The following is a press release from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:
On April 6, 2023, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) acted unanimously to recommend a full closure of California’s 2023 commercial and recreational ocean salmon seasons due to extremely low population estimates for Sacramento and Klamath river fall Chinook salmon. Within hours of the recommendation, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his administration’s request for a federal fishery disaster declaration to support impacted communities.
The U. S. Secretary of Commerce approved this request on Oct. 30, 2023, which began the process of providing federal assistance to communities and businesses impacted by the disaster. On Feb. 15, 2024, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) was notified that $20,625,729 had been allocated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to respond to the disaster. Following the announcement of fund allocation, and with support and input from industry representatives, CDFW developed the draft 2023 Salmon Disaster Spend Plan to distribute these disaster funds.
CDFW invites the public to submit comments on the draft 2023 Salmon Disaster Spend Plan. CDFW is asking for input on the proposed allocations of relief funding to fishing sectors, qualifying criteria, individual payouts and other components of the plan. Following the comment period, CDFW will finalize the plan for submission to the Department of Commerce. Comments may be provided via email through 5 p.m., April 19, 2024, at SalmonDisaster@wildlife.ca.gov.
Looking ahead to the 2024 season, the PFMC will consider the alternatives for the 2024 salmon seasons at its meeting April 5-11 in Seattle. This meeting is open to the public. Although returns of Sacramento River fall Chinook salmon are higher than last year, they are still well below historic averages. The Newsom Administration stands ready to seek additional federal fishery disaster assistance should California’s iconic salmon fisheries and fishing communities continue to be impacted into 2024.
More information about federal fishery disaster relief and ocean salmon fishing seasons is available on the CDFW website. More information about the PFMC and the public meeting on April 5-11 in Seattle is available on the PFMC website.
This money should be allocated for fish hatcheries. Maybe we can get the Russians and the Chinese to quit draining the seas off of California.
Oh honey. We are ALL to blame.
The fish hatcheries are funded through other sources.
Hatcheries are a band aid, not a solution, and they invite very serious problems for which we have few, if any solutions.
This disaster funding is meant to help offset the loses of the fishers, other businesses, and jobs directly affected by closure of the fishery.
Soon, there will be more fish bureaucrats than salmon. And they will all be paid.
Yeah, seems quite convoluted.
How much money has to be spent to figure out how to reasonably and fairly allocate ~$20M to known players?
These people needed the relief funds starting in May of 2023 when the season started.
Will they get it before end of 2024?
Not sounding like it.
Wtf?
Fishers are often paid at the dock or within a week of offloading their catch.
Many of them are 2-4 people, in contract partnership (no unemployment insurance), on a towable boat setup for longline fishing and can’t carry more than a ton or so of catch, if that.
Nothing will go to fishermen. Nothing. Eniros, bureaucrats and grant writers will get most of it.
Your biased and presumptive confusion has returned, Michael.
As has a pseudonymous sap hiding behind an ignorant mask.
Inspite of this report the governor continues with his plan to build tunnels to divert more water south of the Tracy pumps. Since the pumps began extra pumping in 1999 it has increased each year. Ironically the # of salmon started decreasing as the pumps more water south.
Now the governor wants to spend billions building a tunnel system to send more water south. The tunnel will solve nothing as it will not produce one extra drop of water but will destroy the Delta and the salmon.
Was this caused by the Klamath river dam being removed? That became an ecological disaster. That no one seems to be talking about.
No.
The 2023 CA Salmon Fishery closure was based on assessment of the previous 3-5 years of returning salmon #s.
All happened before the first excavator chinked Copco 2.
Though it does sound like some mistakes were made with the water releases, a great deal of what’s currently happening on the Klamath has not only long been expected by NOAA, NMFS, NPS, USFS, BLM, CDFW, ODFW, etc., but unavoidable with the scale limits of human capability and technology.
So I just read the bad news on the Fishing The North Coast With Kenny Priest Website that the pacific fishery management council yet again officially pulled the plug on the California sport and commercial ocean salmon season for 2024 in order to protect the Klamath and Sacramento River returns.The confusing part to me is that according to Andy Martin from Brookings the ocean salmon season out of the port of Brookings Oregon will be open from May 16th through August 31st.Having personally recreationally fished for ocean Kings out of the port of Brookings for a number of seasons and even on occassion provided scale samples to ODFW it’s common knowledge that a great deal of the chinooks both wild and hatchery caught and harvested in southern Oregon are from the Klamath and Trinity rivers as well as the Sacramento and American river systems.It goes without saying that the fish are going to get pounded on up there by the Californians in addition to the Oregonians.