"The economy is in the toilet, and people that normally buy crabs are not buying the crabs," said Dale Beasley, a fisherman in Ilwaco, Wash., who heads the Columbia River Crab Fishermen's Association.

The lack of locally caught chinook, or "king," salmon and the disappointing crab harvest is a loss not just for fishermen but for businesses that draw tourists based on their communities' ties to the ocean.

"Our preference would be to sell as much local seafood as possible, and that's becoming increasingly difficult now," said Paul Shenkman, who owns Sam's Chowder House. "A lot of our guests want local fish, and we can't give it to them."

Fishermen wonder whether they can afford to keep fishing for a living.

San Francisco fisherman John Mellor said he did not receive any federal aid and had been banking on a decent crab harvest to pay for his taxes, boat insurance and daughter's braces. "I have to come up with money to pay these big bills," Mellor said.

To get by, fishermen plan to catch herring, squid, sardine, rockfish and albacore tuna, but they say fishing for those species is not as lucrative.

The salmon fishing ban and poor crab harvest could force more commercial fishermen to leave the business at a time when the Pacific Coast fleet is aging and shrinking amid increasing regulation, declining fisheries and the expansion of farmed fish.

Over the past three decades, membership in the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations has dropped from about 4,500 to 1,000 members, said executive director Zeke Grader. The average age of the group's members has risen from the mid 30s to the late 50s as few young people choose to fish for a living.

"People don't think there's a future in it," Grader said.