I'm not sure if it's in the best long term interest of the entire state if a few niche businesses based entirely around salmon fishing have a bad year. The calculus is those businesses will either struggle now or struggle forever when most of the fish are gone
If I set up shop as a Blackberry developer and RIM goes out of business, I have a tough year as I regroup and figure out next steps for myself.
Every business has dependencies outside of its control, and yeah, sometimes you may have to go bartend for a bit. It sucks, but business never comes with total guarantees. Planning for this stuff can help.
In my state, all the lobster fishing people have a "co op" to jointly decide how to manage the public resource of the fish in our waters so that they can come together and make the kind of conservation decisions together, and create some force to prevent anyone from defecting and catching everything in a down year. This gives them more stability year to year and a little bit of possible price fixing.
Of course not. The more accurate word is "cartel" (note: I see management of a shared resource as a perfectly legitimate justification for cartel behavior).
Since it's literally a good old boy network, probably with threats and violence or maybe they have legal backing? I don't know the legal details, I just know they set the rules and they voluntarily reduce fishing seasons to keep stock at healthy levels.
Some people prefer catfish over salmon. Tastes vary.
Catfish is a pretty good substitute for salmon in terms of macronutrients. Salmon does have higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids. But catfish may be safer in terms of heavy metals and other toxins, depending on where the fish were raised.