Saving Seafood

California: Bill would allow crab season to close temporarily for whale entanglements

February 21, 2018 — North Coast state Sen. Mike McGuire is looking to make changes to the state’s Fish and Game Code with the Fisheries Omnibus Bill, SB 1309, which he introduced Friday.

Several of the provisions in the bill would impact local fisherman and local practices. And, according to McGuire, several of the changes were introduced at the request of fishermen.

Specifically, one provision would update what McGuire called “antiquated regulations” for the Humboldt Bay anchovy fleet.

The bill would establish one 60-ton limit on anchovies taken from Humboldt Bay between May 1 and December 1 each year, rather than two 15-ton limits for specific time periods each year.

“Humboldt Bay has always been subject to its own anchovy fishery regulations,” he said. “The Fishing Omnibus Bill brings the Humboldt Bay regulation in line with the rest of the state.”

Several provisions of SB 1309 deal with the Dungeness crab fishing industry — one would allow the director of California Department of Fish and Wildlife to temporarily close a crabbing season in the event of a whale entanglement, another would create new regulations for lost crabbing gear.

“This bill would authorize the director, upon the unanimous recommendation of the California Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group, as defined, to, on an emergency basis, close Dungeness crab season in any waters due to whale entanglements, or reopen Dungeness crab season in those waters if the risk of whale entanglements has abated,” the proposed bill states.

The working group is made up of commercial and recreational fishermen, environmental organization representatives, members of the disentanglement network, and state and local agencies, according to the Ocean Protection Council website.

“Two seasons ago there was an entanglement in Monterey Bay,” McGuire said Monday. “The director of Fish and Wildlife didn’t have the authority to close crab season even though there was an entanglement. The crab fleet came to the committee and asked us to change this provision in law, which is why we are advancing this fix in the omnibus bill.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, which filed a lawsuit alleging Fish and Wildlife violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing crab fishing, said McGuire’s bill does not go far enough.

Read the full story at the Eureka Times-Standard

 

CALIFORNIA: Whither the crab? Monterey Bay pulls empty pots

January 9, 2017 — SANTA CRUZ , Calif — As a labor strike continues to dry dock their colleagues to the north, many Monterey Bay Dungeness crab fishers are pulling predominantly empty pots, despite letting them soak for as much as two weeks.

“You run a whole string and pull a bunch of blanks, you’re going to start getting eggy,” said Justin Barry, 38, a crewmember on the commercial crabber Five Stars, which is docked at the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor. “The whole thing’s belly up. We’re trying to convince our captain not to call it a season at this point.”

To make matters worse, the market price of Dungeness crab remains relatively low — from $3 to $3.25 a pound — despite the crustacean’s scarcity.

“There’s just not a whole lot of crab to buy right now,” said Hans Haveman, co-owner of H&H Fish. “We were paying as much as $5 a pound around New Year’s. I’m not even sure what I’d pay if someone brought me crab right now. I’d have to think about that.”

Vincent Pham, 40, owns two crab boats in the Santa Cruz Harbor, both named Five Stars. This week, he looked out at the wind chop whipping the ocean outside the harbor mouth.

“It’s not cheap to go out and pull empty crab pots,” said Pham. “You have to know when to say when.”

Many recreational crabbers have already pulled the plug.

Read the full story at the Santa Cruz Sentinel 

The West Coast Groundfish Recovery: The Best Fish News You Haven’t Heard Yet

December 16, 2015 — Monterey, California, used to be an epicenter in the West Coast commercial fishing industry. But these days the city’s waterfront is full of restaurants serving shrimp and tilapia imported from China. And it’s not the only place doing so.

Many small ports around the United States have fallen into disrepair as more Americans consume imported, often farmed seafood. But there’s also an evolution taking place in commercial fishing in some small port towns that might just bring them back to life.

Cities up and down the West Coast once relied heavily on local “groundfish,” such as rockfish, sand dabs, and petrale sole. But the groundfish fishery saw a dramatic decline by 2000, and although many of the fish themselves have come back, the industry hasn’t recovered. Now, a public-private partnership is working to bring access to local fish in small port communities. And it’s a change that could benefit fishermen and women and the environment, and help small port towns rebuild more robust, stable, and diversified economies.

The Dark Days

Guiseppe “Joe” Pennisi, a third generation Monterey fisherman, has been running a boat since he was 18. He saw the West Coast ground fishery begin to grow in 1987 and balloon to hit 11,000 vessels by 2000. That was the year the federal government declared the coast of Oregon, Washington, and California an “economic disaster” due to groundfish stocks collapsing.

At the time, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program moved most species of West Coast groundfish on to their red “Avoid” list, and by 2005, the nonprofits Oceana and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to protect groundfish.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

Concerns over anchovy numbers prompt plan for new stock assessment

November 16, 2015 — SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Amid concerns that the anchovy population along the West Coast might have “collapsed” due to environmental factors, regulators committed Monday to update a 20-year-old stock assessment for the fish, but not to enact stricter harvest rules as some groups had hoped.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, a 19-member policy making group consisting of fishery representatives from Western states, laid out a plan to assess the anchovy stock by next fall, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hasn’t done since 1995.

At the council meeting, federal scientists reported that while surveys have found very low numbers of anchovy adults and eggs, they’ve also detected high numbers of young anchovy. It is unclear, though, what that means for the population’s sustainability.

Because of a lack of comprehensive information, the anchovy stock has been subject to speculation. Like sardines, anchovy numbers often fluctuate. Conservationists, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and Monterey Bay whale watching tour companies still worry that the current fishing quotas could be too high and affecting other animals, such as whales, birds and sea lions.

“This is a victory because we’ve been asking for an assessment for three years now,” said Geoff Shester, the California program manager for the conservation group Oceana. “That said, the council ignored the warning signs and impacts on wildlife, and they’re still basing their regulations on a 20-year-old population estimate.”

Read the full story at Santa Cruz Sentinel

 

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

In California’s Protected Waters, Counting Fish Without Getting Wet

September 8, 2015 — Diver Dan Abbott unloads his scuba gear on a beach in Monterey, Calif. — his tank, flippers and a waterproof clipboard covered in tally marks. He spent the morning counting fish: pile perch, black perch, blue rockfish and kelp rockfish are among the 150 fish he spotted.

Abbott is diving with a team from Reef Check California, a group of volunteers doing underwater surveys by counting everything in the kelp forest in Monterey Bay.

He’s part of an effort to determine whether there are more fish in the waters now than there were eight years ago. That’s when this kelp forest was set aside as a marine protected area, where there’s little or no fishing allowed, part of a huge experiment to restore marine life.

There are more than a hundred protected areas off California, covering 16 percent of state waters, and the only way to know if they’re working is for Abbott and others to keep checking the marine population year after year.

Read the full story at New York Now