JR Gerber

1. (2017, March 01). 2017 Salmon Forecasts Point to Reduced Fishing Opportunities. Retrieved March 06, 2017, from https://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/2017-salmon-forecasts-point-to-reduced-fishing-opportunities/

 

Fisheries are hurting as the salmon populations are at an all time low. The Sacramento and Klamath River fall salmon runs are significantly lower than previous years, mainly due to the drought. More time must pass before we will see an increase in salmon population size, and even those increments are expected to be paltry due to the current small size of the population. The debate gets even more controversial as a decision must be made to either allow fisheries to struggle, but still catch the few fish that they can, or stop fishing on a large scale in California to help the population grow.

I found this article interesting because it shows the difficult controversy of struggling fisheries after the drought. Fisheries need to make money somehow, but they can’t make much with the amount that they are catching. In addition, even the small amounts of fish that they do catch hurt the salmon population because it is already so small. I think that the best thing to do for the environment and economy is to halt fishing or significantly limit it until the salmon and other fish populations regrow to their normal capacities. Once the fish populations return to their healthy size or even higher, fishery businesses will boom, helping the economy and will act as a control over the population sizes.