A non-candidate, and very short, diary here. Much more, I fear, would detract from the inherently mournful wow factor. From the NYT:
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.
* Poof * And they are gone.
So what happened to them? No one knows anything.
So what happened? As Dave Bitts, a fisherman based in Eureka in Northern California, sees it, the variables are simple. "To survive, there are two things a salmon needs," he said. "To eat. And not to be eaten."
Fragmentary evidence about salmon mortality in the Sacramento River in recent years, as well as more robust but still inconclusive data about ocean conditions in 2005, indicates that the fall Chinook smolts, or baby fish, of 2005 may have lost out on both counts. But biologists, fishermen and fishery managers all emphasize that no one yet knows anything for sure.
One oceanographer with NOAA speculates that unusual patterns affecting ocean currents:
After studying changes in the once-predictable pattern of the Northern Pacific climate, Mr. Petersen found that in 2005 the currents that rise from the deeper ocean, bringing with them nutrients like phytoplankton and krill, were out of sync. "Upwelling usually starts in April and goes until September," he said. "In 2005, it didn’t start until July."
Mr. Petersen’s hypothesis about the salmon is that "the fish that went to sea in 2005 died a few weeks after getting to the ocean" because there was nothing to eat. A couple of years earlier, when the oceans were in a cold-weather cycle, the opposite happened — the upwelling was very rich. The smolts of that year were later part of the largest run of fall Chinook ever recorded.
Bottom line is, however, that no one knows anything.
Will jobs and communities be affected? You betchya.
Federal officials have indicated that they are likely to close the Pacific salmon fishery from northern Oregon to the Mexican border because of the collapse of crucial stocks in California’s major watershed.
That would be the most extensive closing on the West Coast since the federal government started regulating fisheries.
"By far the biggest," said Dave Bitts, a commercial fisherman from Eureka, Calif., who is at a weeklong meeting of the Pacific Coast Fisheries Management Council in Sacramento.
Read it all. And weep. For some species, the global warming clock is ticking. For others, the clock hand has reached midnight.