Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
While catching and canning fish from San Francisco Bay no longer occu-
pies the lives of many Bay Area residents, as it did a century ago, a hardy
few still make half a living at it. Most have other jobs and fish seasonally
until they've reached the quota on their annual state fishing permits. The
times of plenty, when salmon paved the rivers and sardines made a mirror
of the bay, may be gone for good. But there is hope that with careful man-
agement the last remaining fisheries may be sustained, if not restored to
their former glory.
The years between World War II and the arrival of the twenty-first cen-
tury saw many fisheries go through boom-and-bust cycles—due both to
fluctuating ocean and estuarine conditions and to the toll taken by human
nets and lures. Some fisheries crashed, some waned, and some moved far-
ther offshore. Primary remaining fisheries in the bay and coastal region
between 1950 and 1990 were Dungeness Crab, Pacific Herring, rockfish,
and salmon.
In this era, salmon fishers began traveling out the Golden Gate for the
ocean harvest of adults. Over the years, an ever larger share of their catch
consisted of hatchery fish, as dams and water diversions increasingly took
a toll on wild salmon. “Until the 1970s, few people worried about the loss
of the different runs, the distinct life histories. A salmon was a salmon,”
says UC Davis's Peter Moyle, a scientist who has dedicated decades of
study to the health of the estuary's fish species. “The prosperity of Califor-
nia depended on the dams, and the implicit promise was that fishing
would continue despite the dams.”
As commercial fisheries declined and markets for certain fish changed,
sport fishing for Striped Bass, sharks, and other fish increased in the 1960s
and 1970s. Over the same period, the region sustained more than 200
duck clubs covering almost 70,000 acres, and tens of thousands of Bay
Area and Sacramento residents regularly traveled to Suisun and delta
marshes to shoot duck. Sport fishing and hunting continue to contribute
to the Bay Area economy to this day.
As of the 2010s, only a handful of commercial fisheries still work the
waters inside the bay, and some hover on the brink of viability. These catch
herring, live bait (sardines, anchovies, Bay Shrimp, and other organisms
larger fish find delectable), and Brine Shrimp. A few boats still drop lines
for halibut, croaker, rockfish, and surfperch, while the delta supports a
small crayfish fishery. Interestingly, though, these are among the few re-
maining urban commercial fisheries in the nation—testimony to efforts to
keep the bay clean and the fisheries sustainable.
Just outside the Golden Gate, those trolling for salmon and trapping
