A ruling from a federal magistrate judge in Seattle that could potentially halt the commercial harvest of winter and summer Southeast Alaska Chinook salmon is getting kudos from the Wild Fish Conservancy, but the Alaska Trollers Association says the fight is far from over.
The ruling handed down by U.S. Magistrate Michelle L. Peterson on Dec. 13 now heads to Judge Richard Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle.
Defendants in the case, including the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA), based in Sitka, have until Jan. 10 to file objections to the magistrate’s report, and their comments will be sent to Jones for consideration as he decides whether to issue a court order to halt the commercial Chinook salmon troller fisheries for winter and summer.
Matt Donahoe, president of ATA, said that eventually the litigation could go to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and on to the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the Chinook salmon technical committee within the Pacific Salmon Commission, all fisheries gear groups in Southeast Alaska combined catch less than half of 1% of Puget Sound kings, Donahoe said. Spokespersons for NOAA Fisheries, responding to a query from Judge Peterson, said that if the court shut down the winter and summer commercial Chinook salmon troll fisheries it would do nothing to increase the number of Chinook salmon available for Southern Residence orca whales, for whom Chinook salmon are a major food source, Donahoe said.
The Wild Fish Conservancy in Seattle meanwhile is hailing the magistrate’s decision as a landmark opinion “that recommends terminating unsustainable commercial salmon harvest that has persisted for decades until new environmental review of those fisheries occur.” Wild Fish Conservancy also noted that Peterson found the federal government’s biological opinion should be remanded back to NOAA for the agency to address violations of environmental law.
The issues center around the need of Southern Resident orca whales for more Chinook salmon than are currently available. According to Washington state’s Center for Whale Research, a Southern Resident orca can eat 385 pounds of Chinook salmon a day if available. Based on estimates, the average Southern Resident orca must consumer 18-25 adult salmon a day to meet its energy requirements.
“The benefits to wild Chinook and Southern Resident recovery from the court’s action cannot be overstated” said Emma Helverson, executive director of Wild Fish Conservancy, in a statement released on Dec. 16. Helverson said the decision, if adopted by the federal court, would also recover and restore the larger and more diverse life histories of wild Chinook salmon. “I want to emphasize that Alaskan fisheries are not to blame for NOAA’s chronic mismanagement of this fishery, and we are sympathetic to the burden this decision may pose on Southeast Alaskan communities,” she said.
Wild Fish Conservancy’s statement makes no mention of challenges currently faced by Chinook salmon on the West Coast, ranging from warming and acidification of ocean waters and dams blocking salmon’s return to natal streams to spawn, to hatchery salmon competing with wild salmon for ocean foods.
The level of PCBs in the milk of nursing whales may also be a contributing factor in the survival of their calves, along with the decline in Chinook salmon. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are highly carcinogenic chemical compounds formerly used in industrial and consumer products, whose production was banned in the United States under the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1979 and internationally by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001, but the compounds are still widely in use.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife and California Department of Water Resources this past week announced plans to boost production of fall run Chinook salmon at Feather Run Fish Hatchery in Oroville, California to 9.5 million fish to combat the impact of drought and a thiamine deficiency affecting natural spawning and in-river production.
Researchers studying the competition for ocean nutrition by wild and hatchery salmon have confirmed that hatchery salmon released into the ocean at the same age as wild salmon are larger at that age and better able to compete for food. The North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission is supposed to be dealing with issues regarding the impact of hatchery fish on wild stocks. Its membership includes Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the United States. The U.S. and Japan are two of the world’s biggest producers of hatchery fish.
