Fishing News

Barbecue sardines — recipe

Picture: Iain Gillespie

Kirsty Carre — January 22, 2015 — Posted in the The West Australian

Serves 4

2 lemons, zested and juiced

2 green chillies

1/2 cup olive oil

2 tbsp parsley

3 garlic cloves

1 shallot, peeled

1/2 tsp salt

16 sardines, butterflied

2 tbsp olive oil

sourdough bread

Place the lemon zest and juice, chillies, olive oil, parsley, garlic cloves, peeled shallot and salt in a food processor and blitz until it forms a thick sauce. Coat the sardines in olive oil and place them in a barbecue cage (you may need to do this in several batches). Grill on either side for 2-3 minutes. Serve on grilled slices of sourdough with the sauce drizzled over the top.

Official unveiling next week for North Coast marine sanctuary expansion

Kamilah Motley of Washington, D.C. takes in the sweeping view of the Sonoma Coast, north of Bodega Bay, Monday Jan. 20, 2015. The unveiling of the expanded Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries will take place next week. (Kent Porter / Press Democrat) 2015

Last-minute consultations were underway in Washington this week in advance of the expected publication Tuesday of final plans for expansion of two adjoining national marine sanctuaries off the North Coast.

Reports of a few lingering operational questions on the part of Coast Guard officials should not impede implementation of long-sought protections for the swath of wildlife-rich waters offshore of Sonoma County, federal sanctuary personnel said.

“So far, the information I have is we are not anticipating any delays,” said Maria Brown, superintendent of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.

The proposed move, announced by the Obama administration in December 2012, will more than double the size of the combined Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries, extending federal protections north along the Sonoma Coast to Point Arena in southern Mendocino County.

The action will fulfill a four-decade quest to ban energy and mineral exploration and extraction off that stretch of coastline, extending federal protection to an additional 2,769 square miles of ocean.

The final rule on the expansion is expected to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, Jan. 27, triggering a 45-day review by Congress and California Gov. Jerry Brown before the area is officially included in sanctuary boundaries. Sanctuary officials earlier had said the rule would be published Jan. 20.

Matt Stout, communications director for the National Marine Sanctuary System, said the expansion is the agency’s largest undertaking of its kind short of creating a new sanctuary. But he said strong support for the plan among lawmakers suggested smooth sailing ahead.

“This expansion has grown out of the will of Congress to see something happen here,” Stout said. “We’ve had nothing but absolutely fantastic support from all members of Congress. And the local delegation is incredibly vocal and supportive, so we wouldn’t anticipate any challenge.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.

Read original story: The Press Democrat

Speaker Atkins Announces “Pacific to Plate” Legislation to Boost Coastal Fish Markets

SAN DIEGO – Assembly Speaker Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) has announced that she will introduce legislation, “Pacific to Plate,” to clarify and streamline state laws to make it easier for San Diego’s Tuna Harbor Dockside Market, and other fish markets like it, to grow and thrive.

“Since the market opened, thousands of San Diegans have enjoyed being able to walk down this pier and choose their next meal from the fresh catch brought ashore by our local fishermen,” Speaker Atkins said.

“Though the Market has been successful, there are still some barriers in state law that need to be overcome to ensure its ongoing operation. ‘Pacific to Plate,’ the legislation I am introducing in the Assembly, will help keep red tape from tangling up this boon to San Diego’s Blue Economy.”

Speaker Atkins hosted a Jan. 17 press conference during the weekly fish market to announce the proposed legislation. She was joined by San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox, Port of San Diego Board Chairman Dan Malcolm and local fisherman Peter Halmay.

The proposed state legislation would:

• Allow Fishermen’s Markets to operate as food facilities
• Allow fresh fish to be cleaned for direct sale at Fishermen’s Markets, and
• Streamline the permitting process, so commercial fishermen can organize under a single permit—just like Certified Farmers’ Markets.

Currently, Fishermen’s Markets are not defined in state law as food facilities, complicating the permit process. In addition, a special exemption is needed to allow vendors to clean fresh fish for patrons.

“San Diego was once the tuna capital of the world,” said Supervisor Cox. “This bill can help us establish more fishermen’s markets, create more jobs for local fishermen and give San Diegans more fish caught fresh off our waters.”

The bill has attracted broad bipartisan support from San Diego’s state legislative delegation. Assemblymembers Rocky Chavez, Brian Jones, Brian Maienschein, Marie Waldron and Shirley Weber are co-sponsoring the “Pacific to Plate” bill, along with state Senators Joel Anderson, Patricia Bates, Marty Block and Ben Hueso.

San Diego’s Tuna Harbor market has been a success since its Aug. 2 opening, drawing 350 visitors a week, who spend about $15,000 on fresh seafood brought directly to the pier by local fishermen.

The market was established following action by San Diego County and the Port District, which partnered to establish a place where local commercial fishermen could sell directly to consumers. The county and Port requested that the State become involved to ease regulations that could be obstacles to the growth of the Tuna Harbor market, and other coastal markets like it.

View original post: http://asmdc.org/speaker/

California drought could end with storms known as atmospheric rivers

California’s drought crept in slowly, but it could end with a torrent of winter storms that stream across the Pacific, dumping much of the year’s rain and snow in a few fast-moving and potentially catastrophic downpours.

Powerful storms known as atmospheric rivers, ribbons of water vapor that extend for thousands of miles, pulling moisture from the tropics and delivering it to the West Coast, have broken 40% of California droughts since 1950, recent research shows.

“These atmospheric rivers — their absence or their presence — really determine whether California is in drought or not and whether floods are going to occur,” said F. Martin Ralph, a research meteorologist who directs the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

The storms, which flow like massive rivers in the sky, can carry 15 times as much water as the Mississippi and deliver up to half of the state’s annual precipitation between December and February, scientists say. Though atmospheric rivers are unlikely to end California’s drought this year, if they bring enough rain to erase the state’s huge precipitation deficit, they could wreak havoc by unleashing floods and landslides.

Scientists using a new type of satellite data discovered atmospheric rivers in the 1990s, and studies since then have revealed the phenomenon’s strong influence on California’s water supply and extreme weather.

This month, a group of government and university scientists, including Ralph, are launching a major field experiment to better understand atmospheric rivers as they develop over the Pacific. Through the end of February, some researchers will fly airplanes above storms as they pass through, while others will monitor them from ships hundreds of miles off California. As the storms make landfall, the scientists will collect data with ground-based instruments.

“We’re going to measure the heck out of them,” Ralph said.

Scientists will use the information to try to improve atmospheric river forecasts, including where they will hit hardest and for how long. That could help communities prepare for flooding and allow water managers to make better use of storm runoff.

These atmospheric rivers — their absence or their presence — really determine whether California is in drought or not and whether floods are going to occur.- F. Martin Ralph, a research meteorologist who directs the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

California usually needs about five good atmospheric rivers each winter to fill reservoirs, stimulate spring vegetation growth and build snowpack to healthy levels, said Michael Anderson, a climatologist for the California Department of Water Resources. But how much the storms boost the state’s water supply depends on the characteristics of each one, including how cold it is, whether it makes landfall toward the north or south, and whether the precipitation falls mostly as rain near the coast or as snow in the mountains.

Jay Jasperse, chief engineer for the Sonoma County Water Agency, calls atmospheric rivers “our water supply up in the air.” The agency, which operates two reservoirs in the Russian River Valley, one of the state’s most flood-prone watersheds, has been seeking more precise forecasts to make better decisions about releasing water from reservoirs to accommodate storm runoff or conserving it to use as drinking water.

“We want to better handle these short, intense rainfall events,” Jasperse said.

If atmospheric rivers fail to arrive, California could be in serious trouble. That’s what happened last winter, when a ridge of high pressure lingered off the West Coast for months, blocking storms and intensifying the drought.

An atmospheric river broke through last February but didn’t bring enough rain to make a big improvement. In December, a strong atmospheric river drenched Northern California, but much of it fell as rain near the coast rather than snow in the mountains. That means the state will need several more big storms by the end of next month to build up its snowpack, which in the Sierra Nevada remains at less than half of normal.

As much as Californians might hope for a series of atmospheric rivers to sweep in and end the three-year drought, experts warn that so much rain at once could bring devastation.

California’s most severe storm event on record was caused by a series of atmospheric rivers that began in December 1861 and poured rain for weeks. The storms caused such extensive flooding in the Central Valley that the state Capitol was temporarily moved from Sacramento to San Francisco.

Ten years ago, an atmospheric river brought record-setting rain to Southern California, causing a mudslide that killed 10 people in the Ventura County beach town of La Conchita.

Atmospheric rivers are expected to grow stronger over the century as global warming increases the amount of water vapor that can be lifted out of tropical oceans and pushed to higher latitudes.

A 2011 simulation by the U.S. Geological Survey found that a hypothetical megastorm — an atmospheric river event so strong it happens only once every 100 to 200 years — could be more catastrophic than a major earthquake, over several weeks bringing 10 feet of rain and hurricane-force winds, widespread flooding, landslides and $300 billion in property damage.

Dale Cox, a USGS project manager who oversaw the disaster scenario, said atmospheric rivers “provide us water, but they are also a major source of our calamity.”

“Everybody’s hoping for them,” he said, “but we don’t want too many.”

tony.barboza@latimes.com

Read original post: http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-atmospheric-rivers-20150119-story.html

The Pacific Sardine Fishery: Then and Now

Sardines and giant kelp, Channel Islands

The Pacific sardine (Sardinops sagax caerulea) is a small pelagic fish found throughout the Pacific Ocean. In California, the Pacific sardine fishery has historically been one of the largest commercial fisheries in the state. The fishery began in the early 1900s, peaked in the late 1930s, and then declined rapidly in the 1940s during a well-known population downturn fueled by oceanic regime changes and fishing pressure. A moratorium was placed on the Pacific sardine fishery from 1967 to 1986. Then, beginning in the 1990s, Pacific sardine landings increased as the population recovered.

Today, the Pacific sardine fishery continues to contribute to California’s economy. In 2013, the fishery for Pacific sardine was the fourth largest commercial fishery in the state of California by volume. These landings were valued at over $1.5 million dollars.

Pacific sardine

Since 2000, the commercial fishery off California, Oregon, and Washington has been managed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council under the Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery Management Plan. The commercial fishing season for Pacific sardine runs from July 1 through June 30 of the following year. The season is split up into three periods: July 1 – September 14, September 15 – December 31, and January 1 – June 30, each with an assigned harvest limit. Based on 2014 landings information to date from the second period (September 15- December 31), the preliminary harvest amount for the third period (January 1 – June 30, 2015) will be 5,084 metric tons.

For more information about coastwide Pacific sardine landings, please visit the NOAA Fisheries Pacific sardine landings web page. For more information about Pacific sardine history, research, and management, please visit CDFW’s Pacific sardine web page.

Original post by Anna Holder, CDFW Environmental Scientist  — CDFW file photos

Federal appeals court backs restrictions on delta water deliveries

A boater plies the Sacramento River near the town of Rio Vista. A federal appeals court on Monday backed environmental restrictions on water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to urban Southern California and San Joaquin Valley agriculture. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Ruling that water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is important not just for people but also for the fish that swim in it, a federal appeals court on Monday backed environmental restrictions on deliveries to urban Southern California and San Joaquin Valley agriculture.

A panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed most of a lower court ruling in a long-running legal battle over endangered fish protections in the delta, the hub of California’s water system.
The appeals decision was issued in one of two lawsuits filed by San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts — including the Westlands Water District — and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California challenging federal protections that at times limit pumping from the delta to the big aqueduct systems that carry water south.

Though the water districts won at the U.S. District Court level in the two cases, the 9th Circuit has now unraveled both of those victories.
Monday’s decision upheld a set of environmental restrictions imposed in 2009 by the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect imperiled chinook salmon, steelhead and green sturgeon that migrate through the delta, along with a small population of orca whales that prey on salmon.

Noting that “people need water, but so do fish,” the 80-page opinion echoed another 9th Circuit decision issued this year that affirmed delta smelt protections adopted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

As in the smelt case, the appeals judges concluded that U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger overstepped legal bounds when he relied on thousands of pages of outside scientific opinion to invalidate many of the environmental restrictions.

Judge Richard Tallman, who wrote the opinion, said the three-judge panel agreed that the fisheries service “used the best scientific data available, even if that science was not always perfect.”

Major urban and farm water districts that get supplies from the delta have for years attacked the salmon and smelt protections in the courts and the political arena. The water contractors argue that federal fishery agencies focus too much on the effects of the delta pumping operations while ignoring other harms to native species, such as pollution and predation by non-native fish.

Bob Muir, spokesman for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which imports delta water to the Southland, said Monday’s decision was not surprising, given the ruling in the smelt case.

Metropolitan and a number of other agencies have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the smelt decision. The high court in recent years has declined to take up other California water cases. A decision on the request is expected next month.

The appeals opinion “is likely to be the last word. But you never know,” said Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice, which represented fishing and environmental groups that intervened in the salmon case.

Caputo called Monday’s opinion “a pretty resounding affirmation by the judges that the [fisheries service] did the right thing when it protected the salmon.”

In a departure from the detailed parsing of environmental law that made up most of the opinion, Tallman opened with a passage from “East of Eden,” John Steinbeck’s novel about California’s Salinas Valley: “And then the dry years would come … The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley.”

“The same can be said for California’s Central Valley,” Tallman wrote, adding that the salmon case was about competing demands for delta water.

“This water is essential to the continuing vitality of agriculture in the Central Valley, and some 25 million Californians depend on it for daily living. But that water is also an important habitat for thousands of river and anadromous fish, many of which are endangered.”

Read the original story here.

President Obama signs discharge permit exemption for commercial fisheries

Yesterday, President Obama signed into law the “Howard Coble Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2014,” exempting small fishing vessels from the EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) discharge permit requirements. The law extended the exemption provision for three years on the very day that the EPA’s NPDES permit requirements would have taken effect.

The regulation was intended to prevent fuels, toxic chemicals, or hazardous waste from entering the water. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told the Alaska Journal of Commernce that requiring a permits for fishermen to hose down a boat is overkill – especially when recreational boats, including mega-yachts – are exempt from the rule.

“We want to abide by environmental regulations that make sense,” Murkowski told the Journal, “But I don’t think any of us believe it should be a requirement for a fishermen who has had a good day out on the water, and they are cleaning up the boat, and hosing slime and maybe some fish guts off the deck and that then becomes a reportable discharge to the EPA…. Let’s use some common sense here.”

Read more about the extension from the Alaska Journal of Commerce here

View the full Act signed by the President here

Unusual Species Highlight West Coast Cetacean and Ecosystem Survey

The research ship Ocean Starr returned to San Diego Wednesday, completing NOAA Fisheries’ first comprehensive survey of whales, dolphins and porpoises and the marine ecosystem off the West Coast in six years. Highlights of the four-month survey included unusual marine mammals and birds drawn by warm ocean conditions, and the first offshore tests of an innovative new system for remotely counting marine mammals through sound.

“You don’t know what you will find until you are out on the ship, which is what makes it so important,” said Jay Barlow, chief scientist of the California Current Cetacean and Ecosystem Assessment Survey that stretched from California north to Washington. “This has been a very interesting and surprising survey because we’ve seen species we wouldn’t expect, which gives us information about their distribution as well as about current ocean conditions.”

The Survey led by the Southwest Fisheries Science Center identifies and counts cetaceans, seabirds and marine turtles using high-powered binoculars and towed listening arrays. The team also uses a series of specialized nets and oceanographic sampling gear to survey microorganisms that provide important clues about ocean conditions as well to monitor the physical environment through which the ship is traveling. In some cases researchers take tiny biopsies from whales and dolphins for genetic studies of population structure, foraging habits and health.

Scientists use the survey results to assess numbers of whales and dolphins and trends in their abundance, which helps determine the degree of protection the species may need.

Unusual species sighted included pygmy killer whales seen for the first time off California and warm-water seabirds such as band-rumped storm petrels seen for the first time in the Northeast Pacific. The survey also sighted sei, blue, fin, humpback, killer and short-finned pilot whales. In one instance the crew could hear a particularly loud chorus of singing humpback whales in the open air on deck.

The abundance of sei whales was a surprise, with more sightings of this species than the last five surveys combined from 1991 to 2008.

The Survey included the first offshore tests of the Drifting Acoustic Spar Buoy Recorder (DASBR), a pioneering system developed at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center to record the calls and other sounds of marine mammals while drifting the open ocean. Crews recover the DASBRs by following a GPS beacon and later acoustic analysis can distinguish the number and density of different species of marine mammals in surrounding waters.

The successful launch and recovery of several DASBRs over the course of the survey helps pave the way for longer-term deployment of the devices that cost less than $5,000 each. DASBRs drift in the open ocean and avoid the engine noise of similar arrays towed behind ships. That allows them to collect more data at a lower cost, supplementing traditional surveys that require expensive ship operations.

More information can be found on the Southwest Fisheries Science Center and  California Current Cetacean and Ecosystem Assessment Survey web sites.

View San Diego ABC Channel 10 News and CBS Channel 8 News  reports on the California Current Cetacean and Ecosystem Assessment Survey.

A selection of photographs from the four-month West Coast cetacean and ecosystem survey can be viewed on flickr.com.

Read original post here.

Climate change projected to drive marine species northward

New study predicts eastern Pacific species shifting poleward by 30 km per decade

Contributed by Michael Milstein December 10, 2014

Anticipated changes in climate will push West Coast marine species from sharks to salmon northward an average of 30 kilometers per decade, shaking up fish communities and shifting fishing grounds, according to a new study published in Progress in Oceanography.

The study suggests that shifting species will likely move into the habitats of other marine life to the north, especially in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. Some will simultaneously disappear from areas at the southern end of their ranges, especially off Oregon and California.

“As the climate warms, the species will follow the conditions they’re adapted to,” said Richard Brodeur, a NOAA Fisheries senior scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center’s Newport Research Station and coauthor of the study. “We’re going to see more interactions between species and there will be winners and losers that we cannot foresee.”
Climate models used to project species shifts

The study, led by William Cheung of the University of British Columbia, estimated changes in the distribution of 28 near-surface fish species commonly collected by research surveys in the northeast Pacific Ocean. The researchers used established global climate models to project how the distribution of the fish would shift by 2050 as greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere and, in turn, the ocean surface.

Brodeur cautioned that like any models, climate models carry uncertainty. While they provide a glimpse of the most likely changes in global climate, they may be less accurate when estimating more fine-scale, local changes.

“Nothing is certain,” he said, “but we think we have a picture of the most likely changes.”

Some species shifts are already being documented as West Coast waters are warming: predatory Humboldt squid from Central and South America have invaded the West Coast of North America in recent years, albacore have shifted to more northerly waters and eulachon have disappeared from warming waters at the southern end of their range.
Effects on the marine ecosystem

“Thinking more broadly, this re-shuffling of marine species across the whole biological community may lead to declines in the beneficial functions of marine and coastal ecosystems,” said Tom Okey, a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation at the University of Victoria and a coauthor of the study. “These declines may occur much more rapidly and in more surprising ways than our expected changes in species alone.”

The study anticipates warm-water species such as thresher sharks and chub mackerel becoming more prominent in the Gulf of Alaska and off British Columbia. Some predators such as sea lions and seabirds, which rear their young in fixed rookeries or colonies, may find the fish they usually prey on moving beyond predators’ usual foraging ranges.

“If their prey moves farther north, they either have to travel farther and expend more energy to get to them, or find something else to eat,” Brodeur said. “It’s the same thing for fishermen. If it gets warmer, the fish they depend on are going to move up north and that means more travel time and more fuel will be needed to follow them, or else they may need to switch to different target species. It may not happen right away but we are likely to see that kind of a trend.”

El Nino years, when tropical influences temporarily warm the eastern Pacific, offer a preview of what to expect as the climate warms.

Shifts in marine communities may be most pronounced in high-latitude regions such as the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, which the study identifies as “hotspots” of change. Cold-water species such as salmon and capelin have narrower temperature preferences than warmer water species, making them more sensitive to ocean warming and likely to respond more quickly.

An intrusion of warm-water species into cooler areas could lead to significant changes in marine communities and ecosystems. The diversity of northern fish communities, now often dominated by a few very prolific species such as walleye pollock, may increase as southern species enter the region, leading to new food web and species interactions.

Albacore tuna have shifted to more northerly waters.

Eulachon have disappeared from warming waters at the southern end of their range.

Humboldt squid from Central and South America have invaded the West Coast of North America in recent years.

According to the study, thresher sharks may become more prominent in the Gulf of Alaska and off British Columbia.

Read the original post here.

Some NGO’s cry foul over change to Calif. sardine management when it contradicts their view

Published by permission of SEAFOODNEWS.COM

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Opinion] By D.B. Pleschner – December 16, 2014
(D.B. Pleschner is executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association.)

Recently the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to change the sardine harvest control rule, increasing the upper limit of the sardine harvest fraction from 15 percent to 20 percent.

The decision came after an exhaustive set of scientific workshops and analysis involving more than 60 people, held over the past two years to respond to a research paper that suggested that sea surface temperature (SST) measured at Scripps Pier in Southern California, which had been employed as a proxy for sardine recruitment, was no longer correlated with recruitment success.

But apparently this fact was lost on environmental activists who cried foul to the media, claiming that sardines are crashing, and the management response to the crisis is to just fish harder.

Claims that the council voted for a more aggressive fishing rate miss the point: nothing could be further from the truth. But the truth is complicated.

We know that California’s sardine population is strongly influenced by ocean temperatures: warmer waters tend to increase sardine productivity, while colder waters tend to decrease it.

“The northern sardine stock has been declining for several years due to poor recruitment, and there is concern that it will decline further in the next couple of years,” says Dr. Richard Parrish, one of the authors of the original sardine control rule. “Although no one can predict the environmental conditions that will occur in the future, the pessimistic view is that the northern stock will continue to decline and the optimistic view is that the present warm water conditions will herald increased recruitment.”

“Whichever occurs first,” he adds, “the past, present and management team-recommended sardine harvest control rules were all designed to automatically regulate the exploitation rates both by reducing the quota and reducing the harvest rates as the stock declines, and by shutting down the fishery if the biomass falls below 150,000 mt.”

The original sardine analysis, made in 1998, was updated by a new analysis that found offshore sea temperatures slightly better correlated with sardine productivity than the measurements made at Scripps Pier. Population simulations made with the updated information that included the population increase in recent decades show that the sardine stock is about 50 percent more productive than thought in 1998. The management team therefore recommended raising the upper bound of fishing fraction from 15 percent to 20 percent to account for the new best available science.

But that doesn’t mean that the catch quota for the coming year will be raised. This is a long-term harvest control rule that simply follows better scientific modeling efforts.

The new rules will determine fishing rate just as before: If the temperature is cold, the harvest will be kept low; if the population size decreases, both the harvest rate and the allowable catch will automatically decrease. In fact, the new sardine harvest rule is actually more precautionary than the original rule it is replacing. It does this by producing an average long-term population size at 75 percent of the unfished size, leaving even more fish in the water, vs. 67 percent in the original rule. The original harvest rule reduced the minimum harvest rate to 5 percent during cold periods. The present, very complicated rule, has a minimum rate of 0 percent during cold periods.

What’s more, the harvest fraction will only be applied after subtracting 150,000 mt from the sardine biomass estimated in the next year’s stock assessment.

Bottom line: The California sardine may be the best-managed fishery of its type in the world — the poster fish for effective ecosystem-based management.

Subscribe to the Seafood News and read the original post here.