Abstract:
For more than a century, politicians, newspaper editors, tate and federal fisheries managers, and their various constituencies with an interest in salmon have complained,lobbied and petitioned, sought legislative relief, and studied to near extinction the declining runs of the Pacific Northwest’s anadromous fish runs. All to no avail, of course. Management efforts have failed; the attempt to the establish reliable, predictive models has failed; massive federal expenditures to rescue crashing stocks have failed; and endeavors to achieve consensus about future policymaking have failed. And today one can add to the now familiar story of extinct and endangered salmon, similar tales about ocean groundfish, newly impoverished fishing communities, reductions in fleet size, and more federal bailouts. What is fascinating in the unveiling of this most recent story is the sense of history repeating itself as commercial fishers shift from one species to the next.
