For Immediate Release: October 23, 2024
Contacts: Scott Artis, Golden State Salmon Association, 925-550-9208, scott@goldenstatesalmon.org
Upper Sacramento Fish Hatchery is a Salmon Ghost Town as Fall-Run Fish Returns are Alarmingly Low
AMERICAN CANYON, Calif. – The Coleman National Fish Hatchery is experiencing alarmingly low numbers of fall-run Chinook salmon returning to spawn so far this year. The hatchery, which opened its gates to spawning salmon on the first Saturday of October, has taken only 1.68 million eggs as of October 19, 2024 – a small fraction of the typical 20 million eggs harvested during the spawning season. The extremely low number of adult fish present follows the last several years of consistently poor salmon returns, which led to the closure of California salmon fishing and federal fishery disaster declarations in 2023 and 2024.
The low number of fish is indicative of overall poor returns of salmon in California’s Sacramento Valley. The Coleman National Fish Hatchery is located on a tributary of the upper Sacramento river south of Redding. The low number of salmon is a direct result of excessive water diversions in the most recent drought, which left insufficient water in northern California rivers to successfully spawn and rear salmon. Those excessive water diversions also drained precious cold water from behind Shasta Dam, leading to high levels of what biologists call “temperature dependent mortality” for salmon eggs and juveniles. For the layperson, those salmon eggs were cooked before they even hatched.
In 2023 the Coleman hatchery saw such a small number of adult salmon that it was forced to import salmon eggs from other hatcheries to meet its quotas. Although the spawning season will continue for weeks, the early signs are that the hatchery may be forced to import millions of eggs again this year.
All of this is extremely bad for California’s salmon fishery that supported tens of thousands of jobs and more than $1 billion in economic activity until it was decimated by the Newsom administration’s water policies.
“October is supposed to be an exciting time of year for thousands of fishing families to welcome the return of salmon that not only support their livelihoods, but are critical for sustaining a healthy Bay-Delta watershed,” said Scott Artis, executive director of Golden State Salmon Association. “Instead, those families, already suffering from 2 consecutive years without work, are watching another potential salmon horror show unfold because state and federal water policies continue to divert the cold water salmon need to survive.”
The question of whether there will be a California Salmon fishery next year won’t be answered for several months. By then fishery managers will know how many salmon spawned in the Sacramento Valley to provide for future commercial and recreational fishing. The Sacramento Valley provides nearly all of the salmon caught in California and coastal Oregon.
“It’s not a good sign when the hardworking hatchery staff have only been able to procure less than 10% of the total egg take goal by this time of year. They’re using what they’ve been given as a result of failed state water policies.” said Artis. “The fishing industry, conservationists, and entire fishing-based towns and communities have a right to be really worried.”
Fishery observers note that salmon in California have declined more under Gavin Newsom’s governorship then at any other time in history. California’s salmon fishery targets fall-run Chinook salmon. Other salmon stocks are protected under the federal endangered species act. Their plight has only gotten worse under Newsom.
California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River system supports four distinct Chinook salmon runs: fall, late-fall, winter and spring. The winter- and spring-runs have seen periods of alarmingly low numbers and are designated as endangered and threatened, respectively, under the Endangered Species Act. The fall-run, which is currently the only commercially and recreationally fishable stock, was closed in 2023 and 2024 due to low numbers of adults that survived the hostile conditions encountered in Central Valley rivers. The late-fall run has been eliminated from most of its native spawning habitat. All four Chinook salmon runs are dependent upon cold water flows and releases from reservoirs for migration and spawning.
Golden State Salmon Association (www.goldenstatesalmon.org) is a coalition of salmon advocates that includes commercial and recreational salmon fishermen and women, businesses, restaurants, native Tribes, environmentalists, elected officials, families and communities that rely on salmon. GSSA’s mission is to restore California salmon for their economic, recreational, commercial, environmental, cultural and health values.
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