One can't minimize the scale of the shutdown, which follows a long-term decline in the fishery and is the first such shutdown since 2008-2009, which was driven by a severe drought. In 2022, the last year of salmon fishing in California, the fleet consisted of 464 commercial vessels, down from 4,750 in 1980.

Private and chartered recreational trips in California, which reached 98,900 in 2022—down from 148,000 in 2012—have also been shut down.

The closing of both categories has rippled across the entire fishing economy, affecting hotels and restaurants that catered to recreational fishing customers as well as bait and tackle shops. For Brown's Petaluma shop, there are no sales of bait or commercial gear — "no more boots, no more rain slickers, all that business is gone and there's nothing to replace it."

There's more to the salmon crisis than the devastation of livelihoods of tens of thousands of Californians working in an industry valued at more than $1.4 billion annually.

The crisis underscores the utter failure of the state's political leaders to balance the needs of stakeholders in its water supply. In this case, the conflict is between large-scale farms on one side and environmental and fishery interests on the other.

For decades, agribusiness has had the upper hand in this conflict. It's not hard to discern why: The growers have more money and therefore more political influence. Westlands Water District, the vast irrigation district sprawled over Fresno and Kings counties in the Central Valley—the largest such district in the nation—spent more than $4.7 million on Sacramento lobbying over the last decade.

During the same period, Stewart Resnick, whose Roll International conglomerate owns the Central Valley almond orchards that are the largest growers of those nuts in the world and enormous consumers of water, donated $2.8 million to political campaigns in California, chiefly to Democratic candidates and in support of ballot box initiatives; among his contributions was $125,000 to oppose the 2021 recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Officially valued at $1.4 billion a year, the salmon fishery can't hope to compete with agriculture on a dollar-for-dollar basis. The market value of all agricultural products in California was $59 billion in 2022, according to state figures; salmon weren't counted. The 10 most lucrative farm crops, led by dairy products, brought in some $35 billion that year.

The salmon fisheries are bellwethers for ecological health generally. "Fishermen are directly dependent on a healthy ecosystem," says Barry Nelson, an adviser to the Golden State Salmon Association. Their fortunes reflect not merely adequacy of water flows in California rivers and bays, but water quality. Any factor that falls outside a given range can produce a crash in fish populations, endangering whole species while putting men and women out of work.

As my colleague Ian James has reported, a key factor in the survival of the salmon population is water temperature. The diversion of ever more water from the federal government's Shasta Dam for farm irrigation has driven temperatures in the Sacramento River to murderous levels.

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