Empty-Net Syndrome

Bill Dawson, the owner of San Francisco's Seafood Suppliers, has been in the salmon business for 35 years. Dawson has seen California's salmon harvest rise and fall, but this year's crash is unprecedented in his lifetime. "The salmon," he says, "have gone off a cliff. It's disastrous."

For the first time, federal and state fisheries officials have closed the season in California and in most of Oregon. The reason: only 90,000 fish returned last fall to the Sacramento River chinook run, down 90 percent from just a few years ago. Experts blame the plunging numbers on water diversions for agriculture and communities (in some years more than half the Sacramento's water is siphoned off), pollution, dams that have cut off salmon from their upstream spawning grounds and unfavorable ocean conditions that diminished food sources in the Pacific.

The near shutdown of the Northwestern harvest is bad news for the region's economy but also for seafood lovers nationwide. Wild-caught Pacific chinook—considered the filet mignon of salmon due to its rich flesh loaded with heart-healthy fats—will be in short supply this summer.

"The connoisseur is going to have to pay for this premium product," says wholesaler Edward Taylor of New York City's Down East Seafood, which sells to high-end restaurants. Prices in fish markets could top $30 a pound, he says. "By the time you fly it here, you could be talking about a $40 piece of fish once you plate it in a restaurant."

The price of wild-caught salmon has risen for five years because of growing demand, as well as diminishing supply. Consumers can look forward to the arrival of Alaskan chinook (also sold as king salmon) in markets this summer. Meanwhile, watch out for farm-raised salmon being passed off as wild this spring. "Make sure to ask if it's wild-caught," says fishmonger Michael Lucas of North Coast Fisheries in Santa Rosa, Calif.

For foodies, wild-caught is to farmed fish what free-range grass-fed beef is to feedlot cattle: a product superior in taste and environmental footprint. Even so, most of the salmon Americans eat (more than a pound per capita annually) is farm-raised. Wild salmon prices tanked when a boom in farm-raised salmon a decade ago flooded the market with cheap fish. Since then, marketing groups have worked hard to educate consumers about wild salmon. The shutdown of California's chinook fishery will be a big setback, says David Goldenberg of the California Salmon Council.