The federal Department of Commerce today is expected to approve limited recreational salmon fishing in the ocean along with a commercial fishing closure on salmon along 400 miles of the Pacific off the Southern Oregon and Northern California coasts, officials said Thursday.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez was scheduled to sign an emergency rule allowing various chinook fishing seasons off Oregon, California and Washington recommended by the Pacific Fishery Management Council to protect wild chinook headed to the Klamath River, said Jeff McDonald, a spokesman in the NOAA-Fisheries headquarters in Washington, D.C.

McDonald said he expected no 11th-hour changes to the PFMC seasons, such as cutting the recreational season that ports like Brookings use to lure summer tourists or trimming limited commercial fishing north of Florence and south of Fort Bragg, Calif.

"We worked with the council to put this stuff together, so I don't expect any surprises," McDonald said Thursday.

The PFMC recommended the limited short seasons during its mid-April meeting in Sacramento, Calif., after initially recommending no commercial or recreational fishing along 700 miles of the Pacific coast.

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Since the April 7 PFMC meeting, recreational anglers have anxiously awaited Gutierrez's approval over fear Gutierrez would nix the limited recreational chinook seasons that port towns market each May and June.

Gold Beach commercial fisherman Scott Boley, a former PFMC member, said he believed the seasons would not be altered after NOAA-Fisheries — the anadromous fish corner of the commerce department — signed off on the seasons in early April.

"I think the political pressure was pretty intense to make sure they had a recreational fishing season," Boley said Thursday. "That's what was preserved."

The recreational chinook season from Port Orford south to Horse Mountain near Manzanita, Calif., is set to open May 15 and run through July 4. That framework allows for fishing over the Memorial Day and Fourth of July holidays — a key for coastal ports to lure tourists from inland cities.

Fishing then would close to curb impacts on Klamath chinook. The reopening of the season on Sept. 1-6 would give anglers a late-season shot at the ocean chinook. That includes the Labor Day weekend of Sept. 1-3.

The hatchery coho season starts June 17 and the Oregon part of the Klamath Zone is part of a 20,000-fish limit for the Oregon coast. Only fin-clipped coho may be kept during that fishery, which runs only through July 4 south of Humbug Mountain near Port Orford. Even if the quota is not reached, Klamath Zone anglers cannot fish for hatchery coho after the July 4 deadline for chinook. The daily limits remain two salmon a day.

The rules do not affect in-river recreational angling, including bay and estuary fishing.

A combination of the 2002 salmon die-off and other in-river problems have led biologists to estimate that only 27,000 chinook — 8,000 below the 35,000-fish "floor" set to ensure viable spawning — would return to the Klamath this year if no ocean fishing occurred.