A tragic reminder of the dislocation being caused by the closure of the salmon fishery, as well as another reminder of the difficulty people have adjusting to changing economic circumstances and the change in patterns long held.
A key impact factor here is the continuing domestication of animals humans form relations with, whether for food source, recreation and sport, or for personal companionship; and the continued development of hatcheries as well as the broadening of farmed salmon point to that impact.
Mendocino coast rocked by closure of salmon fishing
By M.S. Enkoji - menkoji@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, April 20, 2008
FORT BRAGG – Salmon is king here along the Mendocino coast, but the monarch has been dethroned, leaving all the king's men and women in this hard-toiling town fearing for their livelihoods in a way they never have before.
"As of now, I'm broke," says Randy Thornton in the cabin of his 50-foot boat, his face coppered by sun and wind. Overhead, salmon rods with brightly colored lures are racked, idled for the year.
Thornton's charter-fishing business has been killed by an unprecedented yearlong ban on salmon fishing – both commercial and sport.
"My dilemma is I have a boat and I have to make a living," says Thornton, 46 and father of two.
After 10 years of payments, he finally paid off the boat last year. This might have been the year he and his wife would buy a house, he says.
But last week, state Department of Fish and Game officials voted to ban salmon fishing in state waters, which extend out three miles from shore. Five days before, the Pacific Fishery Management Council had banned salmon fishing in the 200-mile-wide swath of federal waters off California and Oregon.
Federal and state biologists believe closing the season for virtually all the West Coast before it even revs up is the only way to boost the number of chinook salmon returning from ocean waters to spawn in the Sacramento River this fall.
Last year was the second-lowest spawning season on record along the Sacramento River and its tributaries. Just 90,000 chinook returned from the sea to complete their life cycle in the freshwater – a 90 percent drop from five years earlier…
The Harvest Market, which almost overlooks Noyo Harbor, once filled its iced seafood cases with the catch from the harbor down below. A slab of salmon in the case last week was wild, but from Alaska.
Out of solidarity for those who once supplied the store, the market won't resort to farmed salmon, says seafood manager Ken Armstrong.
"How do you bring in farmed fish and say to the fishermen, 'We don't care about you?'" he says.
