Empty-Net Syndrome

Sheila Bowman of Seafood Watch, an environmental advocacy group, says consumers can seek out cheaper and more abundant species of wild-caught salmon such as sockeye, pink and chum, which have been canned or ground for salmon burger in years past. They're now finding their way onto more restaurant menus. "Don't pay higher prices for chinook," Bowman says. "Stretch your palate."

More than 90 percent of the continent's wild salmon is harvested off Alaska, where boats caught 137 million salmon last year. Of that number, however, just half a million were prized chinook. Pink salmon, the smallest of the five species of Pacific salmon, constitute the largest portion of the catch—with about 66 million pinks expected to be harvested this year. Sockeye is next, with an expected catch this year of 47 million fish. Alaska's salmon stocks have remained relatively high because its rivers have avoided the environmental destruction of the major salmon rivers in the Northwest—the Sacramento, Columbia and Klamath. "Alaska's salmon fishery is managed for sustainability," says Laura Fleming, spokeswoman for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

That's no consolation for the thousands of fishermen, charter-boat captains, bait-and-tackle-shop owners and others who rely on salmon for their jobs in California, where the economic hit is expected to be $255 million. California and Oregon have asked for federal disaster relief. Tourists who charter salmon fishing boats off the northern California coast are also out of luck this year.

Dawson would normally be busy this month shipping California chinook, which in some years constitutes a third of his business. But this year he has nothing to send: "My buyers all have a tear in their eye." Another problem is rising fuel costs. Dawson is currently shipping a limited amount of Alaska salmon, and getting hit with a new fuel surcharge every week.

Dawson says the crash of California's prized chinook salmon seemed impossible when he was growing up on California's American River, where he witnessed large migrations of spawning salmon. During the 1970s he would see 350 salmon boats heading out of port, but "now there aren't that many boats in the entire California coastal fleet," he says. Everyone is praying that "California kings" (so named because their taste, size and commercial value made them one of the Pacific's most prized commodities) will bounce back. Until then, Dawson says, "this fish is going to be missed by a lot of people."

© 2008