Fall Chinook Salmon returns to date are shockingly low on Upper Sacramento River

After discussing the return of the first Klamath River salmon to Oregon last week for the first time in 114 years just a few weeks after the completion of the river’s dam removal project, we are faced with this week with news of shockingly low numbers of fall-run Chinook salmon returning to spawn to date at the Coleman National Fish Hatchery.

Coleman is located on the upper stretch of the Sacramento River on Battle Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River below Redding.

The hatchery, after opening its gates to spawning salmon on the first Saturday of October, has taken only 1.68 million eggs as of October 19, 2024. This is only a small fraction of the typical 20 million eggs harvested during the spawning season, according to Scott Artis of the Golden State Salmon Association (GSSA), who described the hatchery as a “salmon ghost town” in a statement. 

Even more telling is that the number of eggs received at the same time last year, one of the worst years on record for salmon spawning at the federal hatchery, was about 6.5 million eggs.   

“The extremely low number of adult fish present follows the last several years of consistently poor salmon returns, which led to the closure of California salmon fishing and federal fishery disaster declarations in 2023 and 2024,” stated Artis.

Because of the low numbers of salmon that returned to the Sacramento and Klamath River Basins in 2022 and 2023, all ocean commercial and recreational fishing for salmon has been closed in California and most of Oregon this year and last. All recreational salmon fishing in California rivers has also been closed in 2023 and 2024.

Artis said the low number of fish is indicative of “overall poor returns” of salmon in California’s Sacramento Valley. He said the low number of salmon returning to the river “is a direct result of excessive water diversions in the most recent drought, which left insufficient water in northern California rivers to successfully spawn and rear salmon.”

“Those excessive water diversions also drained precious cold water from behind Shasta Dam, leading to high levels of what biologists call ‘temperature dependent mortality’ for salmon eggs and juveniles. For the layperson, those salmon eggs were cooked before they even hatched,” he argued.

“In 2023 the Coleman hatchery saw such a small number of adult salmon that it was forced to import salmon eggs from other hatcheries to meet its quotas. Although the spawning season will continue for weeks, the early signs are that the hatchery may be forced to import millions of eggs again this year,” he continued.

He said, “All of this is extremely bad for California’s salmon fishery that supported tens of thousands of jobs and more than $1 billion in economic activity until it was decimated by the Newsom administration’s water policies.”

“October is supposed to be an exciting time of year for thousands of fishing families to welcome the return of salmon that not only support their livelihoods, but are critical for sustaining a healthy Bay-Delta watershed,” said Artis. “Instead, those families, already suffering from 2 consecutive years without work, are watching another potential salmon horror show unfold because state and federal water policies continue to divert the cold water salmon need to survive.”

The question of whether there could be a California salmon fishery next year won’t be answered next year when the data on spawning returns has been compiled by state and federal fishery scientists at the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) to determine whether or not there there are  enough fish in the ocean to allow a season. The Sacramento River and its tributaries have traditionally provided the bulk of Chinook salmon caught off the California coast.   

“It’s not a good sign when the hardworking hatchery staff have only been able to procure less than 10% of the total egg take goal by this time of year. They’re using what they’ve been given as a result of failed state water policies,” said Artis. “The fishing industry, conservationists, and entire fishing-based towns and communities have a right to be really worried.”

California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River system supports four distinct Chinook salmon runs: fall, late-fall, winter and spring. The winter- and spring-runs have declined dramatically in recent years, despite being designated as endangered and threatened, respectively, under the Endangered Species Act.

For example, only 100 spring-run Chinook salmon returned to spawn in Butte Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River, last year.  

State and federal fishery agencies have attributed the current Central Valley salmon collapse to drought, changing ocean water and forage conditions and climate change and other factors. While conservationists agree that these issues factor in the collapse, they point to the massive state and federal water project water diversions at the Delta pumping facilities to corporate agribusiness and the lack of cold, oxygenated water flows from reservoirs during a drought as the leading causes of the salmon disaster.

“The fall-run — currently the only commercially and recreationally fishable stock, was closed in 2023 and 2024 due to low numbers of adults that survived the hostile conditions encountered in Central Valley rivers. The late-fall run has been eliminated from most of its native spawning habitat. All four Chinook salmon runs are dependent upon cold water flows and releases from reservoirs for migration and spawning,” stated Artis.

While Newsom has supported the dam removal on the Klamath River and various habitat restoration projects, Artis said, “Fishery observers note that salmon in California have declined more under Gavin Newsom’s governorship than at any other time in history.”

“California’s salmon fishery targets fall-run Chinook salmon. Other salmon stocks are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. Their plight has only gotten worse under Newsom,” he concluded.