Pink Fleshed Fish I've been watching this one for the better part of a year and it keeps getting worse. Just a couple of weeks back I was tooling around the commercial fishing docks of Bodega Bay, CA and the number of commercial boats for sale caught me off guard:

But last week, state Department of Fish and Game officials voted to ban salmon fishing in state waters, which extend out three miles from shore. Five days before, the Pacific Fishery Management Council had banned salmon fishing in the 200-mile-wide swath of federal waters off California and Oregon.

Federal and state biologists believe closing the season for virtually all the West Coast before it even revs up is the only way to boost the number of chinook salmon returning from ocean waters to spawn in the Sacramento River this fall.

Last year was the second-lowest spawning season on record along the Sacramento River and its tributaries. Just 90,000 chinook returned from the sea to complete their life cycle in the freshwater – a 90 percent drop from five years earlier.

90%. Oy.

If you think this will not affect you, you are incorrect. All fish, including farm raised salmon and trout to Alaskan Halibut, will be going up in price to fill the gap in supply. And as such things go, it will likely have a slight ripple effect throughout all meat and proteins.

I'd say go vegan, but those prices are going up too.  ¶ 9:11 PM