Boat tours and ash scatterings help beleaguered California salmon fleet stay afloat

William Smith has long fished the California coast for salmon, taking avid anglers out on his boat in hopes they’ll get to wrestle with and reel in the prized catch.

But not anymore.

Smith, known as “Capt. Smitty,” now spends time on the seas with aspiring whale watchers, or scattering the ashes of the deceased — whatever it takes to stay afloat since salmon fishing was barred in California two years ago due to dwindling stocks. Smith said a rise in the Bay Area’s Hindu and Buddhist communities has made sea burials more popular, and he now does more than 200 a year — and that’s helping him pay off his $250,000 boat engine.

“The bills keep going, whether I’ve got a fishery or not,” said Smith, who runs Riptide Sportfishing in Half Moon Bay, California. “There’s no season on when people die.”

California’s sport and commercial fishermen have been walloped by two years of salmon closures and are bracing for a potential third, which they blame on a years-earlier drought and state and federal water management policies they say have made it tough for the species to thrive. The closures have taken a toll on people’s livelihoods in coastal communities where salmon, fishermen say, is a special fish.

Salmon must swim upstream to lay their eggs, and young fish make their way out to the ocean through California’s waterways — something done more easily when cool water flows are abundant. The fishery has long been strained and the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages West Coast fisheries, said there will be very limited salmon fishing this year in California, if at all. A decision is due in April.

The dim outlook comes as President Donald Trump has ordered officials to find ways to put “people over fish” and route more water to farmers in California’s crop-rich Central Valley and residents of its densely-populated cities. Trump has professed his love for farmers and contends too much heed is paid to the tiny delta smelt, a federally-threatened species seen as an indicator of the health of California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

But salmon depend on this same water system for their survival. And some in the fishing community are wondering if fishermen aren’t people, too.

“We are people that are hardworking and it’s our jobs on the line,” said Sarah Bates, a commercial fishing captain in San Francisco. She said local markets have been devastated by the salmon closures and Bay Area restaurants aren’t snapping up halibut or other catch as they did salmon.

The history of commercial salmon fishing in California dates back more than a century, and in the 1970s and 1980s the fishery thrived off the state’s coast. Over time, salmon fishing has declined with swings in stocks amid volatile weather patterns in a drought-prone state and water management decisions about when surface water, and how much of it, should flow to farms, burgeoning cities and the ecologically-sensitive bay delta.

California’s salmon fishing industry includes commercial fleets and charters that take anglers out for recreation.

Jamie O’Neill, owner of Seattle-based Dock Street Brokers, said many of California’s commercial salmon fishermen are getting out of the business, selling their permits or simply letting them expire. Permits now sell for a fraction of what they used to, and there are fewer than 900 permits compared to 1,200 in 2010, he said.

Charter operators, meanwhile, have branched out to host boat tours and party cruises, especially since short trips require little fuel and can help offset the cost of boat maintenance.

While fishermen can still catch halibut, cod and striped bass along the extensive Pacific coastline, they say without the all-popular King Salmon, anglers just aren’t coming like before. Each fish requires a different bait and technique, and a fast-swimming salmon is a fighter that anglers aspire to catch.

“One is hamburger, and one is filet mignon,” said Andy Guiliano, whose sportfishing boat the Pacific Pearl in Emeryville has expanded its historic tour offerings since the closure. “It makes the cash register ring.”