Commercial salmon fishermen may have just become the West Coast’s latest endangered species; for the second year in a row, fisheries managers have called off the commercial salmon fishing season off California’s coast, and greatly reduced the take off Oregon’s.

This effectively drives a stake through the heart of what’s left of California’s commercial salmon fleet, and also adds a little support to the belief that mysterious “ocean conditions” probably weren’t the sole cause of the prior year’s collapse.

The Sacramento River’s Chinook salmon runs used to support California’s and Oregon’s commercial salmon fisheries, but they collapsed in 2007, and haven’t yet recovered.

From the Sacramento Bee:

Federal fisheries managers have voted to call off California’s commercial fishing season for chinook salmon after record low returns were recorded in the Central Valley last year.

The decision Wednesday marks the second year in a row that the Pacific Fishery Management Council has voted to shut down commercial and limit recreational fishing for natural and hatchery chinook, or “king” salmon, in California.

The managers also voted to greatly limit Oregon’s commercial fishing season.

The council estimated that 66,264 salmon adults returned to the Sacramento River basin in 2008 to spawn. The estimate was down from 90,000 in 2007.

Water diversions (you listening Central Water Project?), water quality issues, habitat destruction, predation and a host of other problems have gradually whittled away the California salmon’s lifeline, leaving the runs hanging by a slender thread.

Throw in one more negative element – like bad ocean conditions – and the whole population plummets down the mine shaft dug underneath them.

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