U.S. halts commercial salmon season

Regulators are trying to protect slumping chinook population off California and Oregon.
By Eric Bailey, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 11, 2008
EUREKA, CALIF. -- -- Instead of preparing to hit the Pacific's wind-tossed waters next month, veteran fisherman Dave Bitts sat at the counter of a dockside restaurant on Humboldt Bay recently, mulling fate and a cloudy future.

For the first time since the birth of the West Coast fishing industry 150 years ago, Bitts and other fishermen face a season without salmon.

Federal regulators, worried about sagging runs up and down the coast, agreed Thursday to cancel this year's commercial and recreational catch of chinook -- the prized king salmon of the fish market -- off California and Oregon.

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