D.B. Pleschner: Sardines are not being overfished

In recent weeks, sardines have been a hot news topic again. Environmental groups like Oceana complain that the sardine population is collapsing just like it did in the mid-1940s. They blame “overfishing” as the reason and maintain that the fishery should be shut down completely.

Today, in truth, Pacific sardines are perhaps the best-managed fishery in the world — the poster fish for effective ecosystem-based management. The current harvest control rule — established in 2000 and updated last year with more accurate science — sets a strict harvest guideline that considers ocean conditions and automatically reduces the catch limit as the biomass declines.

If the temperature is cold — which hampers sardine recruitment — the harvest rate is low. And if the population size decreases, both the harvest rate and the allowable catch automatically decrease.

Current management sets aside a 150,000 metric ton reserve off the top of the stock assessment and automatically closes the directed fishery when the biomass estimate falls below that level, which it did in the latest stock assessment, after four years of abnormally cold La Niña ocean conditions.

In fact, the truth is much more complicated than environmentalists would lead you to believe. It’s inaccurate and disingenuous to compare today’s fishery management with the historic sardine fishery collapse that devastated Monterey’s Cannery Row.

In the 1940s and ‘50s, the fishery harvest averaged more than 43 percent of the standing sardine stock. Plus, there was little regulatory oversight and no limit on the annual catch.

Today, based on the latest stock assessment, the U.S. exploitation rate has averaged about 11 percent, ranging as low as 6 percent, since the return of federal management in 2000.

Here’s where complications begin because scientists recognize two stocks on the West Coast: the northern or “cold” stock ranges from northern Baja California to Canada during warm-water oceanic cycles and retracts during cold-water cycles.

A southern or “temperate” stock ranges from southern Baja to San Pedro, in Southern California. The federal Pacific Fishery Management Council manages only the northern stock.

Doing the math, our current fishery harvest is less than one-quarter of the rate observed during the historical sardine collapse.

In fact, the current sardine harvest rule is actually more precautionary than the original rule it replaced. 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 has a minimum rate of 0 percent during cold periods.

The so-called “sardine crash due to overfishing” mantra now peddled by Oceana isn’t anything of the sort. It’s simply natural fluctuations in biomass that follow the changing conditions of the ocean, reflected in part by sea temperature.

In April, the council will discuss the most recent sardine assessment report and decide on future management measures. It is important to understand that the sardine stock assessment is a conservative estimate based on acoustic surveys that miss sardines in the upper 10 meters of the water column, above the down-looking acoustic transducer, and in shallow near-shore waters where survey vessels cannot go. It’s really a question of scale, fishermen say. While they acknowledge sardines’ downward trend, fishermen question the accuracy of the total number of sardines that the stock assessment estimates.

California’s wetfish industry relies on a complex of coastal pelagic species including mackerels, anchovy and market squid as well as sardines. Sardines typically school with all these species, so a small allowance of sardine caught incidentally in these other fisheries will be necessary to keep wetfish boats fishing and processors’ doors open.

Sardines are critically important to California’s historic wetfish industry as well as the Golden State. This industry produces on average 80 percent of total fishery landings, and close to 40 percent of dockside value. A total prohibition on sardine landings could curtail the wetfish industry and seriously harm California’s fishing economy.

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

Posted in http://www.montereyherald.com 04/04/15

Feds likely to shut down sardine fishing on West Coast

Please read the CWPA: Comment to PFMC.

JEFF BARNARD Associated Press Apr 4, 2015

West Coast fisheries managers will likely shut down sardine fishing this year as numbers decline, echoing a previous collapse that decimated a thriving industry and increasing worries that other species might be withheld from the commercial market.

Fishermen are resigned to not being able to get sardines, but they hope the Pacific Fishery Management Council will not be so concerned that it sets the level for incidental catch of sardines at zero, shutting down other fisheries, such as mackerel, anchovies and market squid, which often swim with sardines.

Sardines were a thriving fishery on the West Coast from World War I through World War II, and the cannery-lined waterfront in Monterey, California, became the backdrop for John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel, “Cannery Row.” The fishery industry crashed in the 1940s, and riding the book’s popularity, Cannery Row became a tourist destination, with restaurants and hotels replacing the canneries.

The industry revived in the 1990s, when fisheries developed in Oregon and Washington waters. Today, there are about 100 boats with permits to fish for sardines on the West Coast, about half the number during the heyday. Much of the catch, landed from Mexico to British Columbia, is exported to Asia and Europe, where some is canned, and the rest goes for bait. West Coast landings have risen from a value of $1.4 million in 1991 to a peak of $21 million in 2012, but are again declining.

“The industry survives fishing on a complex,” of species, said Diane Pleschner-Steele, director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, which represents 63 California-based fishing boats. “Sardines, up until this point, have been one very important leg of a three- or four-legged stool…. Now we don’t have sardines. Our fleet is scrambling.”

The latest estimates of how many Pacific sardines are schooling off Oregon, California and Washington have fallen below the mandatory cutoff line. The council cut harvests by two-thirds last year, and meets April 12 in Rohnert Park, California, to set the latest sardine harvest.

The conservation group Oceana is urging the council to immediately shut down sardine fishing, and not wait until the new season starts July 1. The group wants incidental catch limits set at zero, leaving as much food as possible in the ocean for sea lions and other wildlife, and speeding the rebuilding process for sardines.

Ben Enticknap of Oceana acknowledged that sardines naturally go through large population swings, but he argued that fishing since 2007 has exceeded their reproduction rate, exacerbating the numbers collapse.

“Previous stock assessments were way too optimistic and weren’t matching up with what was observed on the water,” Enticknap said. “The sea lions and sea birds have been starving since 2013, pelicans since 2010. Everyone knew something was going on because there wasn’t enough food to eat for these predators. Now this stock assessment comes out saying that the sardine population is much lower than they had previously expected.”

David Crabbe, a squid fishing boat owner and council member, said he would expect the council to allow incidental catch to reduce the impact on the fleet.

The latest stock assessments vary between 133,000 metric tons, and 97,000 metric tons, both below the 150,000 metric tons cutoff, and less than 10 percent of the 2006 peak of 1.4 million metric tons.

The stock assessment is conducted by boat. As the research boats cruise the water, an acoustic signal is emitted, which bounces back with information on what kinds and how many fish are nearby. Stock assessors also estimate how many sardine eggs are floating in the water, and how many sardines are spawning off California, said Kerry Griffin, a staff officer for the council.

Fishermen are unhappy with the stock assessments, Pleschner-Steele said. They say the acoustic gear is too deep in the water and misses fish on the surface, where they feed.

Read original post: utsandiego.com

Comment to Pacific Fishery Management Council

INFORMATION COMPILED BY DR. RICHARD PARRISH

“The reason that the sardine population has declined so rapidly in the last few years is exceedingly simple.  The story is easily seen in the figures I have attached here.

There was a very poor year-class in 2010 followed by 3 years of total recruitment failure.  Both the sardine stock assessment and the Acoustic-Trawl series clearly show this. End of story.

The sardine control rule did exactly what it was designed to do.   It has shut down the directed fishery after a series of poor recruitment years. — Richard Parrish

Sardine recruitment in billions of one-year-old fish; 2010 was a very poor reproductive year and it was followed by three years of complete reproductive failure (2011, 12, 13). The estimate for 2014 is a statistical forecast based on the average recruits per spawner. Few 2014 sardines have been observed. (Hill et al 2015 Sardine Stock Assessment)

The spawning stock biomass fell from about 600,000 mt in 2010 to a bit over 100,000 mt in 2015. With no recruitment, biomass drops very fast with or without a fishery. The same thing happened in the Japanese Sardine fishery about 20 years ago.

Here is the Acoustic survey data showing again the complete reproductive failure in the 2011-13 year classes.

Sea Lion pups are starving in Southern California and Oceana claims it is due to overfishing of sardine. Here are the food habits of sardine. They are 8th in abundance in the California sea lion diet.

Lowry, M. S. and J. V. Carretta. 1999. Market squid (Loligo opalescens) in the diet of California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) in southern California (1981-1995). CalCOFI Rep. 40:196-207.

Here is the time series of sea lion pups. This is used as the primary population index. The most recent total estimate is as follows: (from CALIFORNIA SEA LION (Zalophus californianus ): U.S. Stock. Revised 12/15/2011)

POPULATION SIZE

The entire population cannot be counted because all age and sex classes are not ashore at the same time. In lieu of counting all sea lions, pups are counted during the breeding season (because this is the only age class that is ashore in its entirety), and the number of births is estimated from the pup count. The size of the population is then estimated from the number of births and the proportion of pups in the population. Censuses are conducted in July after all pups have been born. To estimate the number of pups born, the pup count for rookeries in southern California in 2008 (59,774) was adjusted for an estimated 15% pre-census mortality (Boveng 1988; Lowry et al. 1992), giving an estimated 68,740 live births in the population. The fraction of newborn pups in the population (23.2%) was estimated from a life table derived for the northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus) (Boveng 1988, Lowry et al. 1992) which was modified to account for the growth rate of this California sea lion population (5.4% yr-1, see below). Multiplying the number of pups born by the inverse of this fraction (4.317) results in a population estimate of 296,750.

Minimum Population Estimate

The minimum population size was determined from counts of all age and sex classes that were ashore at all the major rookeries and haul-out sites in southern and central California during the 2007 breeding season. The minimum population size of the U.S. stock is 153,337 (NMFS unpubl. data). It includes all California sea lions counted during the July 2007 census at the Channel Islands in southern California and at haul-out sites located between Point Conception and Point Reyes, California. An additional unknown number of California sea lions are at sea or hauled out at locations that were not censused.

Current Population Trend

Trends in pup counts from 1975 through 2008 are shown in Figure 2

INFORMATION COMPILED BY CWPA

ALLOWING AN ADEQUATE INCIDENTAL SARDINE CATCH IN OTHER CPS FISHERIES IS CRITICAL TO SUSTAIN CALIFORNIA’S WETFISH INDUSTRY

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.

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Dungeness landings likely down 50% in California, 40% in Oregon; lowest volumes in 8 years

Posted with permission of SEAFOODNEWS.COM | by John Sackton December 11, 2014

Graph: Seafood Datasearch, based on state and federal data

NGO critics of California’s sardine rules miss that better science mean conservative management

Published with permission of SEAFOODNEWS.COM

By D. B. Pleschner [Opinion]  Dec 8, 2014

Squid harvest has been bountiful in Monterey Bay

Fans of calamari have much to be thankful for this holiday season.

The squid fishery in California remains robust, and this year’s catch has been unusually strong in Monterey Bay. In a typical season only about 20 percent of market squid are caught off Northern California. But this squid season – which runs from April to March – more than half of the state’s catch have come from north and central coast waters.

“We really had quite a banner year,” said Monterey harbormaster Stephen Scheiblauer.

By initial estimates, at least 75 percent of the northern California squid catch came from waters in and around Monterey Bay. Scientists and squid fishermen do not fully understand the reason for this flip.

“For Monterey, it was amazing,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association.

There have been other seasons where northern California outshone southern California in squid hauls. But, since 1980, all of those years have preceded or fallen during El Nino climate shifts, which bring warm water to the California coast, starting with southern California and moving north. It’s believed squid follow the cooler water.

“These squid really respond to ocean conditions,” said Pleschner-Steele.

The state is not currently in an El Nino pattern. But, it is possible that recent El Nino-like shifts in ocean conditions drove market squid further north.

“The last couple of years, especially in northern California, have been good for squid,” said Neil Guglielmo, captain of the 70-foot fishing vessel Triumphal.

Since squid season began April 1, commercial boats have hauled nearly 60,000 tons of market squid through northern California ports, with a dock value of approximately $38.3 million. This is the largest squid season north of Point Conception in history and more than double the previous record set in the 2002-2003 season. This year, Eureka reported its first squid landings.

“We fished squid this year where we never fished before,” said Guglielmo.

For much of this season, Guglielmo took the Triumphal from its home port near Ventura up the coast to Monterey and points further north to haul in squid. He reported squid as far north as Crescent City.

“We just followed them up there,” said Guglielmo. “There was so much squid.”

This season was also a record for Monterey Bay, with an estimated 45,000 tons of squid caught in its waters, according to marine biologist Briana Brady with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

These record hauls also bring welcome economic benefits to ports. The local squid industry supports approximately 1,500 seasonal and full-time jobs, according to Scheiblauer. Ten squid fishing boats are based in Moss Landing and Monterey. In addition to landing fees at wharfs and the dock value of catches, the squid season brings economic benefits in the form of room and board for crew, fuel for boats, ice, cold storage facilities, transportation and processing for each boat’s catch. The Monterey area includes three resident buyers for squid.

“They’re still a big part of our culture and economy,” Scheiblauer said.

Ample food supplies and undisturbed spawning grounds help sustain market squid along the California coast. But, based on past squid fishing seasons, their numbers can still fluctuate along 10-15 year cycles, according to Brady.

Market squid are relatively small, often measuring about a foot in length, and prefer to eat small invertebrates, plankton or each other. Their short 6-10 month lifespan makes it difficult for biologists to estimate the size of the entire market squid population off of California to manage the fishery sustainably.

Instead, beginning in the last decade, regulators crafted a squid fishery management policy around a handful of core regulations. No more than 118,000 tons of squid can be harvested in California waters during the annual season. This limit was based off of annual squid harvests in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“We’re happy with that maximum cap,” said Pleschner-Steele. “It’s a good, conservative number.”

The state also uses a limited-entry permit system for squid fishing to control the number of fishing boats in California waters. In addition, marine protected areas in southern California and Monterey Bay keep approximately one-third of squid spawning grounds along the coast off limits to fishing. Finally, no commercial vessel may fish for squid between noon Friday and noon Sunday. This weekly moratorium gives squid in non-protected areas opportunities to spawn, according to Scheiblauer.

As of Nov. 20, the statewide catch for market squid is nearly 115,000 tons. Since the maximum squid harvest cannot exceed 118,000 tons, this season is drawing to an early close. Under a voluntary co-management agreement between the squid fishing industry and Fish and Wildlife, larger fishing vessels ceased harvesting squid last month so smaller boats can “mop up” the remaining allotment of squid.

Based on reports from squid fishermen, this year there will still be plenty of squid left behind. But, in the wake of this season’s unusual squid bounty for northern California, no one is willing to predict what might be in store for next year. In two previous El Nino cycles, desolate squid harvests in northern California followed one or two years of largesse.

“You could have a boom year like this year and next year there’ll be nothing,” said Scheiblauer.

But, even after those turbulent oscillations, the squid fishery stabilized around a sustainable mean. That long-term trend gives others cause for cautious optimism.

“If the water doesn’t go crazy,” said Guglielmo, “I think we’ll be fine.”

James Urton can be reached at 726-4453.

Read original article here.

Morro Bay’s fishing industry reels in largest catch in 20 years

6.8 million pounds of fish landings were reported in 2013 in Morro Bay, up from low of 668,866 pounds in 2007, study of data from Department of Fish and Wildlife reveals

By Nick Wilson | November 6, 2014

The fishing industry in Morro Bay has regained its sea legs, bouncing back from a 20-year low in 2007 to post its largest catch by volume since 1993, according to an economic impact report released this week.

Lisa Wise Consulting Inc. compiled the study, which showed a boost in earnings of more than 300 percent from about $2 million in 2007 to about $7.1 million in 2013 — the latest year of data accumulated.

The report documents a rise in fish landings from a low of 668,866 pounds in 2007 to nearly 6.8 million pounds in 2013, the highest single-year landing total since the boom times of the early ’90s.

The report relies on figures documented under government regulations, including information provided by the fishing industry to the Marine Fisheries Statistical Unit at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

This is the fourth consecutive year of the report, which was produced this year with $6,000 in funding provided by the Central California Joint Cable/Fisheries Liaison Committee. The Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization also partners in the project. “As fishermen, we have an understanding of the industry, but others often don’t,” said Jeremiah O’Brien, a member and past president of the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization. “We do those reports to show people what’s happening.”

Lots of good news
The latest data shows a steady trend of increased earnings and landings, although the figures haven’t yet matched peak years of the 1990s, which topped 9 million pounds of landings in 1990 and eclipsed 10 million in 1993.

In 2008, the city of Morro Bay paid for an economic study that predicted a change from a once-thriving fishing industry to a primarily recreational fishing and boating area.

However, the city has since recognized the recovery of the commercial fishing industry, which “should continue to play a significant role in the social and economic future of Morro Bay,” staff members wrote in a recent report.

One of the factors that contributed to the decade-long decline in Morro Bay’s fishing industry — in additional to environmental closures and restrictions of fishing in certain ocean areas — occurred in 2006 with the purchase of Morro Bay’s fishing quota.

The Nature Conservancy bought out Morro Bay’s entire trawl fishing industry in 2006 with the goal of protecting and growing fish populations while limiting fishing.

About eight trawlers left the business, which exacerbated the decline in landings in those years, O’Brien said.

Since that time, the local industry has steadily improved, and earlier this year, the Conservancy transferred the quotas to the Morro Bay Community Quota Fund, which manages the fishing quota and leases fishing permits to local fishermen, who may trawl under specified environmental restrictions such as avoiding trawling in coral reef areas.

How the catch evolved
While the overall catch and earnings have climbed in recent years, landings of certain species have declined along with closures and regulations on uses of fishing equipment.

The salmon catch, for example, dropped to 45,000 pounds in 2013, from around 200,000 pounds per year in much of the 1990s.

And halibut, which must be fished outside of three miles from shore, has remained low for the past decade with a total of about 10,328 pounds landed in 2013 compared with takes of more than 40,000 pounds in the early 1990s.

But other species — including Dungeness crab and squid — have spiked.

Crab accounted for 17 percent of 2013 earnings in Morro Bay, climbing to a 20-year high of more than 300,000 pounds in landings.

There were 170,000 pounds of crab caught in 2006, which was the previous high in the past two decades. There was little to no crab caught between 2008 and 2011.

“The last couple of years we’ve seen a lot more crab,” O’Brien said. “Crab is typically cyclical, and we’ll have bigger catches usually about every six years. But they’ve been spawning in big numbers the past three in a row.”

The squid catch has also swelled, with landings of more than 4 million pounds in 2013.

That total hasn’t been matched since 1993, the only other year in the past two decades to top 4 million pounds of squid.

O’Brien said that a couple of fishing boats have made the investment in catching large numbers of squid along the Central Coast, which has kept squid processing companies from Watsonville and San Pedro, the closest around, returning to Morro Bay because it’s worth their while.

Another factor in the boom in local crab and squid fishing has been a trending preference for the seafood in China, where local buyers are shipping their products.

Local fishermen including Bill Blue have seen their sales of live crab, transported to China, significantly boost income over the past few years.

Like fellow anglers, Blue fishes for a variety of species, including black cod, but the high price that crab fetches in China is too lucrative to pass up.

“It’s good for business, but sad in some ways because you don’t see as many local restaurants buying crab because of the high price (driven by the Chinese market),” Blue said. “That means local people can’t go and get them as easily.”

Read original story here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2014/11/06/3337295/morro-bays-fishing-industry-reels.html

Eastern Pacific bluefin tuna catch to be cut 40 percent to 3,300 tons

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Jiji Press] – October 31, 2014 — posted with permission of Seafood News.

The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, comprising a total of 21 countries and regions, has decided to tighten controls on bluefin tuna fishing in the eastern Pacific.

The decision was made at a special session of the commission in La Jolla, Calif., on Wednesday, according to Japanese officials.

Bluefin tuna catches in the ocean region will be reduced by 40 percent from the 2014 level to 3,300 tons in both 2015 and 2016.

The commission also set a nonbinding goal of cutting the proportion of young tuna weighing less than 30 kilograms in total catches to 50 percent.

The nonbinding goal was set as a compromise after Mexico opposed a Japanese proposal for halving annual catches of young tuna in and after 2015 from the average level between 2002 and 2004. In the central and western Pacific, including waters around Japan, the halving of young tuna catches has already been agreed.

Mexico has developed a tuna ranching sector dependent on capture of juvenile tuna used for growout.

Read original article: SeafoodNews.com

CHUCK DELLA SALA, JOE PENNISI, AND SHEMS JUD: Sustainability Certification Reflects Sea Change in West Coast Fisheries

September 4, 2014 — In essence, what the trawlers of the West Coast have done under this new system is renew the social contract that they have with the public, by providing assurance that they are harvesting a public resource in a sustainable manner.

The following op-ed was submitted to Saving Seafood by Chuck Della Sala, the Mayor of the City of Monterey, California; Joe Pennisi, the owner and skipper of the F/V Pioneer; and Shems Jud, of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Oceans Program:

Most California seafood lovers are familiar with the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Consumer Guides – the booklets that recommend which fish to eat and which should be avoided.

Seafood Watch just dramatically increased its list of recommended seafood options from the West Coast. They now rank nearly all bottom trawl-caught groundfish as “good” and “best” alternatives. Those species include lingcod, chilipepper rockfish, Dover sole, and dozens more.

Readers accustomed to grim news about marine resources will find this news a pleasant surprise; but for those who closely follow commercial fisheries of the West Coast it may seem more like a miracle.

Fourteen years ago the West Coast groundfish fishery was declared a disaster by the federal government. Years of overharvesting and science and management failures had resulted in rapidly dwindling stocks as too many boats chased too few fish in a classic example of the “tragedy of the commons.” Eight species were declared overfished, and the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) and the National Marine Fisheries Services were scrambling – along with fishermen – to figure out some way to save a major American fishery, and one of great importance to Monterey and the region.

There’s nothing like disaster to bring unlikely partners together. In the years following the declaration it has been our privilege – fishermen, fishing communities, and conservationists, to sit together at the same table with the Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service to help develop an entirely new approach to managing one of the most complex multispecies fisheries on earth.

The quota-based management system that was eventually implemented in 2011 became known as the West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Share Program. It combined practical conservation incentives with a system of full accountability by putting federal observers on fishing vessels.   The program gives fishermen the flexibility to fish when the weather is right and to work with their markets to time landings to meet demand. Fishermen are also able to actively manage their portfolio of species, which has dramatically reduced both bycatch and discards.

Today, fishing businesses are slowly becoming more stable, and several of those overfished species are rebuilding at a surprisingly rapid rate.

In essence, what the trawlers of the West Coast have done under this new system is renew the social contract that they have with the public, by providing assurance that they are harvesting a public resource in a sustainable manner. The recent assessment from the Seafood Watch Program, and the June certification of thirteen species of West Coast groundfish as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, verifies that.

This is an unfolding success story; West Coast fishermen still face stiff challenges. They have to pay for those observers and bear much of the cost of administering their catch share program. But the announcement by Seafood Watch signifies a remarkable course change in this fishery, a change that California seafood lovers – and that’s everybody reading this, right? – can be proud of.

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