BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe

Subject: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 06:41 AM

West Coast salmon fishing ban weighed

Collapse of California stocks brings step toward strict limits

The Associated Press
updated 11:52 p.m. CT, Fri., March. 14, 2008

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Federal fisheries managers on Friday took the initial step toward imposing what could be the strictest limits ever on West Coast salmon fishing amid a precipitous drop in fish returning to California's Sacramento Valley.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council unanimously adopted three options for sport and commercial fishing off the Pacific Coast, including an unprecedented complete shutdown of fishing off California and Oregon.

"This is a major disaster. We've never had one ever like this," council chairman Donald Hansen said after the vote. "It will have a major impact on California commercial fisheries for salmon, recreational fisheries, California charters."

The closest the council has come to halting all salmon fishing was 2006, when a decline in Northern California's Klamath River run forced severe restrictions on the number of fish caught.

The other possible strategies include severely limiting fishing or allowing fishermen to catch and release salmon for scientific projects. Both those options would require the federal government to grant an emergency rule because the salmon numbers are so low.

The fishery council is expected to decide which action to take in April during its meeting in Seattle.

"I think the likeliest outcome this year is no one will put a hook in the water," said Humboldt County fisherman Dave Bitts, who was attending the weeklong meeting in Sacramento.

The Sacramento River chinook run is usually one of the most plentiful on the West Coast, providing the bulk of the fish caught by commercial trollers off California and Oregon.

But this year's returns — even with no fishing allowed — are expected to reach less than half the council's goal for spawning a new generation. It marks the third straight year of declines, and the outlook for next year is no better.

... More at the link, expressing puzzlement about how this could happen.

John

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 06:48 AM

Of course, this is a completely unrelated incident(?)

WP: Cheney's hand in environmental laws

Cheney left no tracks as he steered policy moves to ease pollution controls

PART 4
By Jo Becker and Barton Gellman
The Washington Post
Updated: 11:43 p.m. CT June 26, 2007

WASHINGTON - Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the 19th-ranking Interior Department official, arrived at her desk in Room 6140 a few months after Inauguration Day 2001. A phone message awaited her.
"This is Dick Cheney," said the man on her voice mail, Wooldridge recalled in an interview. "I understand you are the person handling this Klamath situation. Please call me at -- hmm, I guess I don't know my own number. I'm over at the White House."

Wooldridge wrote off the message as a prank. It was not. Cheney had reached far down the chain of command, on so unexpected a point of vice presidential concern, because he had spotted a political threat arriving on Wooldridge's desk.

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake.

Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.

First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.

Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish.

What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks.

The Klamath case is one of many in which the vice president took on a decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for the benefit of business.

[It does take about 3 years for salmon to reach peak productive potential, doesn't it?]

John

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Peace
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 06:48 AM

They might try asking Newfoundland where the cod fishery has died.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 08:46 AM

This has to be one of the biggest problems facing the planet, and it doesn't seem to be getting the attention it deserves.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: gnu
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 12:00 PM

Peace... salmon too.... fish farms and Paul McCartney.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Barry Finn
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 12:38 PM

From Cheny's desk;
The government has come up with a new solution,






kill all the bears!


Barry

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 01:28 PM

"West Coast salmon"? Alaska is on the west coast and our salmon are fine...

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: michaelr
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 01:56 PM

Yeah, well I'm in California and we're facing the possibility of the demise of our salmon fishery. This is a big deal, threatening the livelihood of thousands.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: gnu
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 02:15 PM

And how many salmon farms do you have in Calleeforneeahh? And, if you had wee cute seal pups and Briggitte Barrduh and Paul "I don't even know where I am but I like having my pic taken" on top of them, well, it would be a memory.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Beer
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 02:55 PM

Barry,
That is a scary thought. Hell it could even be true.
Beer (adrien)

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Peace
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 03:54 PM

Cheney is an idiot, as Barry pointed out. Just one little thing: he wants to eradicate swans because they land on the water and their feathers occasionally fall out. It scares the fish so they don't perform the mating ritual and the eggs do not get inseminated. Cheney has inside information that because this has happened over time, by killing all the swans the situation should reverse itself over time, the salmon do their thing and all will be right with the world.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: michaelr
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 06:37 PM

Gnu -- what the heck are you on about? We're talking about wild salmon here. I don't know of any salmon farms in this state.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 09:03 PM

There will be a wild salmon sport fishing season in Idaho. So far over 23,000 have been counted on their way upstream on the Snake River.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 10:02 PM

Rapaire - As that in the normal range, or lower or higher?

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Mar 08 - 10:10 PM

It's supposed to be slightly higher than what the average has been. Blow the dams and it could be even higher....

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Barry Finn
Date: 16 Mar 08 - 01:58 AM

Rap, are there any bears left in Idaho?

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Metchosin
Date: 16 Mar 08 - 02:36 AM

Yours are fine Ebbie, but ours in BC are having an extra difficult time. Unlike Alaska, the stupid government here, took the moratorium off farmed Atlantic salmon and the massive increase in sea lice, in areas where they are contained, are decimating the wild salmon smolts that are trying to return to the ocean. Please don't eat farmed Atlantic salmon from BC.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: gnu
Date: 16 Mar 08 - 04:34 AM

Sorry about that. I thought there were fish farms in CA.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: kendall
Date: 16 Mar 08 - 07:53 AM

We have salmon farms here in Maine. I prefer them to the west coast wild ones, but as is often the case, they are confined to a small area and pollution of their own making is causing a serious problem.
It all boils down to one thing; fishermen are just too efficient. That applies to all fish. However, the drop in cod stocks is responsible to a great degree for the abundance of lobsters. They took far more lobsters than seals that used to get the blame for any drop in the lobster population.

We are slowly wearing out our planet just as Ethiopians wore out their country.

It's a dirty bird that beshits its own nest.And that's us, folks.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Mar 08 - 05:20 PM

* "Most contaminants in fish are contained in the skin, so removing the skin and grilling the fish removes a significant amount of pollutants such as dioxins and PCBs.

* "Nearly all canned salmon consists of wild salmon, which is healthier than farmed salmon.

*" Farmed salmon is naturally grey in colour. Wild salmon is pink, the result of a diet rich in carotenoids, from their carnivorous diet of shrimp and other fish. Farmed salmon are given an additive to make them any shade of pink the fish farmer wants.

*" Farmed salmon, like most domestic beef, are also given antibiotics to fight disease, and a special diet to make them grow quickly so they can be marketed faster.

* " Many foods have PCBs, but farmed salmon tend to have two to five times the PCB levels of beef, pork, milk and eggs.

* "Canada farms about 60,000 tonnes of salmon a year – 50,000 tonnes in British Columbia, 10,000 in the Maritimes. Salmon farming is a $700-million-a-year business in Canada. Canada exports about 80 per cent of its farmed salmon.

* "Norway is one of the largest producers of farmed salmon, some 470,000 tonnes a year."

Fun Facts

I have had both but anyone who prefers farmed salmon to wild salmon, imo, has not had fresh salmon. In Alaska, we know there are key signs that a fish is fresh, i.e. it should not smell fishy; its eyes should not be sunken; a stroke of the hand over the body of the fish should identify a firmness a day-old or older fish cannot exhibit.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Mar 08 - 09:10 PM

Bears in Idaho?

Yes, both black bears and grizzlies. There is a restricted hunting season on both -- meaning that if you want to hunt them the chances are that you won't, since the number of permits is determined by the estimated number of bears and then a drawing is held. IF you get a griz permit AND you shoot one you can never again in your life do so in Idaho -- it's literally a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

There are also mountain lions (cougars, pumas). There is also a hunting season for these; there are fewer restrictions than on bears but each Wildlife Maintenance Area (WMA) has a limit on how many can be taken and when that number is reached the season ends right then.

Recently wolves were added to list. They're still working that over and various groups are suing to prevent any wolf hunting. It'll be a while before you can hunt wolves!

We also have lots and lots and lots of coyotes. Way up North there are still some mountain caribou, but they are on the VERY endangered list and you'd be better off shooting yourself than one of them. We also have moose, elk, whitetail deer and mule deer.

By the way, all of these (except the caribou) live in the wild lands around here. Sometimes they come into town.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Beer
Date: 16 Mar 08 - 09:30 PM

I fished the King Salmon in the Yukon one year. In the Klukshu River (sp.?). I will never forget it.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 02:41 AM

Beer, the nine-year-old son of a friend of mine, reared in Alaska and already an avid fisherman, was visiting his relatives in New York. His uncle took him fishing and the boy caught a nice trout. His uncle enthused over it: Just look at the size of that fish! That's a big one, boy. Just look at it...

The nine year old looked up at his uncle. Uncle Bob, he said earnestly, I've never seen a fish so little.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Beer
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 08:01 AM

Lol Eddie, how so very true. Reminds me of a short story about 10 years ago. I was at the Legion having a brew and we got on the topic of fishing. The younger fellow starts to brag about the huge cod he caught when he visited P.E.I. I asked him how big? He stretches his arms out about 18 inches and says he had never seen such huge cod. I smiled at him and said "No haven't is right. Dad would never had let us keep one that size, he would have thrown it back in". But that was a long time ago and the young fellow is probably tight today.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 09:00 AM

Shucks, I've seen a catfish head as big as a basketball back on the Upper River. And if you want BIG fish I suggest you catch a Snake River sturgeon -- they're catch and release ONLY -- last summer a guy caught one eight feet (2.44 meters) long; it wasn't the longest ever caught but it gave everyone a thrill.

Now, catching one of those sodden carpets that are called halibut, especially one of the BIG ones....

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Barry Finn
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 10:36 AM

My mother lives on Cape Cod, she's says there's a rumor going round that there's a movement to change the name to Cape Carp cause that all that's left to fish for in Nantucket Sound.

When I was young I use to pull my boat up to the sand bars that lined the rivers & beaches & just walk around picking up the scallops, the different types of clams, grab the crabs off the rocks, the shellfish were so plenty that to fish was to work. Now the river banks, beds & bars are void of all but a few mussels & hermit crabs, the eels have even vanished from the marshes.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 12:39 PM

Ebbie, yeah, others should be warned of the possible contaminants too, in farmed salmon. Although it has always been my understanding that PCBs are stored in the fat of fish and not the skin.

There is some scuttlebutt here, that allowing salmon farms in the areas of salmon bearing rivers is the powers that be way of ensuring the elimination of "inconvenient" wild stock on certain rivers. That way those rivers can be put to more "productive" and "profitable" use for the generation of hydroelectric power.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 09:10 PM

Just what Prince Rupert needs: a massive hydro plant.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 12:33 PM

Rap, I don't think the Skeena River is in any danger. Fortunately the area is a little too close to Alaska to escape political pressure from that state, to keep the ecological disaster of salmon farms as far away from Alaskan waters as possible.

These farms are doing their damage farther south:

Broughton Archipelago

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 12:45 PM

Chum and pink are particularly vulnerable, because unlike coho and sockeye, they leave the rivers very young before forming scales.

Again, please do not buy farmed Atlantic salmon from BC.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: kendall
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 12:47 PM

Ebbie, you sound like the Chamber of Commerce!

My Uncle caught the biggest fish ever. It was a brook trout, and it was so massive, (how massive was it)? When he pulled it out of the brook, it took 20 minutes for the hole it left to fill up again.
Knowing it was a record breaker, he took it into town to have it weighed on the hay scales, but the scale was not able to handle it, so he took a picture of it, and the negative weighed 14 pounds.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:00 PM

I don't eat farm raised salmon for various reasons, but the most compelling reason for many people might be because it doesn't have any flavor.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:10 PM

Or texture, Sage!

Kendall, to my chagrin I must admit that we don't have brookies like that here. But ask me sometime about our halibut.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Beer
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 02:34 PM

Kendall, that was some fish. Anyone know if a Post has ever been started along the title of "Fish Stories?" Be fun.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 02:54 PM

Kendall, my brother once caught a catfish that was so big (How big WAS it?) that when he tossed it back (it was under the size limit) the wave from the splash washed out the riverbanks of Illinois and Missouri for twenty miles inland, from Hannibal south to the mouth of the Ohio. Most of St. Louis was underwater for over a month, barge traffic stopped dead all summer, and if it wasn't for the New Madrid earthquake fault draining off the water Memphis, Natchez, New Orleans, and other cities would now be located in the Gulf of Mexico.

And that's true. I can introduce you to my brother and he'll tell you the whole story, including what kind of cow he was using for bait.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 04:15 PM

Please do not eat farmed salmon.

Salmon runs are so dangerously low, its hard for Native people to get enough "food fish" to feed their families.

The Atlantic salmon are spreading sea lice to the wild stocks and the the off-shore draggers are killing off alot of feed for the wild salmon. Logging has messed up many, many of their spawning grounds and unless we take strong measures now, we will have no wild salmon left to eat. If the salmon die, so will the Native culture that is so dependent on them.

Accidental genocide?

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: kendall
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 04:43 PM

Raparie,I neglected to mention that I caught the father of that trout.The one Curt took was a juvenile just barely legal.

Ebbie, we used to have huge Halibut, but, like every other resource, they have been nearly fished out. Without lying,(as Raparie does) I state the truth when I say 800 pound Halibut were not uncommon 30 years ago.Now the biggest of them only run around 20 pounds. It's sad indeed. Greed is killing everything.
Every food species is slowly becoming extinct, or no longer commercially viable and the "nothing" is climbing the food chain. Our turn is coming.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 05:30 PM

And Kendall, I neglected to mention that after he threw the li'l un back, that catfish's parents chased us upstream clear to Minnesota. We were in a rowboat, and we wore our oars plumb down to toothpicks from the friction of our rowing. The parent catfish did their best to prevent us from escaping, one being on the starboard side of the boat and the other on the larboard. They pushed water in front of them (which of course helped us escape) but their bow wakes were so ferocious that it flattened all the land on both sides of the river for miles -- this is now called "bottomland". But by gad, those fish tried! By the time we reached Bemidji they had worn themselves down to minnows and were so ashamed of their size that they begged us to use them for bait. We didn't, of course, because that would have deprived a poor baby catfish of its parents.

We're nothing if not a caring bunch.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 05:56 PM

Kendall, an 800-pound halibut would be sad eating! The best eating, imo, comes from those under 150 pounds.

In southeast Alaska we still catch 400-pound hens- I wish they were always released. Those are the big breeders.

I remember a few years back an on-shore fisherman landed a big halibut. He had his picture taken lying alongside it on the sand. He was just over 6 feet in height and the fish was marginally longer.

Most of the halibut brought home for eating weigh in at about 60 pounds, I think.

The Willamette River in western Oregon, Rapaire, has sturgeon in it. I have never seen one but a number of times I have heard in the dark of a night what must have been one leap and slam back down on the water surface.

I propose that the fish (undoubtedly the same one) you and Kendall speak of was a sturgeon.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Metchosin
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 06:47 PM

Thank God for Alaska!!! Our inane Provincial government announced, with great fanfare this afternoon, that they are putting a moratorium on fish farms at the mouths of the Skeena and Nass Rivers. Anyone want to bet that Alaska came down hard on them and told the stupid SOBs to keep their filthy pens away from their pristine waters?

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Metchosin
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 06:50 PM

Please accept a big hug from me Ebbie and one for all else who live in that beautiful sane State.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Metchosin
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 06:56 PM

Now if its too ecologically dangerous to put fish farms up there, why is it OK to keep approving them for central and southern BC?

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 07:52 PM

Thanks, Metch. It would be interesting to see by what process a state or province decides that it is OK - even preferable - to permit farmed fish.

The end product of the policy reminds me of an unfortunate result of a futuristic story.

That said, I must say that I've had deep-fired farmed catfish (in North Carolina) and loved it.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 09:44 PM

Get catfish nuggets, pull off any skin that's on them. Let them soak in cheap beer all day, replacing it as the oil closes up the top. When no more oil comes up, cook them as you would any good mild white fish.

Subject: RE: BS: No West Coast Salmon This Year - Maybe
From: Metchosin
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 10:20 PM

As I said upthread Ebbie, I don't think it is just paranoia on the part of some. I do believe that it is a deliberately thought out way, to finish off rivers which are already faltering in production of wild or hatchery stock, to free them up for unfettered hydro electric power generation. I sincerely hope I'm wrong. I'm not willing to give up on the dream of massive runs of wild BC salmon in all her historic rivers and streams.