‘A healthy ocean means a healthy fleet’: salmon, crab, kelp, and climate the focus of annual fisheries forum
Dispatches on the state of California’s fisheries this year have brought “a mix of some glimmers of better news, while still struggling with difficult issues,” California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Director Chuck Bonham summarized at the 49th Annual Zeke Grader Fisheries Forum on Wednesday afternoon. … Bonham said the 2021-2022 Coho salmon escapement — a metric used to determine the size and health of salmon stock — in our North Coast streams was about 20% higher than the long term average, making it the second highest year for salmon stock in the last two decades. But in the Central Valley, the 2022 fall run recreational Chinook harvest was about 50% less than last year’s, Bonham reported.