Will the salmon be back in 2009?

Climate change may help explain the historic collapse of the species. Yet ocean experts see signs that idle fishermen can fire up their boats again.

By Jacoba Charles

Read more: Environment, Science, Fish, Global Warming, Environment & Science, Jacoba Charles

AP Photo/Noah Berger

Fishing boats sit moored at Fisherman's Wharf on Feb. 1, 2008, in San Francisco.

Jan. 7, 2009 | SAN FRANCISCO -- As winter chills the rivers and streams of California and Oregon, a beleaguered batch of chinook salmon has finally finished its long trip home from the Pacific Ocean. In the gravel of gentle rapids and shaded pools, eggs laid by a decimated group of females are growing, starting the next generation of chinook on their turbulent journey to the ocean and back.

For their part, Pacific fishermen can only hope for the best. After all, it would be tough for things to get worse. In 2008, both commercial and sport fishing for the salmon was completely shut down along the coast from Southern California to northern Oregon for the first time in history.

"This was the first time that I sat around San Francisco and wasn't out there catching wild California king salmon," says Larry Collins, one of roughly 1,500 commercial fishermen forced to spend summer on dry land.

Collins and his fellow anglers blame debased rivers for the collapse of one of the country's prime salmon fisheries. An onslaught of dams and diversions that channel water to suburbs and subsidized crops has depleted fresh water for the fish. The Central Valley river system has historically produced one of the largest runs of chinook in the continental United States. Yet in 2008 roughly 90 percent fewer salmon returned to spawn than in 2004.

"The cities, farms and all the other users have over-drafted the river," says Collins. "Every time you take another acre-foot out of the delta, you put another nail in the coffin of the commercial fishermen of California."

For decades, fishermen and environmentalists have directed their ire at the degradation of rivers. But in the last year, marine biologists have focused on increasingly stressed oceans as the cause of the crash. Yet surprisingly, as 2009 dawns, salmon experts see signs that idle fishermen can start firing up their boats again in the coming year.

Bruce MacFarlane of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) Salmon Ecology Team in Santa Cruz explains that the historic 2008 crash begins with the fact "that ocean conditions weren't good when the salmon went to sea." Salmon need the right food in the right places to thrive to maturity in the ocean. Those needs weren't met for 2008's salmon run, whether the cause is global warming, as many scientists suggest, or simply the natural variability of the environment. And, of course, the rivers are still a major player. If the salmon population wasn't already in a weakened state, there would have been more survivors left to spawn the next generation.

"A natural period of poor ocean conditions hurts the salmon more than it did historically," says Peter Moyle, a fisheries biologist at the University of California Davis. "Under normal circumstances, you would have so many fish coming out that they could more or less overwhelm the poor ocean conditions."

Yet the common thread in the failure of the salmon seems to be the sea. Coho and chinook salmon from up and down the coast -- not just from one river or river system -- all declined. "When you start looking at what they have in common, it is that they share the same ocean at the same time," says MacFarlane.

The unfavorable conditions weren't in 2008 and 2007 when adult salmon failed to return from the sea -- but three years earlier, when the fish were only a few months old and the ocean's food chain fell apart.

"Salmon went to sea expecting the usual bountiful harvest, and they found a desert instead," says Bill Peterson, a NOAA fisheries biologist based at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center who has been studying the local oceans for 30 years. "I think they were dead within a couple of weeks."

A signal of distress came in 2005, says Bill Sydeman, chief scientist with the Farallon Institute. The Cassin's auklet, a seabird that feeds on the same prey that young salmon do, failed to produce a single chick on the ecologically vibrant Farallon Islands. Located nearly 30 miles off the coast of San Francisco, these rocky islands are a well-studied seabird sanctuary. Around the same time, fisherman also noticed the lack of krill -- a favorite food source for juvenile chinook, and an important part of the oceanic food chain.

"There were a couple of years when we saw hardly any krill at all," says veteran California fisherman Chuck Wise. "When there's a lot around you'll see big clouds of it on the surface. The water will almost be red and it will come up on your trolling wires."

The ocean is vastly changeable -- having ups and downs is par for the course. So what exactly went so terribly wrong in the last few years?

Next page: "The ocean looks in better condition now than I've seen in 25 years"