Central Valley Salmon Run Reaches a Record Low

Central Valley Salmon Run Reaches a Record Low
by Dan Bacher
Wednesday Feb 18th, 2009 3:19 PM

    The federal government today released data showing that the return of chinook salmon to the Sacramento River in fall 2008 was the lowest in history.

    Photo of Sacramento River in the California Delta below Rio Vista by Dan Bacher.

sacramento_river.jpeg
sacramento_river.jpeg

Central Valley Salmon Run Reaches a Record Low

By Dan Bacher

The number of Chinook salmon returning to the Sacramento River to spawn in the fall of 2008 was the lowest in history, according to data just released from the federal government’s Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC).

Scientists estimated that only 66,264 natural and hatchery adult fall Chinooks returned to the Sacramento River basin in 2008. “This represents the lowest escapement estimate on record and is approximately 12 percent higher than the preseason forecast of 59,000,” according to the Council’s “Review of 2008 Ocean Salmon Fisheries.”

This alarming number is in stark contrast to just six years before in the fall of 2002 when 768,388 salmon returned to the river and its tributaries to spawn. It is also more 13,676 less than the previous low return of 79,940 fish in 1992. The Central Valley fall Chinook run is the driver of West Coast salmon fisheries, so the collapse of this once robust run has dramatic repercussions up and down the coast.

The 2008 escapement estimate did not meet the lower boundary of the annual fishery management plan objective conservation objective of 122,000 to 180,000 hatchery and natural adult salmon, even though recreational and commercial fishing for salmon in ocean waters off California and Oregon was closed for the first time in history. The Central Valley rivers were also closed to recreational fishing in 2008 with the exception of a two-month season on a small stretch of the Sacramento River.

Fall Chinook returns to Sacramento River hatcheries totaled 17,724 adults. Adult hatchery return goals at Coleman, Feather River, and Nimbus hatcheries were not met, though egg take goals were met at each of these hatcheries, the document stated.

The rest of the salmon spawned naturally in the river. However, “available data indicate hatchery-produced fish constitute a majority of the Sacramento River naturally spawning fall Chinook population,” the report said.

The return of Sacramento River winter run Chinook, listed as “endangered“ under the federal and state Endangered Species Act, was also very low. The spawning escapement of winter Chinook salmon in 2008 was estimated to be 2,850 jacks (2-year-old fish) and adults.

The spring and late fall run Chinook salmon run numbers in 2008, though still down dramatically from historical levels, fared better than the fall Chinooks of the Sacramento.

Returns of spring Chinook to the Sacramento River system totaled approximately 13,361 fish, including both jacks and adults. Most of these, an estimated 11,943 fish, returned to the upper Sacramento River tributaries, while the remaining 1,418 fish returned to the Feather River Hatchery.

The San Joaquin River fall Chinook run continued to be a fraction of the hundreds of thousands that once surged up the river every year to spawn. The estimated San Joaquin River fall Chinook spawning escapement in 2008 totaled 2,466 jacks and adults in the river’s tributaries and 301 jacks and adults to hatcheries.

“Salmon production in the San Joaquin River is determined largely by spring outflows three years earlier,” the PFMC stated. “Since 1986, spawner returns to the San Joaquin River have constituted less than 10 percent of the total Central Valley escapement for fall run Chinook.”

Faced with the continuing low numbers of Chinooks, a coalition of recreational and commercial fishing groups, conservation organizations and California Indian Tribes is pointing to the urgent need to fix the problems that have spurred the salmon fishery collapse, led by record water exports out of the California Delta to corporate agribusiness in recent years.

“The decline of the run to just 66,264 fish last year is very serious,” said Richard Pool, coordinator of Water for Fish, http://www.water4fish.org, “when you consider that a minimum of 120,000 returning fish is needed to sustain the fishery. We are now at the point where the federal government, in its draft biological opinion, recently declared killer whales in jeopardy because of the decline of Central Valley salmon runs.”

“This is no accident,” Pool emphasized, pointing to the collapse of the Delta food chain, the mismanagement of flows in the Upper Sacramento and other Central Valley rivers and increased Delta pumping in recent years as the key factors behind the decline.

“It is a foregone conclusion to me that there will be no general salmon season in 2009,” said Pool. “If we are to avoid extinction of our salmon and killer whales, a lot of changes on the river and Delta are needed in the near feature. We’re cautiously optimistic that the National Marine Fisheries Service in their new biological opinion due soon is going to deal with these issues.”

For more information about the draft biological opinion, go to: http://www.counterpunch.com/bacher02162009.html.

As Central Valley salmon populations continue to collapse, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the Nature Conservancy are campaigning for a peripheral canal and more dams that threaten to drive Central Valley salmon, delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, and the southern resident population of killer whales into the abyss of extinction. The canal is designed to create the infrastructure to export more water out of the Delta when less water exports, more water conservation, and the retirement of drainage impaired land in the San Joaquin Valley are what's needed to save salmon, smelt and orca populations.

For more information about what you can do to save Central valley salmon, southern resident killer whales and the Delta, go to http://www.calsport.org, http://www.water4fish.org and http://www.restorethedelta.org.

It seems to be coming to this:  there are those who believe that perpetuation of our species, or even just keeping our society "healthy" in the short-run, is more important than maintaining our ecosystem.   

What a joke.   

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the Nature Conservancy are campaigning for a peripheral canal and more dams

Nature Conservancy?

Anybody else totally befuddled?

the previous low return of 79,940 fish in 1992

I guess the half-full perception would take solace in the fact that the previous low was 79K fish in 1992.
Did that mean it collapsed? No, because just 10 years later, there were 768K fish.
So, maybe in 2018 we'll have 700K fish again, and the numbers will prove that 08-09 wasn't a true "collapse."

Stakeholder Proposal to Restore the Fall Run from Water4Fish http://www.scribd.com/full/14477750?access_key=key-2o806omcd2cs4k8ei6sz

It seems to be coming to this:  there are those who believe that perpetuation of our species, or even just keeping our society "healthy" in the short-run, is more important than maintaining our ecosystem.   

What a joke.   

Eric, you're my friend, but I don't see the issue as being this black and white.

Hypothetically, who will be the first to step up and take job cuts, lowered standard of living, and even possibly hunger for low income Californians?

The ecosystem of the the central valley stopped being "natural" 50 years ago when we completely plumbed it.  This plumbing, in part, is what gave us Californians such a great lifestyle.  We all have benefited from it - whether we want to admit it or not.

So now that our population is over 30 million and growing, and there is less water from the sky than there used to be, the choice between fish or economy is really acute.  It is really a difficult choice, and I for one can see both sides on it.  I know there's greed-heads involved as there always is, but cutting back on Ag will really affect regular folks as well.

We've reached carrying capacity.

Dave

We've reached carrying capacity.

Yeah, and we're fowling the nest.  That's my point.  I know that our strides in technology were necessary - it's just the lack of ethics that came with it that ruins the deal.  That's part of the Abking paradox - I'm part of what I hate, I want it to change, but I'm dependent on it.  I'll keep preaching "do the right thing" and eating my corporate-grown tomatoes.