The historic change in the salmon environment that occurred by the building of human communities, and the dams in the spawning rivers that protect those human communities from flooding and provide them a stable source of water cannot—nor even if it could would it be desirable—be undone.
However, restoring the salmon population can be done and the proper use of hatcheries is how this author proposes to do it.
California hatcheries are seen here at the department of Fish & Game website.
Michael Keopf: Solution to salmon decline: Build more hatcheries
By Michael Keopf - Special to The Bee
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, April 19, 2008
When I was a boy growing up in Half Moon Bay, salmon boats would sail from the harbor and head out to sea long before sunrise. When the king salmon were running, hundreds of mast lights – like a tiny galaxy of stars – went out in the darkness to bring salmon to your table.
My father was a salmon fisherman, and in time I was too, as were my brothers. We all fished salmon to feed our families, for there was a time in California when wild king salmon were plentiful.
Now it's finished.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council has halted salmon fishing for commercial and sport fishermen off the coasts of California and Oregon. On Tuesday, the state Fish and Game Commission voted to ban fishing for salmon in state waters off the California coast. They cite diminished returns of spawning salmon in the Sacramento River.
Sadly, there are a few misguided visionaries who applaud this decision, effortlessly citing overfishing as the culprit. They see commercial fishermen as ravishers of the ocean. They see sports fishermen as recreational rednecks who should learn to eat tofu. It's a condescending viewpoint.
Salmon are sustainable. No fisherman would cut his own throat and fish himself out of business.
What has happened to our salmon? The answer is simple: King salmon have lost their bedrooms. There's no place for hanky-panky to spawn little fish.
We know the culprits: Mining in the 19th century washed away spawning grounds; pollution; real estate development; logging; the extraction of fresh water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that salmon require to get out to sea.
Sea lions are blamed, but sea lions and salmon have coexisted for eons. Then comes the big one – dams. There are 1,400 dams in the state of California. Many block salmon from returning home.
And, there's another reason, even bigger than dams: global warming, that convenient excuse that forestalls solutions. Some claim that global warming has robbed the ocean of the food salmon eat…
There is a solution despite our lack of state and federal leadership: hatcheries.
Currently, there is one federal hatchery in the state of California, built in 1906. The California Department of Fish and Game maintains a grand total of eight, most of them built in the 1950s and '60s. Hatcheries are the primary incubators of what's left of California's wild king salmon. That's nine hatcheries vs. 1,400 dams. Advantage cement.
How many hatcheries would $60 million or $90 million build? The Pacific Fishery Management Council spends roughly $3 million a year on salaries and expenses. They've been around for three decades "regulating" salmon back into existence.
Hatcheries are a low-tech solution. I oversimplify, but all that is needed is clean flowing water, egg and milt (sperm) collection with seasonal labor and holding ponds to raise the smolts (baby fish) before they're released to go wild in the sea. New hatcheries could be built not only on the waterways that drain the San Joaquin Valley, but also on coastal rivers that historically had large runs of king salmon.
