By ALEX BAUMHARDT/Oregon Capital Chronicle
For the seventh time in less than a decade, Oregon’s commercial fishermen, governor and congressional delegation are asking for federal aid to soften the blow of climate change on the state’s ocean salmon fisheries.
In January, members of the Oregon Salmon Commission asked Gov. Tina Kotek to request a federal fishery resource disaster declaration from the U.S. Department of Commerce, over Oregon’s poor 2024 coastal Chinook salmon season — the seventh disaster-worthy season since 2016.
“The impacts of drought, wildfires, changing ocean conditions and loss of freshwater habitat for salmon spawning, rearing and migration have all deeply impacted the health of our salmon populations,” Jeff Reeves, chairman of the Oregon Salmon Commission, said in his letter to the governor.
The commission is an industry-funded group that’s legally part of the Oregon Department of Agriculture and represents Oregon’s commercial salmon fishermen.
Kotek requested a disaster declaration from U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on April 1, and Oregon’s congressional Democrats followed up with a letter to Lutnick on Friday urging him to fulfill the request.
A disaster request allows crews of commercial fishing vessels and related businesses to be eligible for federal loans and financial assistance to keep them operating and to prevent future losses.
Similar disaster declarations were declared each year from 2016 to 2020 due to poor ocean conditions and drought that caused the economic value of Chinook catches to the state’s commercial ocean fisheries to drop nearly two-thirds, from about $6.3 million per year to less than $2 million per year. The Commerce Department provided about $9 million in aid to Oregon and California fishermen for the 2016 and 2017 seasons and more than $7 million to fishermen and related businesses for the 2018 through 2020 seasons.
Kotek asked for and received in 2024 an official disaster declaration from the U.S. Department of Commerce for the bad 2023 Chinook season, but Congress has not yet appropriated funding, according to Anca Matica, a Kotek spokesperson.
Another bad year
Oregon’s commercial ocean salmon fishermen caught about 18,000 Chinook between March and October 2024 — about 40 percent of the 10-year average. From 2011 to 2015, the average catch was closer to 75,000 per year, according to John North, an assistant fish division administrator with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
More than 50 percent of Chinook were caught in Newport in 2024, while southern Oregon fisheries struggled with low returns due to drought and warming waters in the Sacramento and Klamath rivers.
“Salmon are heavily dependent on cool, clean water for their survival” North said.
Although there are 800 licensed, commercial salmon vessels operating in 17 ports along the Oregon coast, only 163 vessels registered a catch in 2024, according to Reeves’ letter to Kotek. Each of the last five years, those vessels have brought in an average of $20,000 worth of catch, and the top 20 vessels have made less than $62,000 each year for the last three years, he wrote.
“Oregon’s coastal communities are hurting from the decline in salmon landings over the past five years. With timely assistance, we can mitigate what will otherwise have severe ramifications for many businesses in our rural economies and keep building toward the future,” Reeves wrote.
North said the state’s ocean salmon outlook is “not all doom and gloom.” Chinook coming from the Columbia River have been steady, he said, and coastal Coho salmon numbers seem to be improving since the late 1990s, when numbers got so low they received protections under the Endangered Species Act.
Salmon have also returned to the upper tributaries of the Klamath River for the first time in decades following the removal of four dams on the river, North said, giving the fish “the chance to bounce back.”
- Oregon Capital Chronicle is a nonprofit Salem-based news service that focuses its reporting on Oregon state government, politics and policy.
