Thread: Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace

Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace



Tim Calvert, a fisherman, in San Francisco. The scarcity of Chinook salmon may keep the Pacific fishery closed for the season.

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: March 17, 2008

SACRAMENTO — Where did they go?



The Chinook journey up and down the Sacramento River.




The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations — and coming up dry.

Whatever the cause, there was widespread agreement among those attending a five-day meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council here last week that the regional $150 million fishery, which usually opens for the four-month season on May 1, is almost certain to remain closed this year from northern Oregon to the Mexican border. A final decision on salmon fishing in the area is expected next month.

As a result, Chinook, or king salmon, the most prized species of Pacific wild salmon, will be hard to come by until the Alaskan season opens in July. Even then, wild Chinook are likely to be very expensive in markets and restaurants nationwide.

“It’s unprecedented that this fishery is in this kind of shape,â€

Eph 5:18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;

I know this might seem out of context, and it might be, but I think what the Bible was talking about was to do all things in moderation, and this is what I think is happening to a lot of our natural resources, including the salmon.

Up here in Oregon, and Washington, salmon has always been a commodity, and being sold in great abundance in the stores. I am sure it is the same in Alaska and California, in the least, so we have to imagine a lot has gone to waste in the past.

It has seemed to me that in something as our wild salmon, there is a natural balance that can be tipped, and it may already have been.

We are a large nation, with a large taste for life and all it has to offer, but I think sometimes we have stopped thinking to do all things in moderation, as Biblically prescribed, as well, our own forefathers thought it was a good idea to only take what you really needed (Benjamin Franklin prescribed a certain way of eating for certain people and activity levels).