The U.S. Department of Commerce has determined that fishery disasters affected multiple California salmon runs, including the 2024 Sacramento River fall Chinook salmon fishery and the 2024 Klamath River fall Chinook salmon fishery.
The official determinations open up those fisheries to federal financial relief, which will be allocated to the state and Tribal governments to distribute to affected fishers and businesses.
California’s struggling commercial and recreational salmon fisheries have been closed since 2023 in a move regulators hope will allow populations to recover.
“A host of factors have pushed these iconic and important fisheries to the point of collapse, including prolonged and historic drought, severe wildfires, impacts to spawning and rearing habitat, harmful algal blooms, and ocean forage shifts and associated thiamine deficiency,” California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis stated in her request for a fishery disaster determination. “Extreme climate disruption is compounding these factors and is now testing the resiliency of our salmon.”
With California fishers unable to harvest salmon, the state is seeking USD 47 million (EUR 45.6 million) in financial relief – the equivalent of the five-year average of the state’s combined commercial and recreational salmon fisheries.
However, it’s not guaranteed that the state or Tribal governments will get the full amount of money they’ve requested. In 2024, California officials were frustrated to receive just USD 20.6 million (EUR 20 million) from NOAA Fisheries after requesting USD 35.3 million (EUR 34.3 million).
NOAA Fisheries has also approved a fishery disaster determination for the 2023 Squaxin Island Tribe Puget Sound fall chum salmon fishery. According to the Tribe’s request, low chum salmon abundance in the Puget Sound in Washington resulted in constrained fisheries and closures. Squaxin Island Tribe Chair Kristopher Peters claimed the chum fisheries the Tribe depends on suffered a nearly 100 percent loss.
“The chum salmon fisheries are of utmost importance to our Squaxin Island Tribal community, as they have been for generations,” Peters noted in his request to the Department of Commerce. “The low returns of chum impacted our entire tribe. We are fishing people; it is central to our culture and way of life, as well as our economy.”
