Farmers can estimate the size of a harvest months in advance by counting the blossoms on their trees. Similarly, salmon fishers can cast an eye into the future by counting spawning fish in a river. Fishery managers are doing that now in the Sacramento River and its tributaries, and what they’re seeing could be a bad sign for next year.

The low count of returning adult salmon, made by the federally operated Coleman National Fish Hatchery, is preliminary, with several weeks left in the natural spawning period for the Sacramento Valley’s fall-run Chinook, backbone of the state’s salmon fishing economy.

There is even some possible good news in the numbers — a large percentage of immature Chinook, called “jacks.” This demographic slice of the salmon population can be a predictive indicator of ocean abundance for the coming season, and it could be a sign there are more fish in the ocean than many expected — though officials say it’s too early to say.

Overall, the unwelcome numbers, mirroring similar figures from last year, are alarming to people who fish, for they portend the possible continuation of the two-year-and-counting statewide ban on salmon fishing, imposed in 2023 following a weak spawning season.

Already, the loss of revenue from the fishery shutdown has devastated the coastal fishing fleet, which is still waiting for $20 million in federal funds allocated for disaster relief early this year.

R.J. Waldron, who took recreational anglers salmon fishing on his Emeryville charter boat Sundance for more than a decade, recently sold his vessel. The reduced income was too skimpy to pay the overhead costs of owning a boat and renting a slip. He said relief funds, had they been portioned out, would have kept him afloat.

“That would have helped me maintain my boat and basically ride the storm out until we get salmon fishing back — if we get salmon fishing back,” he said.

Sarah Bates, owner of the San Francisco-based commercial vessel The Bounty, said she drew about 90% of her income from Chinook salmon sales prior to the closure and has helped make ends meet by fishing for other species, like black cod, shrimp and rockfish. Others, she said, have been targeting halibut.

Bates said the uncertain outlook has been disorienting for the men and women who shape their lives around a calendar year of fishing seasons and regulations.

“A lot of us feel a little untethered,” she said.

At least six more months may pass before financial relief arrives. Barry Thom, executive director of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission — which has helped facilitate the grant application process — said in an email that the federal funds could be distributed sometime in May and June of 2025.

The odds of whether fishers will be returning to work by then still looks like a tossup. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Brett Galyean, project leader at the Coleman hatchery, described “really low” numbers of 3- and 4-year-old adult Chinook. As of Oct. 29, his staff had collected 4 million eggs from female fish — less than one-third the hatchery’s target of 14 to 15 million eggs.

The spawning run is drawing toward the end, too, with new arrivals at the hatchery now “slowing down,” according to Galyean.

At several other Central Valley hatcheries operated by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, facility managers have only just started counting salmon, an official said. This means overall numbers could still mount to promising levels.

The low returns to Coleman, the state’s largest fish hatchery, reflect a long-term decline in Chinook salmon numbers regionwide. As many as 2 million adult Chinook historically spawned in the Central Valley’s rivers, and the fish were a keystone feature of marine and inland ecosystems.

“If you kill all the baby salmon, three years later you don’t have adult salmon.”
— Barry Nelson, policy representative, Golden State Salmon Association

The industrialization of the landscape to produce gold, water, cities, and crops has sent salmon runs tumbling. While the Central Valley’s fish hatcheries — built last century to augment the wild stocks — release millions of baby Chinook each year, populations have dropped below fishable levels.

In 2022 officials counted just 69,000 adult fall-run Chinook in the entire Sacramento Valley, with a moderate improvement last year. In the mainstem of the Sacramento River alone, a key spawning destination, annual returns have dropped below 4,000 adults — down from an average of almost 60,000 each year from 1990 to 2009.

What ails California’s salmon is perennially debated. Water users lean on explanations such as invasive species, reduced floodplain habitat, and climate change. Fishery advocates often stress the importance of water, especially quantity and temperature.

Bates said the Central Valley needs more aggressive floodplain restoration to provide feeding and refuge habitat for small fish, but that sufficient water is the key.

“It’s the water — there’s no way around it,” Bates said. “The water conditions in the Sacramento River and the Delta no longer support juvenile salmon migrating downstream.”

Sometimes, the outflow from Lake Shasta and into the Sacramento River during the spawning season is just a few degrees too warm — conditions that can abort millions of eggs and newly born fish and has become a recurring problem in recent years. Hot weather has played a role, though environmentalists say negligent management of the reservoir — especially failure to keep its water sufficiently deep into the late summer — is just as problematic.

As the young salmon migrate downstream, they face such perils as low flows, high temperatures, water pumps and predators. Thiamine deficiency, a relatively new and emerging ecological hiccup connected to the marine food web, has also impacted Chinook salmon. Climate change is a long-term threat.

Barry Nelson, policy representative for the Golden State Salmon Association, believes the main reason for the Sacramento’s salmon collapse has been inadequate river conditions downstream of Shasta, and low smolt survival.

“We sterilized the Sacramento River,” he said. “We killed almost all the fish, and rule number one in fisheries management is, if you kill all the baby salmon, three years later you don’t have adult salmon.”

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