Spring Breakfast by the Bay ~ May 5, 2007

This week is your last chance to buy tickets for our annual Spring Breakfast by the Bay. CUESA hosts two delicious fundraisers each year (a spring breakfast and a fall supper) which help raise funds for our educational programs. If you love reading this email, attend our free weekly cooking demonstrations, have come on a farm tour or use our website as a resource, you are benefiting from our work. While this alone is gratifying, we need financial support to continue our current programs and expand our efforts in the coming years. What better way to give back than to enjoy a truly farm-fresh meal, right next door to the market? Please join us! To reserve your seat and learn more, click here >

Saturday, April 28 ~ Market to Table Events

10:30 am - Meet the grillmaster and cooking demonstration
Steven McCarthy of Prather Ranch Meat Company

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Chris Cosentino of Incanto Restaurant and Bar

Saturday, May 5 ~ Market to Table Events

10:30 am - Meet the farmer

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Alexandra Lopez, The Food Diva

All events take place in our Dacor teaching kitchen in the arcade north of the Ferry Building's clock tower.

Good news for fisherpeople and salmon lovers: the Pacific Fisheries Management Council and the California Department of Fish and Game have adopted a 2007 California commercial ocean salmon season that is less restrictive than last year’s. By early May, Larry and Roz Miyamura of Shogun Fish Company will likely be bringing local, wild salmon to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Bad news for fisherpeople, salmon lovers, and salmon: the root causes of several years of restricted seasons, including an almost nonexistent 2006 season, are still not being adequately addressed.

The intricate and miraculous lifecycle of salmon complicates their survival. Most of the salmon caught in the waters off of the coast of California come from two major river basins: the Klamath and the Sacramento. The fish are anadromous: they hatch in the rivers, swim to the ocean to mature, and then return to the rivers to spawn (reproduce), after which they die. Their survival is dependent upon livable conditions in both oceans and rivers.

Spawning salmon return to the same river in which they were born. For successful reproduction, salmon need cool, clean water with high amounts of dissolved oxygen and a relatively unobstructed passage up the river. Especially on the Klamath River, dams, water diversions, agricultural runoff and other human factors have led to higher water temperatures, obstructed passage, toxic algae blooms and, ultimately, major fish kills. The current Klamath salmon population is estimated to be only about 10% of historic levels. And while these dams, diversions, and other impacts on the river are the root causes of the decline in salmon populations, no plans are in place to change them. Instead, year after year, the ocean salmon season is limited in an effort to restore populations. But after a 20-year trend of increasing restrictions, salmon populations have not recovered.

Although Sacramento and Klamath salmon are two distinct populations, fisherpeople on ocean waters cannot distinguish the two, so the entire catch is restricted to ensure that enough Klamath salmon return to the waters to reproduce. In the past few years, even though the Sacramento stocks (which have responded very positively to some habitat improvements) are estimated to have been high, the entire catch was restricted due to low Klamath Coho salmon returns. Fisherpeople are frustrated because their industry suffers greatly from such restrictions, yet they are seeing little action by the state to address the root causes of the population decline. In some cases, even treaty obligations, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act are not being upheld.

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) is calling for the removal of four Klamath River dams, claiming that they heat up water to “lethal temperatures,” and deplete oxygen. These conditions in turn cause algae blooms that are toxic to fish. A fact sheet on the PCFFA website describes why the four dams should be removed:

Hundreds of miles of historic spawning grounds would be reopened to Klamath River salmon whose numbers now run dangerously close to extinction. Klamath runs were so small [in 2006] that regulators closed ocean fishing almost completely along 700 miles of coast, starving commercial fishing communities of an estimated $100 million and shortening Tribes of a resource traditionally used for both subsistence and ceremonies. Damage to salmon fisheries far outweighs any benefits of power production. Unless these dams are dealt with, more fishery closures are inevitable.

Conservation groups, sport and commercial fisherpeople, Native American tribes and others are working tirelessly to turn the tides for wild salmon. But the goal of these groups is not just stable salmon populations; their vision is one of clean, free-flowing rivers, prosperous fishing communities, and thriving salmon populations.

To learn more about this vision and how you can support it, visit the links below and be sure to come to CUESA’s Salmon Celebration on May 19.

Ecotrust

The Salmon Protection and Watershed Network

Save Our Wild Salmon

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations

Earthjustice

Sorry, there is no market update this week! Please check the CUESA Information Booth for information about which farms will and won't be attending the market on April 28 and May 1.