This year’s West Coast salmon fishery is an economic disaster according to a declaration issued this week by NOAA Fisheries in Portland, Oregon. The designation is the first step toward providing federal disaster assistance to commercial and charter salmon fishermen and related businesses in Washington, Oregon and California. The governors of those states have estimated $290 million in losses due to the shutdown of salmon fishing. Fishing was curtailed because of a sudden collapse in populations of Chinook salmon from California’s Sacramento Valley. NOAA Fisheries is the federal agency in charge of ocean fisheries and turning around the long-standing decline in salmon populations.
(AP)