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Tied up: The salmon season is over before it began
Restaurants and food retailers, including the Menlo Park's farmers' market, will be the poorer for it.

by Dave Boyce

At the entrance to the Half Moon Bay harbor, a sound buoy bobs in the waves. Every nine seconds, it wails in the mournful way that buoys do to remind fishermen and other mariners of where they are on the trackless sea.

Now the mournful tones seem fitting in light of the recent turn of events for salmon fishermen and the communities that depend on their enterprise. At least until next April, Chinook salmon won't be part of the catch, and it will be rare at restaurants and fish retailers, including the Menlo Park Farmers' Market. If you do find it, it will probably be from Alaska and you will pay dearly for it.

Due to dramatically low numbers of two-year-old "jack" Chinook salmon returning to their spawning streams in the Sacramento River system, federal and state regulators recently canceled the commercial and recreational salmon fishing season along the California and Oregon coasts. (The state Fish & Game Department rules on salmon fishing in rivers on May 9.)

The season usually begins May 1 and lasts through September. This year, about 55,000 adult salmon are expected to pass through the Golden Gate and on into the Sacramento River watershed. A migration of 122,000 to 180,000 is typical, said Chuck Tracy, a staff officer at the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a group of 14 appointed representatives from Oregon, Washington, California and Idaho and based in Portland.

Other ocean food fish populations are lower, too, Mr. Tracy said, but he noted that the number of salmon heading into the Sacramento system is "far below" normal, an indication of problems in the fresh-water system.

"The pathway (for salmon) from the ocean is the most fragile because of all the obstacles," said Pietro Parravano, a fisherman and a popular regular selling Chinook salmon at the Menlo Park Farmers' Market. "A river system that was very productive has failed. ... I think this issue reflects the lack of understanding of how comprehensive salmon fishing management really is. You can't manage it just in the ocean."

The Almanac visited with Mr. Parravano at the Half Moon Bay harbor, where his fishing vessel, the Anne B., is berthed.

A former teacher

Mr. Parravano is a former resident of Portola Valley. He arrived as a high school junior in an academically oriented family and graduated from Woodside Priory School in 1967, he said. After he finished graduate school, he returned to Portola Valley and to the Priory in 1978 to teach earth sciences for three years.

His attraction to fishing evolved, he said, beginning with the purchase of a 19-foot Boston Whaler after a fellow Priory teacher took him out on the ocean for sport fishing. He later crewed on a crab boat out of Half Moon Bay and eventually, after spending a couple of years asking questions about commercial fishing, bought the Anne B. in Oregon in the mid-1980s.

The boat, which had been repossessed by the bank and wouldn't start, but all it needed were new batteries, he said. "It made me feel more connected to the boat, the fact that I got it running."

In the company of another boat, Mr. Parravano and his wife, Joan, a nurse, made a storm-interrupted trip down the coast to Half Moon Bay, where, he said, "I really felt welcomed."

He's been fishing ever since. Among his many achievements: Mr. Parravano is a past president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, an elected commissioner for the San Mateo County Harbor District, and a member of the Pew Oceans Commission along with former New York governor George Pataki and former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta.

Managing fish

A young salmon in a river or stream and heading to the ocean must negotiate many complications, including hatchery routines that are predictable to predators, farm fertilizers that change water chemistry, and large fish kills at pumps that send water to Southern California, not to mention dams, Mr. Parravano said.

The fisheries council in Portland considered "40 some reasons" for the salmon population problems in the Sacramento system, said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish & Game. "There are a lot of theories out there," he said in an interview. "The fact is we don't know. It's going to basically take more study."

"There are no smoking guns," said Mr. Tracy of the fisheries council, but he added that it's likely that the Chinook's problems lie in traveling from stream to ocean.

(Unlike the Columbia River in Washington, a salmon's path back to its home stream in the Sacramento River system usually does not involve a dam, Mr. Tracy said. Northern California dams tend not to have fish ladders, so hatchlings are released only in streams in which the path to the ocean is not interrupted by a dam, he said.)

If the salmon's problem is in the fresh water, that is the state's bailiwick. Mr. Martarano of Fish & Game said his agency is engaged in various ways, including looking into better water pumping strategies as well as hatchery routines that are less predictable to predators.

Citing the decreased salmon run, a federal judge on April 16 faulted federal water regulators for failing to adequately address the impact of pumping fresh water out of the Sacramento River delta.

Sustaining communities

Governors in California, Oregon and Washington have declared states of emergency and are seeking millions in state and federal dollars to help the fisheries and the fishing industry.

With their boats rigged for salmon, what will the commercial fishermen in Half Moon Bay do? Re-rig for Dungeness crab, said Jim Anderson, who fishes for salmon and crab out of Half Moon Bay. He also chairs the California Salmon Council. Other viable species include rock and black cod, albacore tuna, halibut and squid, he said.

Crab season ends June 30 and restarts in mid-November. Crab is one species that yields a decent return with diesel fuel over $4 a gallon, Mr. Anderson said.

But there is competition from large-scale enterprises, he said. Legislation to make crab fishing more equitable for independent fishermen, as exists in Washington and Oregon, has not made it past the governor's desk in California, Mr. Anderson said.

"We have a lot of people trying to survive with crab," he added. "It just divides the pie up into smaller pieces."

Economic hardship will be spreading to other parts of the larger community, including boat builders, bait and tackle retailers, restaurants, recreational fishing outfits, hotels and motels, Mr. Parravano said.

There have been interruptions in previous salmon seasons, but they've been scattered, he said. Not this time. "It's going to show that it takes a community to sustain fisheries," he said.

He looked up from a bench in front of the harbor master's office at a silent scene of idle boats with their upright poles. "This would normally be alive," he said. "You would hear saws buzzing. It's a whole different scene now."

Fishing in San Mateo County is part of a network of food resources that the county can lay claim to in any discussion of becoming self-sustaining. Some are already talking about this larger picture.

San Mateo County is one of five California counties, and the only Bay Area county, that belongs to the Ag Futures Alliance, based in Sebastopol. Of the 27 San Mateo County members listed at the Web site, one is Ladera resident and Committee for Green Foothills member Lennie Roberts. The county health officer and agriculture commissioner also belong, as does Mr. Parravano.

The alliance's goals include explaining to the public the role of agriculture in a sustainable society, preserving viable agriculture in "urban fringe zones," looking after the health and quality of life for the people who work the land and the sea, and showing how communities can work together on complex social challenges.