The Pacific salmon season may end before it begins this year.

The federal Pacific Fishery Management Council said this week that California and Oregon will almost certainly be prohibited from recreational and commercial salmon fishing, as will Washington unless an emergency wavier is granted.

Why? Well, for starters, only 63,000 fall run salmon spawned in the Sacramento River last year -- less than a third of the expected 189,0000, itself a worrisomely low estimate. And that's the good news. Of greater concern is that only 6,000 young fish have returned to the river to spawn, out of an expected 157,000. The situation is so bad that a federal disaster may be declared, and fisheries ecologists are scrambling to understand why the population has declined so drastically.

We support the federal ban, and suggest that it should be extended to several years in order to allow the salmon population to recover. That said, the ban is essentially a symbolic move by the feds. Even if the season were fully open, there simply wouldn't be fish to catch in any appreciable amount.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council is currently considering recommendations on how to structure the ban, in consultation with experts and stakeholders. The agency will release three ban options tomorrow for public and agency comment. Public hearings will be held in Oregon, Washington, and California in the coming weeks.

This week's news takes us back to 2006, when we read one of the most chilling scientific articles hit the presses in recent years. Boris Worm's research group at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, ran an analysis of historical trends in yields from major commercial fisheries, and documented the rate at which fish stocks declined through industrial fishing. Their conclusion: all major commercial fisheries, inclusive of all oceans and all species, will be essentially depleted and unproductive by 2050.

In other words, most major populations of commercially-exploited fish - tuna, salmon, haddock, cod, Patagonian toothfish, and more - will be so depleted that they cannot be caught in significant numbers, and depleted to a point where some may never recover even with a total moratorium on fishing.