Sea Otters likely to be legislative focus for Unted Fisherman of Alaska this year

Sea otters and the Arctic are two focal points for Alaska’s top fishing group at both state and federal policy levels.

United Fishermen of Alaska is the nations largest industry trade group representing nearly 40 organizations. At its recent annual meeting UFA outlined several of its policy watches prior to the legislative session; the group also gave out awards and made a job offer.

UFA is working closely with state and federal overseers to craft a management plan for exploding populations of sea otters in Southeast Alaska. The mammals, which were reintroduced to the region in the 1950s, are feasting on fishermen’s shellfish catches and completely wiping out stocks in prime areas. Sea otters are protected under the Endangered Species Act and may only be hunted by Alaska Natives for traditional uses.

“I think there are opportunities for Alaska Natives to more readily use sea otters in their art, and there also is the need for a management plan,” said UFA executive director Mark Vinsel.  “One thing that is lacking in the US policy is consideration for exploding species. That is a situation that all parties see happening here with sea otters in Southeast Alaska.”

Read the full article at SEAFOOD.COM

Commercial Market Squid Fishery to Close Nov. 21

In partnership with the SW Fisheries Science Center and with cooperation from the Department of Fish and Game, CWPA mounted a field research program involving fishermen to expand understanding of the natural fluctuations of the market squid resource.  CWPA sponsors collaborative squid research and will be sending out another field survey of squid grounds in early December.

The Department of Fish and Game (DFG) will close the commercial fishery for market squid at noon on Nov. 21.

Based on landings information and projections, DFG has determined that the season’s harvest limit of 118,000 short tons of market squid will be reached by that date. The squid fishing season runs from April through March. Therefore, the fishery will remain closed until the current season ends March 31, 2013.

Market squid remains the state’s largest and most lucrative commercial fishery, valued at over $69 million last season.

DFG has been tracking catches daily in anticipation of reaching the harvest limit, which was established to ensure squid are not overharvested.

Domestically, market squid, Loligo (Doryteuthis) opalescens, is sold as calamari for food and as bait in the recreational fishery. Much of the market squid catch is frozen and exported overseas.

The squid fishery has been managed under the state’s Market Squid Fishery Management Plan since 2005. The goals of the Plan are to ensure long-term conservation and sustainability of market squid, reduce the potential for overfishing and provide a framework for management.

In addition to the harvest limit, only a limited number of commercial squid fishing permits are issued. The fishery is closed on weekends to allow for periods of uninterrupted spawning each week.

The Plan was developed under the provisions set forth by California’s Marine Life Management Act (MLMA), which became law in 1999. The MLMA created state policies, goals and objectives to govern the conservation, sustainable use and restoration of California’s living marine resources.

Department of Fish and Game News

We are not the only ones who feel strongly about the allegations made by Oceana, here are some similar articles and places they are being published…

California Wetfish Producers Intervene in Lawsuit in Opposition to Oceana

The following was released by the California Wetfish Producers Association:

 Monterey, Calif. – Feb 22, 2012 – The California Wetfish Producers Association, a non-profit association promoting sustainable marine resources and fishing communities, announced today that it is working with a diverse group – including the City of Monterey and the Ventura Port District – to challenge a federal lawsuit by Oceana that would decimate California’s historic wetfish industry.

The group filed to intervene as defendants in the ongoing case by Earthjustice, representing Oceana, against the Secretary of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Saving Seafood

Squid and sardine fishing is no danger to species in Monterey Bay

The Monterey Bay region’s healthiest fisheries are under attack by extremists.  Touting studies with faulty calculations, activists have been trying to persuade federal regulators to massively curtail sardine limits, if not ban fishing outright. But the science doesn’t support their conclusions.

 Today’s fishery management of coastal pelagic species along the West Coast portion of the California Current Ecosystem is recognized as the most protective in the world, one of only a few areas that’s deemed sustainable by internationally recognized scientists.  This is not a newly implemented strategy.  The state and federal government established guidelines more than a decade ago for coastal pelagic species harvested in California and on the West Coast, maintaining at least 75 percent of the fish in the ocean to ensure a resilient core biomass for other marine species.

Saving Seafood

Oceana is wrong about forage fish

Regarding the recent op-ed by Oceana on forage fish management, this is just more incompetent baloney. I don’t know who is advising Oceana on these science questions, but it is plain that it didn’t comprehend the Lenfest report. This report clearly calls out West Coast forage fish management as highly precautionary and the best in the world.

Oceana’s science arguments, claiming that sardines are being overfished, have been subjected to peer review and don’t hold up. Oceana tried to get a forage bill through the Legislature last year, but it had so many problems it didn’t pass, thank goodness. Many of us are working with the Fish and Game Commission to develop a state forage policy that has a scientific basis. Oceana wants to kill our fisheries, even when they are sustainable.

Kathy Fosmark 
Alliance of Communities for Sustainable Fisheries

Monterey County Herald

Fishermen fight suit over forage limits; battle set over state’s dominant fisheries

Joined by Monterey officials, California’s wetfish producers are fighting a lawsuit that aims for greater protections for anchovies, sardines and squid, setting the stage for a major battle over one of the state’s dominant fisheries.

So-called “wetfish,” also known as forage fish, live near the bottom of the food chain but make up a substantial percentage of California’s commercial catch, including 97 percent of all landings in Moss Landing and Monterey. In December, environmentalists filed suit to change how the federal government manages those fisheries.

Mercury News, Santa Cruz Sentinel

California is global leader in managing forage fish

More than 150 years ago, immigrant Chinese fishermen launched sampans into the chilly waters of Monterey Bay to capture squid. The Bay also lured fishermen fromSicily and other Mediterranean countries, who brought round-haul nets to fish for sardines.

This was the beginning of the largest fishery in the western hemisphere – California’s famed ‘wetfish’ industry, imprinted on our collective conscience by writers like John Steinbeck.

Who doesn’t remember Cannery Row?

Capitol Weekly, North County Times

What Makes A Fishery “Viable”?

To no one’s surprise, environmentalists and industry lobbyists are butting heads in a major legal wrangle over California’s “wetfish”–sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and market squid. As you may recall, the pretty little market squid is the state’s single biggest fishery:

And it’s not just humans who like to eat them–they’re a major food source for sea lions, seals, seabirds, sharks, etc. According to the Mercury News, Oceana is now suing to “force the federal government to consider impacts on the broader marine ecosystem when setting limits.” If Oceana wins, then when the Feds decide how many squid fishermen can catch, they would have to factor in the needs of all the other animals that like to eat squid.

Science 2.0

D.B. Pleschner: Oceana claims controversy but knowledgeable; scientists disagree

D.B. Pleschner

The anti-fishing group Oceana is up to mischief again.

Members claim that when the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted last week to allow sardine fishing to continue in 2013, based on recommendations of their Scientific and Statistical Committee — a group of knowledgeable scientists who review all council actions to achieve best available science — a debate erupted (spurred largely by Oceana) about whether the sardine resource is in a state of collapse similar to what happened in the 1940s “Cannery Row” era.

But as usual, Oceana is attempting to obfuscate the truth to achieve its agenda of shutting down fishing.

The fact is there was no controversy among expert fisheries biologists over the setting of the 2013 sardine harvest limit, and the resource is not about to collapse. The controversy stemmed from the problem that the acoustic survey, one of three indices used to measure sardine abundance, estimated only 13,000 metric tons in the Pacific Northwest, during the same period the fishery was catching 50,000 metric tons, in the same general area and an aerial survey estimated 900,000 metric tons.

Because this was an “update” year, neither scientists nor the council had leeway to change the stock assessment, even though it likely underestimated the sardine population. In fact, scientists from around the globe have acknowledged that the West Coast sardine fishery is among the best managed in the world.

That’s because the management of Pacific sardines is very precautionary. We have a risk-averse formula in place that ensures when population numbers go down, the harvest also goes down. Conversely, when more sardines are available, more harvest is allowed.

For example, all the indices used to measure abundance — acoustics, daily egg production and an aerial survey conducted in the Pacific Northwest — ticked upward (or were stable) last year, which led to a higher harvest guideline in 2012.

In 2011, our sardine fisheries harvested only 5.11 percent of a very conservative stock estimate, leaving nearly 95 percent of the species for predators and ecosystem needs.

Does that sound like overfishing to you?

Apparently Oceana doesn’t understand what actually occurred during the historic collapse of the sardine fishery in the 1940s. But for those of us who care, it’s important to compare historical data with the present. This is especially important because sardine fisheries were “virtually unregulated” on the West Coast during the Cannery Row era, but since then the U.S. sardine fishery has operated under strict management rules.

Consider that the sardine biomass declined from 793,000 metric tons in 1949, when sardines abandoned the Pacific Northwest, to about 3,000 metric tons in 1965, and the exploitation rate for adult sardines during most of the period was more than 50 percent — far cry from the fishery today.

Because this year’s stock assessment declined, Oceana claimed the sky is falling on sardines, and demanded that the harvest rate for 2013 be cut to 2 percent — which would effectively close the fishery entirely. The Scientific and Statistical Committee and Pacific Fishery Management Council knew the truth and rejected Oceana’s demands.

As an author of the sardine harvest policy, Dr. Richard Parrish makes these important points about key differences between then and now:

• Sardines have not abandoned the Pacific Northwest
• Sea temperatures have not chilled to the levels seen in the late 1940s

 Present harvest guidelines were designed so that the council would not have to change the harvest rate every time the stock size changed.

The up-and-down flexibility in harvest guidelines, based on annual biomass estimates, is an important feature to achieve optimum yield — which considers fisheries as well as forage.

These scientific facts support the Coastal Pelagic Species Management Team, cientific and Statistical Committee and Pacific Fishery Management Council’s decision that the current harvest control rules for sardine (and other CPS) are precautionary and going forward will continue to protect our marine ecosystem and fishery.

We can’t afford to destroy sardine and other CPS fisheries, the backbone of California’s fishing economy.

D.B. Pleschner is executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, a nonprofit designed to promote sustainable wetfish resources.

Santa Cruz Sentinel

National ocean policy sparks partisan fight

The wrangling threatens to overshadow a fundamental issue — the country’s patchwork approach to managing offshore waters. Twenty-seven federal agencies, representing interests as diverse as farmers and shippers, have some role in governing the oceans. Obama’s July 2010 executive order set up a National Ocean Council, based at the White House, that is designed to reconcile the competing interests of different agencies and ocean users.

Hurricane Sandy, Climate Change, and the Future of Fish

Brian Hajeski, 41, of Brick, New Jersey, reacts as he looks at debris of a home that washed up on to the Mantoloking Bridge the morning after Hurricane Sandy rolled through, Tuesday, October 30, 2012, in Mantoloking, New Jersey.

Hurricane Sandy’s terrible toll in lost lives and decimated communities is still being measured. But as we start to sort out the pieces, it’s also worth noting that the storm sent shockwaves through the mid-Atlantic region’s fishing industry. Harbors and infrastructure were pummeled and in some cases destroyed along the New York and New Jersey coastlines, and the Garden State Seafood Association has already asked Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) to formally request a federal fisheries disaster declaration.

In the aftermath of the storm, the link between our changing climate and increasingly extreme weather is coming into greater focus and being called out by an increasingly large caucus. (For more on the link between climate and extreme weather events in North America, see this new column by the Center for American Progress.) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was among the first to link Sandy’s fury to the “reality” of climate change. Bloomberg Businessweek ran a cover story under the banner headline, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid,” which called out the increasing spate of corporate voices accounting for climate change in their business models. And the magazine’s namesake, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, cited climate change as the tipping point that led to his much-ballyhooed endorsement of President Barack Obama for reelection.

Click here to read the full article.

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