PORTLAND - It's official: This year's West Coast salmon fishery is an economic disaster.

AP photo

A school of salmon.

NOAA Fisheries made the declaration Thursday in Portland.

This is a first step toward providing federal disaster assistance to commercial and charter salmon fishermen and related businesses in California, Oregon and Washington.

The governors of those states have estimated $290 million in losses due to the shutdown of salmon fishing.

The fishing was curtailed because of a sudden collapse in populations of chinook salmon from California's Sacramento Valley.

NOAA Fisheries is the federal agency in charge of ocean fisheries and turning around the long-standing decline in salmon populations.