Salmon fishers fear for future

MOSS LANDING, Calif. -- A landlubber Rick Sullivan wasn't meant to be. After quitting school at 15, he worked aboard a commercial tuna boat out of this foggy little fishing port, launching a quarter-century career on the ocean.

Through good days and bad, there has always been the lure of fish to be caught -- until this summer of discontent.

Instead of heading to sea in what is normally high season for the Pacific's runs of chinook salmon, the 40-year-old fisherman spends a morning in a living-room recliner -- wife off to her job, cocker spaniel Oreo by his side -- glued to C-SPAN, listening to the discordant sounds of Congress.

His government has essentially laid him off, Sullivan said.

Worried by dwindling salmon runs on the Klamath River, federal fishing regulators have slashed this year's season for chinook -- a prime cash crop for the West Coast commercial fleet -- to a few odd weeks scattered across the normal six-month season.

June and most of July, usually among the best months for catching salmon, were shut down for Sullivan and his like along a 700-mile swath of northern California and Oregon. The season resumed Wednesday , but they face a quota of 75 fish a week, fewer than a competent commercial salmon troller can hook on a good morning. With those limits, Sullivan and others expect to catch 10 percent of the salmon they might catch in a successful season.

That's hardly enough to finance a trip to the fuel dock, barely enough to buy tackle, and not nearly enough to pay the harbor slip fee and buy insurance and permits and cover a boat loan, home mortgage, child support, and gas for the truck. Folks are gloomy on the docks. Tensions are rising back home.

Recently, Sullivan watched the House of Representatives wage a daylong procedural tug-of-war over federal disaster assistance to keep the imperiled West Coast salmon fleet afloat.

So far, the best Congress has to offer is the prospect of $10 million, a fraction of the $81 million sought by California and Oregon lawmakers. The Bush administration, blamed by fishermen for causing the Klamath's salmon problems by diverting too much water to farmers during drought years, only recently began edging toward a full-blown bailout.

``All my buddies and I are sitting around doing nothing right now," Sullivan said, before the season resumed last week .

Up and down A-Dock -- port of call to the Moss Landing fleet -- commercial fishermen like Sullivan worry about the future of their industry.

Rockfish mostly are off-limits, and halibut are hard to find. Bottom trawlers are being bought off to ease damage to the ocean floor. Nearly all the tuna canneries have moved overseas. Dungeness crab has as many bad years as good.

Now the chinook -- a legendary migratory fish of the West, the prized king salmon of the marketplace -- has been put nearly off-limits.

When Sullivan began fishing in the early 1980s, California had nearly 8,000 commercial vessels and 11,000 crewmen fishing for salmon. This year, the state issued licenses to 1,357 salmon boats and 1,432 fishermen.

That attrition has left Sullivan, at 40, one of the youngest commercial fishermen at Moss Landing. ``I'm the next generation of old fishermen," he said. ``After me, there's no one else."

Sullivan still hits A-Dock most days. There is always some chore to be done on the Gardenia, his 35-foot wooden fishing troller, and camaraderie to be shared with his fellow captains.

The federal government is offering low-interest loans to endangered fishermen, but Sullivan doesn't see the value. ``We can't pay it back if we can't fish," he said.