a year's time from China.

The records told a troubling tale, but even more troubling was what they didn't tell. Only a tiny fraction of imports are inspected at all, and even fewer are tested.

Imports of seafood have surged dramatically in recent years and account for nearly 80 percent of the seafood consumed by Americans. That translates to 4.8 billion pounds of imported seafood last year out of the 5.8 billion pounds consumed.

The United States is just starting to confront the challenge: In an increasingly globalized food supply, the government — using an antiquated inspection system — is unprepared to keep Americans safe from the dangers arriving at our ports.

"When you look at less than 1 percent of shipments, and sample and test maybe one-fifth of those, there's no way you can protect the American food supply," said Michael Taylor, a former FDA official who is professor of health policy at George Washington University.

Seafood is considered one of the riskiest imports, and those from China have risen steadily. When the FDA does turn away shipments, usually it is because they contain veterinary drugs, among them nitrofurans, a family of antibiotics banned by the FDA because tests showed they cause cancer in animals.

More than 100 of the shipments were rejected for being filthy, decomposed or otherwise unfit for consumption, according to the records.

In December, after disclosures about Chinese imports of poisonous pet food and lead-filled toys, the FDA and the Chinese government agreed on new procedures aimed at preventing tainted and dangerous food and drugs from reaching American shores. But skeptics question whether the new, voluntary arrangement has sufficient teeth.

Revamping the system

Meanwhile, Chinese seafood is a prime target of legislation in Congress to revamp decades-old inspection mechanisms.

FDA officials are requesting new authority, including the ability to license private companies to assist with inspections. But the Bush administration has signaled opposition to key provisions that would require regular inspections in foreign lands and limit ports where food can arrive to docks with FDA labs.

Former FDA officials argue that change is urgently needed.

William Hubbard, formerly the FDA's associate commissioner, noted that the FDA's inspection system was designed early last century when the big challenge was finding bugs or mold in arriving barrels of commodities like flour or molasses. Now, the U.S. gets millions of shipments of food each year from around the world.

Hubbard, who retired in 2005, recalled inspectors reporting particularly disturbing methods of Chinese aquaculture: raising chickens in cages kept above fish-ponds — a potential source of the salmonella in seafood, he said.

"Increasingly, the world is moving in a better direction in food safety and we're falling behind," Hubbard said. "As our system becomes more antiquated and more ineffective, the world is sending us their junk."

Supermarket frozen-food sections routinely are filled with imported fish fillets, shrimp and crabmeat — which must contain country-of-origin labels on packaging.

No such disclosure is required for fish served in restaurants, so people generally can't know with certainty where the fish or shrimp they ordered originated.

Records at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show how surging Chinese imports are meeting the demand of seafood-loving Americans. For instance, between 2000 and 2007, imports of farm-raised tilapia from China — a staple in restaurants — soared ninefold, to more than 240 million pounds.

Imports of catfish have been especially vexing to U.S. seafood interests, given the whiskered bottom-feeder's popularity in parts of America.

In four years, imports of Chinese catfish — or fish so described — increased from 1.6 million pounds to more than 22 million pounds last year, posing stiff and sometimes crippling competition for U.S. catfish farmers.

Jeff McCord, spokesman for the Catfish Institute, said that many of the more than 1,000 catfish-growers he represents saw their revenues plummet.

Posing a new threat

It's usually impossible to track down the source of food-borne illnesses, which, according to the Centers for Disease Control, occur 76 million times annually in the United States, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths.

But fish — particularly uncooked or improperly cooked — is a common source of problems. And the rapidly growing imports from China pose a new threat that needs attention, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, a food-safety expert at the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest.

In China and elsewhere in the developing world, "the ability to produce food and ship it globally far surpasses their ability to ensure it's safe," she said.

Experts agree that change is needed to protect Americans from dangerous imports. The question now is how much change Congress will demand and how much change the Bush administration and the FDA will be willing to accept.

Last year, U.S. and China officials began discussing changes amid disturbing revelations about dangerous products from poisoned pet food to shoddy tires.

In an agreement reached by the FDA and its Chinese counterparts in December, seafood was accorded the status of "high-risk" because of ongoing problems. Now, the FDA says, both sides are pursuing initiatives that the FDA hopes will lead to an FDA office in China and an electronic certification system for imports arriving in the United States.

[two utes]

I think the sad fact is we aren't the best stewards of our natural resources ....we have much to learn about the web of life on our planet.

.:(

-al

This is so true........I'm sorry to hear of this traggic situation, it will effect not only people lives, but more importantly nature itself.
Salmon, their eggs, and fry provide a food source to many other creatures, big and small, and they inturn feed in abundace on others. Yes, we have much to learn about the web of life.
On a much smaller scale, the Australian Goverment over a period of years bought out all the Licences off the Commercial Scollop Fisherman in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria. As a result the sea bed is no longer being ploughed by thousands of cages dragging the bottom, which in turn has allowed growth of vegetaion, and sea life. Only after a few years we have seen improvment of the fishing here. Boating/Fishing has grown dramaticly, and now we must do the right thing and practice catch and release to preserve what we have. Now that we have a food chain in the Bay we have Penguines, Whale, and Great White sharks entering the bay again, giving other operators opporttunities to provide sight seeing services, some of which had the Scollop licences.
Unfortunalty though there are still some peolple who feel that they must catch more than their limits.
In my opinion. it is these people who should be hit hard with large fines, or even jail sentences.

[ShinShin]

The sea lions do have an impact on the runs of several rivers in this area. Not only salmon, either. The sea lions have ruined the steelhead population as well, especially at the Ballard locks. Like Greg said, locally we can do nothing about the sea lions because of their federal status. What is really ironic with that is that sea lions are not native to this water way. They have learned to travel here. Research has shown that many of the sea lions at Ballard came from California. When taken back to their native areas, they simply return.

Sea lions are only a small part of the problem. Mismanaged fisheries by political bureaucrats who have prostituted themselves for the lobbyist's dollars are today finding that the chickens have come home to roost. We see this today, not only on this topic, but gas, electricity, food, housing, health care, the list goes on and on. Anywhere a politician has his fingers, we are paying the price.

Mat

[MSD]

Time to eat the Discus??? :p