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California cancels salmon fishing season
- kposehn 4y agoI've been Salmon fishing in California since I can remember. There are few things I love more than being on the water going for Kings as the sun comes up. I'm really bummed we won't have a season, but having more fish in the future is worth the short term cost.
- bradleyjg 4y agoIt can’t hurt, but I don’t think something like this is really going to fix the problem. Dams, water levels abs temperatures, ocean trawling, acidification … there’s lots and lots of stress on salmon population aside from anglers.
- mikeg8 4y agoFixing a multifaceted problem requires multifaceted solutions. It can definitely help.
- NegativeLatency 4y agoThe publicity from the cancelation seems like a really valuable aspect too
- kposehn 4y agoAbsolutely. We definitely need to put a spotlight on this and other dwindling fish stocks. Even though there are other populations to draw from, once they're gone they are very, very hard to get back.
- NegativeLatency 4y agoCar tire debris: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/03/coho-salmon-pollution-car-tires-die-off https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/03/coho-sal...
- nradov 4y agoLocal divers have been removing some tires but they can only get a tiny fraction of what has been dumped. https://www.leeoceans.org/initiatives/ptlobos-tire-removal https://www.leeoceans.org/initiatives/ptlobos-tire-removal
- hadlock 4y agoThere was a bombshell report about an immediate moratorium on crab fishing in Alaska, that came out of nowhere, seemingly. About a month later there was a (very, very quiet) report justifying the moratorium. The short version is that effectively scientists had been asking for reduction in fishing in the area for decades and finally the remaining stock in the area was so low it was critically endangering the ecosystem there. So they finally put in a hard stop after years of kicking the can down the road. I suspect we'll see additional cessation of fishing in other areas as it further unravels that we've been chronically overfishing for decades. Britain after WW2 overharvested mackerel from their seas for so long that they had to put permanent fishing quotas and even today the mackerel have not fully recovered from overfishing over half a century ago. Anglers have an enormous impact on fish and wildlife stocks.
- qqtt 4y agoSee also cod fishing in Newfoundland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland Cod stocks collapsed in the early 1990s, with a moratorium on fishing enacted in 1993. It took until 2011 for signs to show that the ecosystem was recovering.
- BrianHenryIE 4y agoThe Atlantic (2016) is a good documentary on natural resources in Ireland and Newfoundland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtRHSWGYNFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtRHSWGYNFc https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5744820/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5744820/
- steve_adams_86 4y agoMy understanding is that the cod are not expected to recover to numbers previously seen at all, though. The smaller number present today seem likely to comprise a permanently smaller proportion of the new habitat that has formed in their absence. I looked into this many years ago so perhaps that has changed. I hope so. Otherwise it means the Canadian Atlantic was irreparably altered by modern fishing in the blink of an eye, and the rest of the world is working hard at doing the same thing right now.
- kposehn 4y agoIt won't fix it for sure, but it will help. Reducing the pressure on the population can go a long way to improving future prospects.
- mbgerring 4y agoLuckily, the dams start coming down this year. https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/18/klamath-river-dam-removal-southern-oregon-dams-northern-california-drought https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/18/klamath-river-dam-rem...
- ROTMetro 4y agoTo add to the doom and gloom. https://www.science.org/content/article/common-tire-chemical-implicated-mysterious-deaths-risk-salmon https://www.science.org/content/article/common-tire-chemical...
- eweise 4y agoBummed as well. Just got into fishing a few years ago. Was going to get a fishing kayak this spring for catching salmon off the coast but now I guess I'll wait.
- kposehn 4y agoMight be worth going for halibut this year. If the coastal waters are still super cold it should keep the SF bay quite active for the season, so you could always try hitting the sand flats off South SF. I haven't done it myself but others had great luck last year.
- eweise 4y agoGood idea. That's actually what I've mainly been fishing for around Tiburon. I've had pretty good luck there.
- ryandrake 4y agoThe article doesn't seem to mention whether they are only canceling the season for big time commercial fishing or for all fishing altogether. I suspect it's the latter. Too bad that the government can't seem to grasp the concepts of scale and profit motive. The wildlife populations are getting wrecked from large scale fishing operations mass-scraping the sea clean, not from Joe Sixpack dipping their rod in the ocean on the weekend and hoping to come home with one or two fish.
- kposehn 4y agoSport Fishing can put a huge amount of pressure on stocks too. During the salmon season there are hundred of boats off Stinson Beach (NW of the golden gate) fishing, same for Pacifica and Half Moon Bay. For every commercial boat there are many, many smaller boats. It all adds up.
- bcbrown 4y agoThe ratio of commercial:recreational quoatas depend on the numeric value for the season, but at lower quotas the ratio skews heavily recreational. So when the run is substantial, commercial fisheries can fish, but when the run is marginal, more of the quota is recreational: Allowable non-treaty ocean harvest (thousands of fish) Coho: C R 0–300 25 75 >300 60 40 Chinook: 0–100 50 50 >100–150 60 40 >150 70 30 Source: Page 10 of https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/2022-10/2022-Fed-Reg-Booklet10062022.pdf https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/2022-10/2022-Fed-Reg-Bookle...
- Melatonic 4y agoI have heard from people who do love fishing that getting a decently cheap flight to Alaska is totally worth it specifically for Salmon
- 50 4y agoDo you happen to know if there are any places in California to go fly fishing, if any? My curiosity deriving from David James Duncan's The River Why and Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It.
- kposehn 4y agoThere are a ton of excellent places. You can go for steelhead in the Klamath and Trinity rivers, lots of trout in the Sierra Nevada mountains (I'm partial to the Truckee River watershed), and if you want to try something really different go for striped bass on a fly in some of the Central Valley Foothills reservoirs in late-August or September. I've even gone surf-fishing on fly for Skates and sharks in San Diego at the beach. There's a lot of different fly fishing experiences in California from traditional trout to really unique stuff. Please do try some out!
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago> Last year, 196,000 adult fish were expected to return to the Sacramento River to spawn but only 60,000 showed up. 70% decline If your business depends on this fishing season, what do you do? Go bartend?
- comonoid 4y agoI saw a bartender fishing in 2020 when everything was closed. So, why not?
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoI'm not sure if it's in the best long term interest of the entire state if a few niche businesses based entirely around salmon fishing have a bad year. The calculus is those businesses will either struggle now or struggle forever when most of the fish are gone
- nradov 4y agoStart a catfish farm. https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/reeling-in-the-dough-california-catfish-proving-to-be-big-business/103-474274760 https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/reeling-in-the-doug...
- geraldwhen 4y agoCatfish is not great.
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 4y agoIt's hardly a substitute for salmon.
- nradov 4y agoSome people prefer catfish over salmon. Tastes vary. Catfish is a pretty good substitute for salmon in terms of macronutrients. Salmon does have higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids. But catfish may be safer in terms of heavy metals and other toxins, depending on where the fish were raised.
- dcwardell 4y agoReminds me of the Alaskan Snow Crab population collapse last year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207372
- mikeg8 4y agoGreat news. I live in the area this story was filmed in and have been to that pro shop. I really hope they can weather a lost season and feel bad for the tough times ahead. But I’m happy and proud that our state is willing to take drastic measures to protect the resource. I hope that as we focus on balance and stewardship, populations of salmon, and abalone, to continue to rebound so that the fisheries are healthy and reopened, and we can all enjoy the bounty from this region’s ocean.
- yesenadam 4y agoAnd maybe the life in the ocean is more than just a "resource" for humans to exploit, like so much coal or gas.
- peanuty1 4y agoThis is exactly how I was feeling reading this thread. We are only concerned about the salmon to preserve the industry and not the salmon themselves or the ecosystem. Sometimes I hear Millennials and Gen-Z say they don't want to have kids because the world sucks and think they're doomers but they have a point.
- mulmen 4y agoWell, we can’t all enjoy the resource. That’s how we got into this mess.
- nradov 4y agoIt's unclear if abalone will ever rebound to the extent of allowing for much harvesting. There was a brief, unnatural boom in the abalone population due to humans almost wiping out their natural predator: sea otters. Now the sea otter population is recovering and they take many of the abalone. Withering syndrome also started impacting abalone populations around the same time as the sea otters. It's still a problem. https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Laboratories/Shellfish-Health/Abalone-Diseases https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Laboratories/Shellfish-... More recently, sea star wasting syndrome has killed off the predators that kept sea urchins in check. Sunflower sea stars are now locally extinct. Those urchins eat the same kelp as abalone and have out competed them along most of the California coast. https://marine.ucsc.edu/data-products/sea-star-wasting/index.html https://marine.ucsc.edu/data-products/sea-star-wasting/index...
- insane_dreamer 4y ago> For years, the salmon fishing industry has been locked in a political struggle in the legislature and the courts over how much water is being allocated to Central Valley farmers. An estimated 80 percent of the state's water goes to agriculture, leaving cities and fisheries to fight over what's left. This is the core issue. With droughts tending to increase rather than decrease, CA probably needs to reevaluate its commitment to supporting its (very large) agribusinesses.
- bradleyjg 4y agoCA needs to rethink its water law. Parts of the agribusiness industry are at least providing decent bang for the gallon. But the fact that there are fields of low value alfalfa being watered tells you the incentives are all screwed up.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoIsn’t it almonds, too?
- coryrc 4y agoThe water deficit could completely be taken out of alfalfa for the next decade of predicted drought. Literally nothing needs to change except stop growing a low value crop. Charging for water would have the same effect.
- bradleyjg 4y agoAlmonds use a lot of water but they are also quite valuable. Maybe we get there eventually, but to start we just need to make enough of a price signal come through that the really low value + high water usage stuff stops.
- Teever 4y ago[flagged]
- myshpa 4y agoIt's not just the draughts. https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts "Species like thresher, bull and hammerhead sharks have lost up to 80-99% of their populations in the last two decades. Seabird populations have declined by 70% since the 1950's. Studies estimate that up to 40% of all marine life caught is thrown overboard as bycatch. Six out of seven species of sea turtles are either threatened or endangered due to fishing. Over 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises are killed as bycatch every year. 2.7 trillion fish are caught every year, or up to 5 million caught every minute. Fish populations are in decline to near extinction.
- bradleyjg 4y agoStudies estimate that up to 40% of all marine life caught is thrown overboard as bycatch. This is a fairly important part. It’s one thing to fish and eat. It’s another thing to fish and destroy. Trawling is the strip mining of the sea.
- jandrewrogers 4y agoIn the US, you are required to discard bycatch under penalty of law. As a professional fisherman you aren't even allowed to eat it. They don't want to discard it, they are required to. The regulation nominally exists to disincentivize bycatch but anecdotally it seems to just ensure that bycatch becomes waste.
- XorNot 4y agoIf you're allowed to keep bycatch, then the incentive to reduce it is suddenly gone - easier to just find a way to accidentally also make money off it.
- pvaldes 4y ago> it seems to just ensure that bycatch becomes waste. Not exactly. Bycatch becomes energy diverted towards the scavengers part of the trophic chain. They are feeding other animals with it.
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- itissid 4y agoThis should not come as a surprise to anyone following all kinds of dystopic salmon gymnastics the govt has been doing to get salmon to our sushi bars.[1][2] [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/773/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/773/transcript [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9qA8c-E_oA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9qA8c-E_oA
- EngManagerIsMe 4y agoHonestly, good. Our commercial fishing operations have really, really depleted stocks and we need more than a couple years to let them build back up. It's one thing if you are out line fishing and throw back the live fish who are caught on your line you don't want. But net fishing and just destroying a huge percentage of whats in your net because it's not what you wanted is absolutely outrageous.
- belorn 4y agoHere in Sweden we have major issues with hydroelectric power preventing salmons from reaching their spawning areas. Some rivers have limited or event stopped fishing because there just aren't enough that survive the trip past the power stations (that assuming there is a path past them for the fish to use). Is there similar issues in California?
- 8bitsrule 4y agobelorn, this has long been a big problem in all of the US west. This article starts with a good, quick history of that problem. https://pcffa.org/dams-and-salmon/ https://pcffa.org/dams-and-salmon/ Here's another about the problem with Columbia River (Washington) dams. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/09/salmon-future-us-dams https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/09/salmon-f...
- stevenwoo 4y agoYes, it's been on the brink for a while with both hydroelectric and flood control dams and usage for agricultural irrigation of deserts reducing water flow. Many of the California Chinook salmon mentioned spawn on the Sacramento River.
- kposehn 4y agoUnfortunately yes, and even more so in Oregon/Washington. We need hydro power, but most all of the dams are on important watersheds.
- hinkley 4y agoNorthern California and Oregon have removed some dams because of this problems, but there are particular fish for whom it's still a big problem. As you can imagine with a fish that returns to the same streams, and a large river system, you can have some tributaries that are fully accessible, some that are slightly accessible, and some that aren't accessible at all.
- esel2k 4y agoWe have a similar issue here in Switzerland (a river that ends in the ocean in northern Germany) were salmon disappeared 50years ago. Too many gates, hydroelectric plants etc. Apparently they saw the first salmon coming back after 50 years: https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/fish-story-first-salmon-caught-in-basel-in-50-years-a-583127.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/fish-story-fi... As a child I heard that story about bringing the salmons back. That it took 50 years and not yet a success is somehow very disappointing and I wonder if other countries will afford such ling-term restoration projects.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoeveryone who is capable (there are a lot of us!) can we please just eat a little less of this stuff? I’m not asking for much, like a tiny tiny bit less, if you can. Just like one time consciously skip it and cackle “haha i’ll get you next time ocean” if it helps! this is not going well
- YellOh 4y agoI'll be the annoying one and say we could also eat a lot less. Eating fish is not a requirement
- steponlego 4y agoI'm more concerned about your soybeans from Brazil eliminating the rain forests. No. Not until you cut back on your soybean and pea based plant based products, which are doing much more damage. Sorry.
- deanCommie 4y agoAs with all such things, the question isn't always "can we reduce consumption" but "can we improve efficiency" I don't know the right answer, but hypothetically if 50% of fishing is waste, then reducing demand/consumption by 5% won't be as impactful as reducing waste by 20%. And unlike the massive amount of consumers who all have to make different individual choices to achieve that, efficiencies in industries is likely to be centralized in a few big players.
- mbgerring 4y agoWe need to start paying people to work full time on ecosystem restoration.
- steponlego 4y agoI find farm raised salmon to be much much higher quality than the wild caught stuff. I think it's mainly down to the farm raised fish being killed and cleaned and put on ice all within about an hour, compared to up to a week in the gillnet, then another couple days in a slimy grody hold, then another day or two to unload at port, and another day or two to clean before it even gets packaged and shipped.
- tap-snap-or-nap 4y agoHumans cannot co-exist with nature, we have failed to leave any part we touched unspoilt, undisturbed, unpoisoned whether be it intentionally or not. Exclusive large critical non-human zones should be immediately established if we are actually serious about conservation.
- daveyjonezz 4y agoAt this point it seems to me like the best thing a Bezos-type could do is purchase massive plots of land and put ownership in some sort of permanent non-transferable non-development trust. Or buy land adjacent to National Parks and roll them in to the existing park. You get the idea.
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- andsoitis 4y agoIs the solution to ban catching wild fish, and instead only allow farming? That's what we do on land, for the most part, to get meat, isn't it?