April 2023 - The Director's Corner
March was a month of big decisions, both for us and for our local fishing community.
New Board Members Chaps Poduri and Dr. John Field.
The governance team of the Trust just expanded by two. I am thrilled to welcome Dr. John Field and Chaps Poduri to our governing board. Both are long-time community members - John lives in Santa Cruz and Chaps in Pacific Grove, so we now have the full geographic scope of Monterey Bay covered. Chaps is a finance and public policy expert, currently serving the PG City Council. John is Fishery Biologist with NOAA Fisheries and brings decades of west coast fisheries science and management experience to our team. Their energy and ideas joined with the current five members’ energies are sure to spark new insights for the Trust, just in time for a strategic refresh starting in May.
And then there’s the big decision that will have severe impacts on our local fishermen.
Facing extremely low returns of salmon to the Sacramento and Klamath rivers (the two biggest commercially viable runs left in CA), the PFMC and its advisory bodies came to the conclusion at the March meeting that there will be no fishing this year - neither in the commercial or recreational sectors (rivers included). NO SALMON for California. That is a harsh reality for the commercial fleet, which was valued at just under half a billion in fish sales last year.
Photo credit David Hills
The last time this happened was in 2008. In a similar fashion, years of drought, water diversions, and habitat losses overwhelmed the fish who just couldn’t make it back to spawn in high enough numbers to allow fisheries to open. But this year it’s worse: the fleet is coming off a fourth straight unprofitable/losing crab season (Seary et al 2022). In other words, the loss of salmon season is happening on top of an already compromised economic situation. How long can our fishermen hang on? How will they keep their crew and their markets with no fish to catch? If we lose the commercial harvesters, we lose access to fresh local seafood that supports the economy, the food system, and overall food security.
Solutions?
The first response from the government is disaster funding, which may eventually come through and help alleviate the devastating losses to fishermen and businesses. But fishermen don’t want a handout, they want to fish. They want a viable fishery, which requires adequate water flow in rivers, accessible spawning habitat, and the political will to protect their habitat year after year in the face of development and growing water demands by consumers and agriculture interests.
We are ready to support actions by and with fishermen, policy leaders, and managers, in order to co-create a strategy for long-term resilience of California king salmon. Let’s get to work.