U.S. officials plan to curtail salmon fishing along West Coast to help killer whales

Federal officials in the U.S.are planning to curtail non-Indigenous salmon fishing along the country's west coast in years when runs are forecast to be low, in orderto help endangered killer whales.

The NOAA Fisheries department is taking public comment on the plan, which calls for restricting commercial and recreational salmon fishing when chinooksalmon forecasts are especially low.

Southern resident killer whales the endangered orcas that spend much of their time in the waters between Washington state and British Columbia depend heavily on depleted runs of fatty chinook.

Recent research has affirmed how important chinook are to the whales year round, not just when they forage in the inland waters of Washington and B.C. in the summertime.

The fishing restrictions would extend from Puget Sound inWashington to Monterey Bay in central California around 1,300 kilometres of coastline and they would betriggered when fewer than 966,000 chinook are forecast to return to rivers in the Pacific Northwest.

The last time forecast chinook returns were thatlow was in 2007.

The restrictions would include reducing fishing quotas north ofCape Falcon in Oregon; delaying the start of the ocean commercialtroll fishery between Cape Falcon and Monterey Bay; and closing parts of the Columbia River and Grays Harbor in Washington,and the Klamath River and Monterey Bay to fishing much of the year.

If NOAA Fisheries adopts the plan as recommended by the PacificFishery Management Council, it would be one of the first times afederal agency has restricted hunting or fishing one species tobenefit a predator that relies on it.

There are 75 orcas in the three pods that make up the southernresident orca population.

The killer whales have in recent years been attheir lowest numbers since the 1970s, when hundreds were captured
and more than 50 were kept for aquarium display.

Scientists warnthe population is on the brink of extinction.