“In 2014 and 2015 decisions made by federal water managers with agreement from federal fish agencies led to the decimation of winter run salmon. 2014 was also a bad year for the commercially valuable fall run salmon. We don’t yet know how fall run fared in 2015.

The baby winter run salmon being released today and tomorrow carry with them the hope that winter run Sacramento king salmon won’t be driven into extinction at the hand of man. These salmon are found nowhere else on earth.

After release, these baby salmon face many more perils and many will be lost before reaching the ocean. They’ll attempt to rear over the coming weeks in parts of the river or in the Delta. In the Delta they face the prospect of being pulled off their natural course by the huge diversion pumps that siphon water for use by large agricultural interests in the western San Joaquin Valley. Some of these baby salmon will be pulled directly into the pumps. Others will be lost to predation greatly amplified by the pumps. The best thing we can do now for these little fish is to control the Delta pumps. Water flowing through the Delta to the bay now is helping not only baby winter run salmon, but also the other native fish and wildlife in the Delta. Anyone claiming that not diverting this water is a waste either doesn’t understand what salmon need in order to survive in the Delta or is happy to see them decimated, as they were the last two summers. These baby winter run salmon represent some of the last of their kind.

GGSA appreciates the timing of the release of these fish aimed to coincide with runoff from a wet storm. Baby salmon are poor swimmers and rely on runoff to carry them downriver and out to sea. Hopefully the fish released today and tomorrow will find enough runoff to safely make the trip downstream from the upper Sacramento River basin.

Fishermen expect to be restricted over the next several years for the actions of water managers that have hurt winter run salmon badly.”

GGSA president John McManus is a long-time salmon fisherman and salmon advocate. He comes from a varied background that includes ten years of commercial salmon fishing in southeast Alaska, 15 years producing news for CNN and more recently, 11 years doing publicity and organizing for the public interest environmental law firm Earthjustice. Work at Earthjustice included organizing and publicity supporting restored salmon fisheries in the Columbia, Klamath and Sacramento rivers. 

A San Francisco native, Muni Pier and Lake Merced were the places where he first learned to tie a fishing line, bait a hook, and cast. He’s a long time member of the Coastside Fishing Club and keeps a boat part of the year in Half Moon Bay. 

From the 1970s on he spent a lot of time in the north coast salmon communities of Bodega Bay, Pt. Arena, Fort Bragg and Eureka. As salmon runs declined in the 1990’s, he got a front row seat to the demise of these communities, something that fuels his advocacy for salmon and salmon communities to this day. 

The Golden Gate Salmon Association is a coalition of salmon advocates that includes commercial and recreational salmon fisherman, businesses, restaurants, a native tribe, environmentalists, elected officials, families and communities that rely on salmon. 

GGSA’s mission is to restore California salmon for their economic, recreational, commercial, environmental, cultural and health values.

Currently, California’s salmon industry is valued at $1.4 billion in economic activity annually in a regular season and about half that much in economic activity and jobs again in Oregon. The industry employs tens of thousands of people from Santa Barbara to northern Oregon. This is a huge economic bloc made up of commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen (fresh and salt water), fish processors, marinas, coastal communities, equipment manufacturers, the hotel and food industry, tribes, and the salmon fishing industry at large.