“If they f*** with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to f*** them too." .... Paul Wolfowitz

13:15/01. NINTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS REFUSES EXXON'S LATEST APPEAL: On 24 March, 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran ground in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Most of the public knows the rest, but very few realize that the affected fishermen and citizens of Alaska are still waiting for their punitive damages awards from Exxon-Mobil. Although an Anchorage Court ruled in 1994 for $5 billion dollars to be awarded, Exxon has since filed three consecutive appeals with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco. In December 2006 the Court reduced the punitive damages to $2.5 billion, citing recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings of the proportion of allowable punitive damages. Exxon filed an appeal on 10 January for the case to be reheard. On 23 May the Court announced its refusal to hear the appeal, leaving Exxon only the option of appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, which they have already stated they will pursue. The Court announcement is great news for the 33,000 Alaskan plaintiffs waiting to receive their money, however that could still be months if not years away. For more information about the Court decision read the Wesley Loy 24 May Anchorage Daily News article, www.adn.com/money/industries/oil/story/8913313p-8813354c.html.

13:15/02. CALIFORNIA DELTA SMELT - HOW LOW CAN THEY GO?: Finally Delta smelt, a small freshwater indicator species fish that lives in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, are getting some attention. Delta smelt were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1993. However, the population size witnessed a major decline, similar to many other Delta organisms, in 2002. In March, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled that the operation of the Tracy, CA pumps, which deliver freshwater from the Delta to roughly 25 million California farmers and citizens, were operating illegally (see Sublegals 13:09/04). The Department of Water Resources (DWR) failed to obtain the necessary take permits to authorize the killing of listed Delta smelt and salmon. The Judge Roesch ruled that the DWR must receive the permits otherwise the water pumps would be shut down entirely.

Numerous scientists have made countless recommendations to DWR and the State of California on ways to reduce the negative impacts on Delta smelt survival. The state has been slow to act upon such recommendations. To make things worse, the past five years have seen increases in the quantity of water being pumped through the system down to Southern California and to the Bay Area, which creates a large vacuum moving the salt water backwards up the river. An annual survey of Delta smelt is conducted every spring to determine the juvenile population size.

Survey results demonstrate a 93% decline in juvenile Delta smelt in 2007. Only 25 fish have been caught, 1/10th of the lowest results on record. Only 17% of trawls even caught fish, as opposed to on average 46% in prior years. The Delta smelt are fewer in number and harder to find. These drastic population reductions have prompted a new flurry of activity to reduce water pumping even further than the annual slowdown in May. Officials from DWR caution that a further slow down in pumping would prompt water conservation measures to ensure drinking water, but the anticipated impacts on farmers have not been estimated. The Delta smelt is an indicator species for the entire Delta ecosystem, which is also the main feeding area for tens of millions of outmigrating juvenile salmon and steelhead, also experiencing sharp declines in recent years from similar causes.

More information about the decline in Delta smelt and other resources are available in the 20 May Dan Bacher IndyBay article www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/05/20/18418870.php. Additional information about DWR’s response reducing water pumping is available in the 22 and 24 May Contra Costa Times Mike Taugher articles www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_5961818 and www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_5975517 or the 22 May San Francisco Chronicle Patrick Hoge article, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/22/BAG0NPV4411.DTL.

13:15/03. IN-SEASON MODIFICATIONS TO COMMERCIAL SALMON FISHERY - PUBLIC COMMENTS SOUGHT: The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted on the 2007 commercial salmon season at its March meeting. Two in-season modifications have since been made. Action 1 (8 March) altered the scheduled open period from Cape Falcon, OR to the Oregon/California border and from Horse Mountain to Point Arena, CA. The landing and possession limits were increased in the Fort Bragg subarea in April through Action 2 (20 April). Both actions were taken to allow the fisheries to operate under the 2006 annual management measures and provide more harvest opportunity during the 2007 season. Comments on the in-season modifications should be sent to D. Robert Lohn, Administrator, Northwest Region, NMFS, Sand Point, Way NE, BIN C15700, Seattle, WA 98115–0070 or emailed to 2007salmonIA.nwr@noaa.gov. A copy of the 14 May Federal Register (27064-27065) is available at http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/pdf/E7-9223.pdf. Questions regarding the regulation changes or comments can be sent to Sarah McAvinchey at Sarah.McAvinchey@noaa.gov.

13:15/04. PUBLIC COMMENT SOUGHT FOR AMENDMENT 15 TO PACIFIC COAST SALMON FISHERIES MANAGEMENT PLAN: The Pacific Coast Salmon Fisheries Management Plan (FMP) ensures that stocks of salmon are maintained at sustainable levels while also allowing for commercial, recreational, and Tribal fisheries. Following the commercial salmon fishery near closure in 2006, policy makers and fishermen drafted Amendment 15 to provide flexibility in salmon fishery management in years of forecasted low abundance of Klamath River fall-run Chinook, as occurred in 2006 (see Sublegals 12:15/03). Amendment 15 considers multiple factors when allocating the season: critically low natural spawner abundance; multiple years of low spawner abundance; the status of co-mingled stocks; El Nino or other adverse environmental conditions; and Endangered Species Act considerations.

The Secretary of Commerce is currently receiving public comments through 28 June on the Amendment 15 rule in the 15 May Federal Register (27276-27280). Comments should be labeled with “I.D. 120806A’’and can be sent via email: salmon2006amend15@noaa.gov; or mail: D. Robert Lohn, Administrator, Northwest Region, NMFS, Sand Point, Way NE, BIN C15700, Seattle, WA 98115–0070; or to Rodney R. McInnis, Administrator, Southwest Region, NMFS, 501 West Ocean Boulevard, Suite 4200, Long Beach, CA 90802–4213; or by fax: 206–526–6426. A copy of the notice and background of the current 35,000 natural spawner Klamath conservation floor and FMP is available at http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/pdf/E7-9329.pdf. Additional questions can be directed at: Sarah McAvinchey by phone at 206-526–6140 or email at sarah.mcavinchey@noaa.gov, or Eric Chavez by phone at 508–980–4064 or email at eric.chavez@noaa.gov.

13:15/05. CLIMATE CHANGE AND SALMON RESTORATION: WHAT NEEDS TO BE CONSIDERED?: Climate change is taking the United States by storm, no pun intended. In the past year the topic of climate change has hit the public from all different angles and industries, and salmon restoration can now be added to the list. On 17 April a team of agency and academic scientists published a study called “Projected impacts of climate change on salmon habitat restoration” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), sparking the start of reports linking climate change and salmon restoration. Previous models for salmon recovery and habitat restoration assume stable climate; however this report overlaid models of climate, land cover, hydrology, and salmon population dynamics for multiple different climate change scenarios for the Northwest Puget Sound region (see Sublegals 13:11/02). The models demonstrated large negative effects of climate change on salmon freshwater habitat, making population recovery more difficult. The study recommended that extra attention should be placed on habitat restoration for juvenile rearing capacity and that streams and side channels should be allowed to flow across their original flood plains to decrease the effects of high peak flows.

On 11 May the Independent Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB), for the Northwest Power & Conservation Council, Columbia River Basin Indian Tribes, and National Marine Fisheries Service, released the “Climate Change Impacts on Columbia River Basin Fish & Wildlife” report. The report reiterated what the PNAS findings concluded and expanded the scope of consequences. The report highlighted that increased water temperatures would accelerate embryo development, leading to premature hatching and smaller fry, which would increase predation rates for juvenile salmon. Increased water temperatures would also affect adult salmon by increasing metabolic demand and decreasing energy stores as well as impacting dam passage and fish ladder usage success rates. The report also summarized the predicted impacts on salmon as ocean conditions changed: increases in water temperature will alter the timing of upwelling events affecting juvenile marine survival rates; metabolic demands for salmon would increase as food sources would diminish due to ocean acidification (see Sublegals 12:20/06), increasing the competition for food and decreasing growth rates; and changes in behavior and food availability would increase migration distances altering life history patterns of spawner returns.

The report summarizes the variety of factors forecasted to impact salmon populations. While it was easier to determine the cause and effect relationships between only two factors, the Board highlighted that the range of factors is both more realistic and will have an exponentially larger impact on salmon. Although the ISAB reported numerous changes to salmon recovery due to climate change, the results pointed out that the effects of current hydrosystem operations have adversely affected salmon habitat and populations to a significantly larger extent than climate change will. The report concludes that actions to reduce water temperatures and to increase summer flows will be the most important and effective salmon restoration work in the face of climate change. Therefore, the ISAB calls for the current hydrosystem to make alterations to their protocols to assist in salmon restoration. The ISAB also recommends flexible management schemes and an emphasis on both near- and long-term programs and assessment. More information about the ISAB report is available at www.nwcouncil.org/library/isab/isab2007-2.htm.

13:15/06. ATLANTIC SALMON RESTORATION EFFORTS IN LAKE ONTARIO: Lake Ontario was once home to an abundant population of land-locked Atlantic salmon that sustained native peoples in the region for millennia and later supported a large commercial fishing industry after European settlement. Over-fishing and habitat degradation drastically reduced the numbers of Atlantic salmon in Lake Ontario by the late 19th century, while the coup de grâce came from the construction of the Erie Canal which allowed the invasive sea lamprey and alewife to enter the Great Lakes system from the Atlantic Ocean and wreak havoc on an already stressed ecosystem. The extirpation of the unique land-locked Lake Ontario Atlantic salmon was complete by 1896, despite restoration efforts including hatcheries in the preceding decades. While the pre-industrial and industrial over-exploitation of natural resources and development of the Great Lakes region brought about the collapse of the fisheries, the 20th century brought little improvement to the stewardship of the lake.

Recovery efforts continued sporadically throughout the century, sponsored by both the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR), but consistently failed to produce self-sustaining populations due to the lack of spawning habitat. Most, if not all, of the available tributaries had silted over from centuries of industrialization, agricultural development, channelization, and logging. Additionally, by the mid-20th century pollution from the urban areas along the lake had become a major impediment to re-establishment, as did the large scale use of pesticides including DDT. Furthermore, the number of invasive species introduced both deliberately and accidentally, including Pacific salmon, zebra and quagga mussels, rainbow smelt, and the above mentioned alewife and sea lamprey, have made the re-establishment of Atlantic salmon much more challenging.

In the late 1980s some stream habitat had improved, as a result of local landowners’ and conservationists’ environmental stewardship efforts, to the point where both the NYSDEC and the OMNR decided to sponsor pilot projects once again to restore Atlantic salmon to Lake Ontario. Against all odds the pilot projects have shown some success. By 2003 the OMNR concluded that the pilot project had satisfied the short term goals, and that a full scale restoration effort was justified. On 22 May 2007 the chairman of the LCBO, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (Ontario’s version of an American ABC store), in conjunction with representatives from the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and many other sport fishing and conservation groups, participated in a ceremonial restocking of Atlantic salmon in Duffins Creek in Pickering, Ontario. Since its inception last year, the Lake Ontario Atlantic Salmon Restoration Program (which is sponsored by the LCBO and numerous conservation and sport fishing groups) has released half a million fry into streams on the Canadian side of the lake and has provided hundreds of volunteer hours for stream restoration projects. The challenges faced by those who are determined to bring back the salmon to Lake Ontario are daunting, but their chances of restoring a self-sustaining population of Atlantic salmon, albeit at a fraction of the historic size, appear to be good. For more information see www.bringbackthesalmon.ca and www.atlanticsalmonontario.ca.

13:15/07. CALIFORNIA NORTH CENTRAL COAST MLPA REGIONAL PROFILE PUBLIC COMMENTS: The Regional Profile for the California North Central Coast MLPA Initiative is still available for public comment. The Regional Profile seeks to collect and summarize the available data about the North Central Coast. The Regional Profile is available at the MLPA website, www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/mlpa/nccprofile.html, or at coastal depository libraries. Comments should be sent to MLPAComments@resources.ca.gov by 20 June.

13:15/08. PORT LIAISON POSITIONS NEEDED FOR MLPA INITIATIVE: The organization Ecotrust is under contract with the California Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to compile expert knowledge from fishermen to create a comprehensive dataset of commercial fishing use patterns in the north central coast of California, from Pigeon Point to Alder Creek. Ecotrust is currently looking for commercial fishermen or members of the fishing community who are willing to participate as port liaisons in support of this work. During the central coast MLPA process, the project greatly benefited from working closely with members of the fishing community. Hired port liaisons will work with Ecotrust staff and field teams to: arrange introductory meetings; identify and contact commercial fishermen; help arrange interviews; and arrange meetings to verify results. Applicants should have: experience or interest in collaborative research; ability to work with a wide variety of people; and knowledge of the fishing industry and port operations. Port liaisons will be compensated for their services. For more information, please contact Charles Steinback, charles@ecotrust.org, 971-404-5632, or Astrid Scholz, ajscholz@ecotrust.org.

13:15/09. BUSH CALLS FOR US TO JOIN UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF THE SEA: The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is the international law governing the oceans from mineral resources to fishery management to national security. While the U.S. has been voluntarily complying with the mandates of UNCLOS since 1983, we have yet to formally ratify the treaty. President Bush declared his support in ratifying UNCLOS, sending the issue to the Senate.

Currently over 150 nations have ratified the treaty, 25 other nations have not ratified the treaty, and only 17 have not even signed the treaty. For more information about President Bush’s statement read the 15 May White House Press Release at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070515-2.html. Additional information about UNCLOS is available at the UNCLOS website, www.un.org/Depts/los/index.htm, or at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea.

13:15/10. PACIFIC FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL JUNE MEETING: The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), the entity which governs federal fishery regulations from California to Washington, will hold their June meeting in Foster City, CA from 9-15 June. Items on the agenda include: approving groundfish stock assessments; adopting groundfish management measure process and schedule for 2009-2010; draft management alternatives for intersector allocation, trawl rationalization, and American Fisheries Act issues; consider inseason groundfish adjustments; and plan implementation of new requirements from the reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Act, a copy of the agenda is available at www.pcouncil.org/events/2007/0607pfmc.pdf. All meetings are open to the public. More information about the meetings is available at the PFMC website, www.pcouncil.org.

13:15/11. PUSH FOR NEW DAMS IN CALIFORNIA CONTINUES: With the legislative path towards the construction of two new dams in California currently stymied by the Democratic controlled Legislature (See Sublegals 13:13/02), a coalition of business interests, Republican law-makers, agricultural and city officials are seeking an alternative path towards implementing a plan to construct the two new dams at a cost to taxpayers of around $4 billion. Despite a lack of evidence showing that the two proposed dams (near Fresno and Auburn) would provide very much water, or even come close to providing a solution to California’s ongoing water shortage problem, proponents of the dams continue to publicly press for the construction of the new dams to capture more water from the diminishing Sierra snowpack. “It's now or disaster,” Randy Fiorini told the San Diego Union Tribune, President of the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), representing urban and farm suppliers. The coalition is developing plans to put the $4 billion bond measure directly to voters through a proposition on the 2008 ballot. The chance of the new dams being approved in a ballot measure are much greater than through the Legislature since on the face of it the proposal seems like a common sense solution to the water shortage problem, one that many voters without hydrological knowledge nor the time and patience to examine the issue carefully could support. For more information see the 20 May Michael Gardner article in The San Diego Union-Tribune www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20070520-9999-1n20dams.html. For the ACWA’s water policy recommendations in their 2005 report “No Time to Waste: A Blueprint for California Water” which calls for increased water storage (new dams), go to www.acwa.com//issues/blueprint/blueprint_issue_focus.asp.

13:15/12. DAM ON SANDY RIVER IN OREGON TO BE REMOVED JULY 2007: Portland General Electric (PGE) announced recently that it will begin the process of decommissioning the Bull Run Hydroelectric Project beginning in July 2007 with the removal of the Marmot Dam on the Sandy River. The Bull Run Hydroelectric Project, which consists of two dams, a three-mile wooden flume, a reservoir, tunnels, canals, and a fish ladder, was completed in 1912. The dam, while not completely blocking salmon and steelhead passage, has drastically reduced the numbers of salmon and steelhead in the river. PGE had intended to relicense the project in 1999 but soon found that keeping the aging structure would not be cost effective. Company spokesman Mark Fryburg remarked that “[o]ur estimate back then was if we removed the dam, it would cost $20.4 million. If we kept the dam, it would cost $27.2 million." The removal of the Marmot Dam, a 47-foot structure, is scheduled to take four months during the period that salmon are not spawning in the river. In the summer of 2008 the smaller 16-foot Little River Dam will be demolished along with the three-mile wooden flume and the small reservoir, Roslyn Lake, will be drained. By 2009 PGE will turn over 1,500 acres of land to the Western Rivers Conservancy, which hopes to acquire an additional 3,000 acres of private land to form a contiguous corridor for salmonid habitat. The land will be administered by the Bureau of Land Management as an “Area of Critical Environmental Concern.”

For a timetable of the deconstruction of the two dams and wooden flume go to: www.portlandgeneral.com/community_and_env/hydropower_and_fish/sandy/dam_removal.asp. For a 23 May Catherine Trevison article in the Oregonian go to www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/1179888911310450.xml&coll=7. For more information about Western Rivers Conservancy and its future plans for the Sandy River restoration go to www.westernrivers.org/pages/sandyRiver.html.

13:15/13. 2007 INTERNATIONAL SMART GEAR COMPETITION: The World Wildlife Fund is hosting the 3rd annual “International Smart Gear Competition.” The intention is to award innovations that assist fishermen in catching more target species while reducing the number of non-target species taken. The competition is open to everyone over the age of 18, including fishermen, professional gear manufacturers, teachers, students, engineers, scientists, etc. The grand prize is $30,000 in cash and the two runner-up prizes are $10,000 each. The judges will assess the different entries based on: effectiveness of reducing bycatch; innovativeness; practicality; cost-effectiveness; ability to maintain target catch; and overall conservation impact. To learn more about the competition or what is required to enter visit www.smartgear.org. The deadline for submission is 31 July. Further questions can be directed towards Mike Osmond at michael.osmond@wwfus.org or 650-323-3506.

NEWS, COMMENTS, CORRECTIONS: Submit your news items, comments or any corrections to Editor at: sublegals@ifrfish.org, or call the IFR/PCFFA office with the news and a source at either: (415) 561-FISH (Southwest Office) or (541) 689-2000 (Northwest Office).

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