Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Commercial salmon fishing got off to a slow start in May due to windy weather and has stayed in a slump that local fishermen are blaming on unusually warm ocean water in one of the worst king salmon seasons in memory.
Some Bodega Bay-based anglers gave up rather than scramble for meager catches of underweight and undersized salmon, despite the relatively high dockside prices of $5 to $8 a pound.
Seafood distributors, meanwhile, are bringing in fresh, wild salmon from Fort Bragg and the Klamath River region in California to as far north as Alaska and Canada. “There’s always some fish around,” said Michael Lucas of North Coast Fisheries, a Santa Rosa wholesaler.
On Monday, local stores had salmon on ice for $16 to $20 a pound.But for local fishermen, the season is a bust, with the catch through August at 30 percent of last year’s harvest and equally shy of the forecast for the current season.
“It’s just not worth it,” said Chris Lawson, a 40-year fishing veteran, who said he quit going out for salmon in mid-July and is now awaiting the start of Dungeness crab season this fall.
Many cited the abnormally warm ocean water, running as high as 60 degrees this year compared with the low 50s that salmon prefer. Lawson called it “one of the worst seasons ever.”
John Largier, an oceanographer at the Bodega Marine Laboratory, said the ocean has run “anomalously warm” since the end of June, a trend he attributed not to the developing El Niño but to a “warm blob” of water that has persisted in the eastern Pacific Ocean for the last two to three years. It is likely related to the same atmospheric conditions that account for California’s four-year drought, Largier said.
The warm water likely diminished the food supply for salmon, a voracious predator that feeds on krill, sardines, squid, herring, rockfish — almost anything small enough to be ingested. Warm water cuts down the quantity and quality of the salmon food supply, resulting in a diet that Jennifer Simon, a state Department of Fish and Wildlife environmental scientist, described as “eating celery.”
Read more at: Meager salmon catch one of worst seasons for | The Press Democrat