Help fishing industry.

Byline: The Register-Guard

If the West Coast's beleaguered fishing industry doesn't get federal disaster assistance soon, there may be no fleet left when - and if - the salmon some day return.

Last year, Congress spent oceans of time discussing the plight of coastal fisheries and restructured the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the premier federal law regulating ocean fisheries. Thanks to a monumental push by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Gordon Smith, R-Ore.; and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the law included a formal declaration that the West Coast fishing industry is facing an economic disaster.

Yet Congress failed to approve a single dollar of actual aid for the fishermen, seafood processors, communities and businesses that lost tens of millions of dollars when the federal government imposed sharp fishing restrictions on a 700-mile stretch of the coasts of Oregon and California. It's a glaring example of dysfunctional governance: recognizing a full-bore disaster and then doing nothing to help.

At least Oregon heard the cry of fishermen. In Salem, the legislative Emergency Board last year approved $1 million in emergency assistance. Despite controversy over how the money was distributed, the money has helped some fishermen, although many remain on the brink of losing their boats and livelihoods.

Much more assistance is needed, along with a full-throttle federal effort to fix the real cause of the salmon crisis: a Klamath River that once supported vibrant salmon runs but that, thanks to federal mismanagement, has become one of the nation's most troubled waterways.

Last week, Wyden, Smith and Boxer introduced a bill to provide more than $60 million in immediate assistance. With early salmon return data indicating that fishing will remain severely restricted for the 2007 season, Congress should waste no time in approving an aid package that is critical to the fishing industry - and to coastal communities in Oregon and California.

Ultimately, however, the future of the fishing industry depends on restoring Klamath salmon runs, which have suffered precipitous declines because of drought, a proliferation of disease and parasites that afflict fish, dams that hinder migration and river flows lowered by excessive water diversions to farmers.

In revising the Magnuson-Stevens Act, lawmakers had the foresight to include an unprecedented order for federal fishery managers to fast-track a recovery plan for endangered Klamath coho runs. The new Democratic majority in Congress should flex its oversight muscles to make sure the Bush administration actually produces a plan that will restore the Klamath's former bumper crops of salmon. Lawmakers should keep firmly in mind that it was the administration's mismanagement of the Klamath that led to the current salmon crisis.

Congress must act soon to save both the West Coast's salmon fishing industry and the Klamath River. Time's running short for both.