Saving Seafood

PFMC Action Takes Scientific Approach to Anchovy Management

November 16, 2015 — The following was released by the California Wetfish Producers Association:

On Sunday November 15, the Pacific Fishery Management Council received a presentation from the Southwest Fishery Science Center, stating that recent year field surveys, particularly in 2015, have documented record abundance of eggs and juvenile anchovies along the entire west coast. The Center also signaled their intent to conduct a stock assessment in 2016, preceded by a scientific workshop to determine the best method to assess anchovy fluctuations, as recommended by the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC).   The management team and advisory subpanel supported this stepwise scientific approach, noting that even though anchovy landings ticked upward in 2015, the small fishery in Monterey was well below harvest limits, and recent surveys signaling significant new recruitment were optimistic signs of increased abundance.

Environmental activists, while pleased with news of the upcoming stock assessment, pleaded for the Council to establish interim measures in the meantime, using the “point of .concern” framework built into the CPS management plan to reduce the harvest limit, which would likely close the fishery until the stock assessment was completed. Public testimony concluded with statements from several fishermen from Monterey and southern California, along with two spotter pilots, who testified to the amazing abundance of anchovy they have witnessed in recent years. In addition to Monterey fishermen who have fished anchovies for 50 years, Corbin Hanson, a southern California fisherman who saw literally miles of anchovies along the central coast when he drove his vessel from southern California to Monterey this summer, testified: “Anchovies are probably the most abundant fish in our waters! I spend the majority of my time fishing these waters and can testify to this fact.”

The Council deliberated on the anchovy issue on Monday morning, November 16.   They ultimately decided to proceed with the stepwise approach supported by the management team, advisory subpanel and the SSC.   This will assure that recent year data will be incorporated into the stock assessment. The Council also asked the CPS management team to analyze various options for active management.

This analysis will require significant work, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife will need to age the backlog of anchovy samples in time for the workshop next spring. However, this scientific approach is the best approach to quantify the current abundance of anchovy, and will lead to a new assessment that will benefit both the ecosystem and the fishing community. California anchovy fishermen and processors appreciate the consideration that Council members gave to fishermen’s testimony. “Even though landings are small, the anchovy fishery is very important to Monterey’s wetfish industry,” says Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the non-profit California Wetfish Producers Association. “We all thank the Council for using science, not politics, in its decision. Council members recognized that a sound management decision requires that all evidence of recent anchovy recruitment be considered.”

View a PDF of the release here

 

D.B. PLESCHNER: Anchovy collapse simply a manufactured ‘crisis’

November 15, 2015 — If you follow news about the Monterey Bay, you’ve undoubtedly heard the recent outcry by environmentalists in the media claiming the anchovy population in California has collapsed and the fishery must be closed immediately.

The current controversy stems largely from a study funded by environmental interests that claims an apocalyptic decline of 99 percent of the anchovy population from 1951 to 2011.

However, fishermen have seen a surge in anchovies in recent years. Data collected at the near shore Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System stations and other recent surveys also document a big upswing in anchovy numbers. For example, a 2015 NOAA rockfish cruise report found that “catches of [Pacific sardine and northern anchovy] larvae and pelagic juveniles were the highest ever in the core [Monterey Bay to Point Reyes] and north and still relatively high in the south.” Yet the recent study bases its conclusion on outdated historic anchovy egg and larval samples, not recent observation.

Outdated data didn’t stop extremists from seizing on the study to manufacture an anti-fishing crisis for anchovy where none exists. They’re now lobbying the Pacific Fishery Management Council for an emergency closure of the small anchovy fishery in Monterey Bay, saying the current anchovy catch limit of 25,000 metric tons is dangerously high.

In reality, anchovy management employs an extremely precautionary approach, capping the allowed harvest at 25 percent of the estimated population. Josh Lindsay, policy analyst for the National Marine Fisheries Service, which enforces the fishing cap, says, “We took the overfishing limit and told the fishing fleet that they could only catch 25,000 metric tons. That’s a pretty large buffer built into our management.”

Read the full opinion piece at the Santa Cruz Sentinel

 

CALIFORNIA: Anchovy population has not collapsed

November 11, 2015 — I’ve been fishing in Monterey and along the West Coast for more than 30 years and I’m one of only about eight fishermen who fish anchovy in Monterey Bay. I’m shocked at the recent outcry in the media that claims the anchovy population has collapsed!

Environmentalists who are calling for the immediate closure of our local anchovy fishery are basing their claims on a flawed study that deliberately omits data from recent years showing a huge upswing in the anchovy population.

Read the full story at Santa Cruz Sentinel

CALIFORNIA: Plentiful anchovies far from collapse

November 10, 2015 — I’ve been fishing for more than 50 years up and down the West Coast and I’m shocked at all the hysterical claims I’ve read in the media recently about the anchovy “collapse.” Much of the hype stemmed from an anchovy study still in peer review, but the truth of the matter is that its conclusions are disastrously wrong!

I’m one of a handful of fishermen who fish anchovy in Monterey. I’m on the water nearly every day and I’ve seen a big surge in the anchovy population in recent years. Anchovies now stretch from the “pinheads” fishermen see in Southern California all the way up the coast past Half Moon Bay, where a large group of whales was recently spotted feeding on anchovies.

Read the full story at Monterey Herald

 

Big Trouble Looms For California Salmon — And For Fishermen

November 6, 2015 — The West Coast’s historic drought has strained many Californians – from farmers who’ve watched their lands dry up, to rural residents forced to drink and cook with bottled water. Now, thanks to a blazing hot summer and unusually warm water, things are looking pretty bad for salmon, too – and for the fishermen whose livelihoods depend on them.

Preliminary counts of juvenile winter-run Chinook are at extreme low levels. These are salmon that are born during the summer in California’s Sacramento River and begin to swim downstream in the fall.

Unusually warm water in recent months has caused high mortality for the young salmon, which are very temperature sensitive in their early life stages. Most years, about 25 percent of the eggs laid and fertilized by spawning winter-run fish survive. This summer and fall, the survival rate may be as low as 5 percent, according to Jim Smith, project leader with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Bluff office.

“That’s not good,” Smith tells The Salt.

Worse, it’s the second year in a row this has happened. Most Chinook salmon live on a three-year life cycle, which means one more year like the last two could essentially wipe out the winter run. To protect them, fishing for Chinook in the ocean may be restricted in the years ahead, when winter-run fish born in 2014 and 2015 have become big enough to bite a baited hook. The hope is that the few young fish that survived the recent warm-water die-offs will make it through adulthood and eventually return to the river to spawn.

Read the full story at New York Now

 

In the Dry West, Waiting for Congress

November 6, 2015 — KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Drought in the West is an ugly thing. Rivers trickle away to nothing, fires rage, crops fail, ranchers go broke, tribal people watch fish die. As Westerners fight over the little water left, tempers crack, lawsuits fly and bitterness coats whole communities like fine dust.

As the climate warms, the West gets meaner.

The Klamath River begins in southern Oregon and meets the Pacific Ocean among the redwoods in Northern California, draining nearly 16,000 square miles. Until recently, who got water and how much had been deeply contentious issues. In particular, the irrigators and the Indian tribes were angry at one another, and the users in the river’s upper basin were angry with users in the lower basin.

But in recent years, something changed. Hostility gave way to compromise. Just about everybody who wants some of that precious river flow has made nice, given and taken, sat down and compromised.

Three major agreements have been wrapped up in Senate Bill 133, introduced by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and several colleagues. The bill is supported by tribes that want to protect the fish; ranchers who want to feed their cattle; farmers who grow alfalfa and potatoes; fly fishermen and duck hunters; ecologists; a power company; and many local politicians of various ideological stripes.

Toxin Taints Crabs and Kills Sea Mammals, Scientists Warn

November 4, 2015 — The authorities in California are advising people to avoid consumption of crabs contaminated by a natural toxin that has spread throughout the marine ecosystem off the West Coast, killing sea mammals and poisoning various other species.

Kathi A. Lefebvre, the lead research biologist at the Wildlife Algal Toxin Research and Response Network, said on Wednesday that her organization had examined about 250 animals stranded on the West Coast and had found domoic acid, a toxic chemical produced by a species of algae, in 36 animals of several species.

“We’re seeing much higher contamination in the marine food web this year in this huge geographic expanse than in the past,” Ms. Lefebvre said.

She said that the toxin had never before been found in animals stranded in Washington or Oregon, and that there were most likely greater numbers of contaminated marine mammals not being found by humans.

The California Department of Public Health recently advised people to avoid consumption of certain species of crabs because of potential toxicity. Razor clam fisheries in Washington have been closed throughout the summer for the same reason.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the California department said that “recent test results” indicated dangerous levels of domoic acid in Dungeness and rock crabs caught in California waters between Oregon and Santa Barbara, Calif.

Read the full story at The New York Times

US probes dolphin death after Navy uses sonar

November 4, 2015 — HONOLULU (AP) ” The National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday said it was investigating the death of two dolphins found washed ashore in California shortly after Navy ships were using sonar in nearby waters.

The animals are being analyzed to try to determine what caused them to get stranded, agency spokesman Jim Milbury said.

The dolphins were common bottlenose dolphins, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Julie Holland said. They were found Oct. 21 at Imperial Beach and at Silver Strand beach in San Diego.

Two Navy ships were using mid-frequency active sonar 80 nautical miles away from where the dolphins were found, Holland said. They used the sonar for slightly more than an hour over two days from Oct. 19.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Sturgeon Tag Find Brings NOAA Scientists to California School

October 30, 2015 — A green sturgeon tag is a real find, for a kid on the beach and for NOAA scientists.

Ethan Mora and Liam Zarri, researchers from NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, woke up early on a recent October morning to gather critical scientific data on green sturgeon. But they weren’t off to some remote research station; they were going to an elementary school in Napa to reward one of the students with $20 for finding a lost satellite tag.

Deja Walker, a third-grade student at Napa Valley Boys and Girls Club, was strolling with her grandparents on Stinson Beach near San Francisco in early October when she noticed some boys throwing around what looked like a toy. When the kids tossed it aside, she investigated and found the nearly foot-long tube offered a reward for its return to NOAA.

What Deja didn’t know was that she had found one of several satellite tags used by NOAA researchers to understand the impact of commercial halibut fishing on green sturgeon, one of nature’s most prehistoric fish.

Green sturgeon are bottom feeders, scavenging on invertebrates and small fish. They can grow to about eight feet in length and live for about 70 years. Although they spawn in fresh water, the adults may travel up and down the West coast from Mexico to Alaska.

Sturgeon have meandered throughout our oceans and rivers since dinosaurs roamed the Earth. But despite their long history, one population of green sturgeon in California may be edging closer towards extinction. The southern population, or those green sturgeon that spawn in the Sacramento River basin, were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 2006 because of the loss of historical spawning habitat.

Read the full story at The Fishing Wire

 

Lingering drought heightens worries of extinction for salmon

October 28, 2015 — SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Another deadly summer of drought has heightened fears of extinction in the wild for an iconic California salmon, federal officials said Wednesday.

Officials with the National Marine Fisheries Service said preliminary counts indicate that hot, shallow waters caused by the drought killed most of this year’s juvenile winter-run Chinook before they made it out to the Pacific Ocean.

It “doesn’t look very good,” said Garwin Yip, a federal fisheries spokesman.

If a final count this winter confirms the bad news, it would mean a second straight summer in which 5 percent or less of the young fish survived California’s drought.

Since the fish spawn on a three-year cycle, the die-off would make management of next year’s water critical for the salmon’s survival in the wild.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at New Jersey Herald