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

D.B. Pleschner: The truth about new sardine fishing limits

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.

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

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

D.B. Pleschner: State’s wetfish industry solid, sustainable

http://www.losangelesregister.com/articles/california-604383-fisheries-wetfish.html

Despite gloomy predictions of El Niño and the broader impact of climate change on the ocean and planet, California’s historic wetfish fisheries carry on – still the foundation of California’s fishing economy.

More than 150 years ago, Chinese fishermen rowed Monterey Bay at night in sampans, with baskets of burning fat pine on the bow used as torches to attract market squid, which fishermen harvested with round-haul nets.

This was the modest beginning of California’s “wetfish” industry. The immigrant Asian, Italian, Slavic and other nationalities of fishermen who came to America introduced new fishing methods.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Sicilian immigrants to Monterey brought their lampara nets, another type of round-haul net, and launched what would become the largest fishery in the western hemisphere – California’s famed sardine industry, popularized in our collective conscience by John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.”

It was the plentiful schools of fish – especially sardines that stretch from the Gulf of California to Alaska – that provided opportunity for generations of enterprising fishing families to prosper. The complex of fisheries that make up California’s wetfish industry, including mackerel and anchovy as well as squid and sardines, helped to build the ports of Monterey and San Pedro, as well as San Diego and San Francisco.

Wetfish, now called coastal pelagic species, or CPS, have contributed the lion’s share of California’s commercial catch since before the turn of the 20th century.

Even back then, fishermen recognized that a sustainable fishery was good for both fisherman and fish. That’s why over the decades, fishing interests have supported marine protections based on sound science, and have contributed significantly to cooperative research. That tradition continues today.

In fact, today, coastal pelagic fisheries in California like squid and sardines are managed with strict quotas as well as numerous time and area closures, including a statewide network of no-take marine reserves. Fishermen are allowed to harvest only a small percentage of the overall fish population.

Current regulations require that at least 75 percent of CPS finfish must stay in the ocean to ensure a resilient core biomass, and the sardine protection rate is even higher at about 90 percent.

In addition, squid fishing is closed on weekends (squid live less than a year and die after spawning). And about 30 percent of squid spawning grounds are also closed in reserves.

What’s more, to preserve the quality of the catch, fishermen typically fish day trips nearby the ports. This makes California’s CPS fisheries among the most efficient and “greenest” fisheries on the planet with one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world.

For example, wetfish fisheries can produce 2,000 pounds of protein for only six gallons of diesel fuel.

Beyond the history, the culture and the sustainability, California’s CPS fisheries contribute essential revenue into local port communities.

Wetfish fisheries are an important part of California’s fishing economy and squid is California’s most valuable fishery. Statewide, these fisheries represent more than 80 percent of all landings and close to 40 percent of dockside value of all fisheries in the Golden State.

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

Bigger marine reserve isn’t better

By Jerry Fraser, publisher, National Fisherman

The proposal that would create the world’s largest marine reserve is a poor idea whose time, sadly, has likely come.

President Obama wants to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, so designated by his predecessor, from about 80,000 square miles to upward of 750,000.

Leaders in the U.S. Pacific Territories have spoken out against the plan, which would ban fishing, resource exploration, and other economic activities. So have the chair and co-chair of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, among others, as seen in the video below, but I expect their entreaties will fall on deaf ears.

Marine reserves are not inherently bad, but they must be justified by — and measured against — specific conservation objectives. “Greater protections of our beloved ocean,” as cited by petitioners in favor of expanding the monument, is not an especially rigorous standard.

Indeed, in this case the precautions offered by a reserve are dubious. Conservationists describe the waters as pristine, which implies that any human activity that has taken place over the years has had no deleterious effect. And you’re banning fishing… why?

The impacts on local fishermen as well as our distant water tuna fleet will be real and adverse. Islanders who oppose an expanded monument know very well it will mean economic losses to local fisheries and the stifling of the traditional Pacific Islands fishing culture that has sustained local communities for centuries.

Yet their voices are countered not with data, but with sentiment: “Together we can push for the fullest expansion and the fullest protection of one of America’s natural wonders,” writes Frances Beinecke of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

George W. Bush erred when his administration fashioned the monument, and Obama has erred in proportion. Unfortunately, the times and the tides are against us.

Watch the WPRFMC Press Conference video: http://vimeo.com/99262265

D.B. Pleschner: California’s ports, fishermen rely on healthy wetfish fisheries

Despite gloomy predictions of El Niño and the broader impact of climate change on the ocean and planet, California’s historic wetfish fisheries carry on — still the foundation of California’s fishing economy.

More than 150 years ago, Chinese fishermen rowed Monterey Bay at night in sampans, with baskets of burning fat pine on the bow used as torches to attract market squid, which fishermen harvested with round-haul nets.

This was the modest beginning of California’s “wetfish” industry. The immigrant Asian, Italian, Slavic and other nationalities of fishermen who came to America introduced new fishing methods. Around the turn of the 20th century, Sicilian immigrants to Monterey brought their lampara nets, another type of round-haul net, and launched what would become the largest fishery in the western hemisphere — California’s famed sardine industry, popularized in our collective conscience by John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.”

It was the plentiful schools of fish — especially sardines that stretch from the Gulf of California to Alaska — that provided opportunity for generations of enterprising fishing families to prosper. The complex of fisheries that makes up California’s wetfish industry, including mackerel and anchovy as well as squid and sardines, helped to build the ports of Monterey and San Pedro, as well as San Diego and San Francisco. Wetfish, now called coastal pelagic species (CPS), have contributed the lion’s share of California’s commercial catch since before the turn of the 20th century.

Even back then fishermen recognized that a sustainable fishery was good for both fisherman and fish. That’s why over the decades fishing interests have supported marine protections based on sound science and have contributed significantly to cooperative research. That tradition continues today.

In fact, today coastal pelagic fisheries in California like squid and sardines are managed with strict quotas as well as numerous time and area closures, including a statewide network of no-take marine reserves. Fishermen are allowed to harvest only a small percentage of the overall fish population. Current regulations require that at least 75 percent of CPS finfish must stay in the ocean to ensure a resilient core biomass, and the sardine protection rate is even higher at about 90 percent.

In addition, squid fishing is closed on weekends (squid live less than a year and die after spawning). And about 30 percent of squid spawning grounds are also closed in reserves.

What’s more, to preserve the quality of the catch, fishermen typically fish day trips near the ports. This makes California’s CPS fisheries among the most efficient and “greenest” fisheries on the planet with one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world. For example, wetfish fisheries can produce 2,000 pounds of protein for only six gallons of diesel fuel. This highlights the importance of California wetfish to California.

Beyond history, culture and sustainability, California’s CPS fisheries contribute essential revenue into local port communities. Wetfish fisheries are an important part of California’s fishing economy and squid is California’s most valuable fishery. Statewide, these fisheries represent more than 80 percent of all landings and close to 40 percent of dockside value of all fisheries in the Golden State!

download/view PDF infographic

[www.californiawetfish.org/CPS_infographic.pdf]

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

Read the original post: MontereyHerald.com

Lucrative crab industry in danger

Lucrative crab industry in danger | Sea Change: Ocean acidification | The Seattle Times

DUTCH HARBOR, Alaska — For decades, the crab piled up in fishing boats like gold coins hauled from a rich and fertile sea.

But the very ocean that nursed these creatures may prove to be this industry’s undoing.

New research earlier this year shows that Bristol Bay red king crab — the supersized monster that has come to symbolize the fortunes of Alaska’s crab fleet — could fall victim to the changing chemistry of the oceans.

Barring a hasty reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions — or evidence that the creatures could acclimate to changing sea conditions — a team of scientists fears Alaska’s $100 million red king crab fishery could crash in decades to come.

That grim possibility also raises alarm about the crab fleet’s other major moneymaker, snow crab.

“With red king crab, it’s all doom and gloom,” said Robert Foy, who oversaw the crab research for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Kodiak, Alaska. “With snow crab, there’s so little known we just can’t say. But we don’t see anything from our experience that’s good for any of these crab. Some is just not as bad as others.”

Said Mark Gleason, director of the Seattle-based industry trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, “From my perspective, the chemistry is pretty clear-cut.”

For decades, these storied crustaceans have drawn men and women from Seattle to the far reaches of the North Pacific. There, adventurers wrestled 800-pound steel cages amid raging seas and aprons of pack ice, hoping to strike it rich on a bounty of flaky meat and accordion legs.

The emerging issues with Alaska’s crab underscore a predicament that stretches beyond the North Pacific. It gets to the difficulty of trying to comprehend the depth of fallout from ocean acidification.

For reasons scientists don’t always understand, similar species, even those living side by side, often respond to changing water chemistry in remarkably different ways.

“The real issue here is unpredictability,” said Richard Aronson, a Florida-based marine scientist who has tracked king crab in Antarctica. “There are all these unanticipated collateral impacts. The problem is, most of them are nasty surprises.”

‘We’re scared to death’

Certainly the threat to king crab was unexpected.

As humans pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a quarter of it gets absorbed by the seas. That lowers the water’s pH and alters the availability of carbonate ions, which crab rely on to build their exoskeletons.

Many crab species appear hardy in the face of souring seas, or at least not so frail. Exceedingly corrosive waters actually pump up Maryland blue crab to three times their size and turn them into voracious predators. Sour waters kill Dungeness crab, but far less often than Alaska red king crab.

When Foy and his colleagues exposed baby red king crab to CO₂ levels expected by midcentury, the young died more than twice as often as crab raised in normal water. When researchers boosted CO₂ to levels expected decades later, red king crab died in far larger numbers.

“The overall survival at the larval and juvenile stage is extremely low,” Foy said. “It decreases to a point that is likely to affect the population of the crab.”

Such a loss would exact quite a toll.

“You say king crab, and most people associate that with Alaska,” said longtime crab-boat captain Kale Garcia, who lives outside Kent. “So, for it to go away, that’s a huge part of the identity for Alaska. I think it’d be devastating. I know it’d be devastating for me.”

Red king crab is the showboat of the Northwest’s billion-dollar fishing industry. It is a television sensation and a marketer’s dream, its image emblazoned on bumper stickers, mugs, caps and T-shirts throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

It is even a tourist attraction: Cruise-ship passengers stopping in Ketchikan pay $159 for a half-day ride to watch crews haul marine life aboard a 107-foot crab boat that appeared on Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch.”

Alaska’s commercial crabbers also catch small loads of golden king crab and Tanner crab, but the real cash comes from just two species — red king crab and snow crab. The 54 million pounds of snow crab caught in 2011 brought the fleet $115 million dockside. But a mere 14.8 million pounds of red king crab brought nearly as much — $92.5 million. And it can fetch $39.99 a pound at Pike Place Market.

Crabbing attracts tough adrenaline junkies who disappear for weeks into the storm-buffeted frontier of the Bering Sea. They lounge in cramped quarters watching bad movies and wait for crab to fill their cages. Then workers scramble day or night on icy decks through stomach-churning swells, amped on coffee and nicotine.

“A lot of people that are involved in the industry, it’s something they’ve been in forever,” Garcia said. “People like that don’t plan an exit strategy out of the fishery. There is no exit strategy. They’re like ‘This is what we do. We fish.’ ”

NOAA researchers are using Bob Foy’s research to develop models and a timeline that charts the potential collapse of king crab. But things are changing quickly.

“Bob reared those crabs under conditions that we thought were some time off in the future,” said Jeremy Mathis, a NOAA oceanographer who specializes in Alaska and the Arctic. “And what we actually found is that in certain times of the year, the conditions near the bottom in the Bering Sea were actually worse than the conditions that Bob was raising his crabs under.”

There’s no evidence that souring seas have yet altered wild populations — the most corrosive seas now occur at times when red king crab aren’t as susceptible. But Alaska’s crab industry has followed the science closely.

“All of us in the fishing industry are looking at each other and going ‘This sucks,’ ” said Ed Poulsen, former science adviser to the crab industry group. “I can tell you right now I’m doing all I can to get into other fisheries. I’m diversifying. With these changes in the environment, I think things are probably not going to get better.”

Still, Jim Stone, of Lakewood, Pierce County, co-owner of the Bering Sea crab boat Arctic Hunter, is trying to remain optimistic.

“We’re scared to death,” Stone said. “But we’ve heard a lot of horror stories before.”

Adaptation possible, but uncertain

The research comes with plenty of caveats. No laboratory setting can ever properly approximate what happens in nature. Scientists are still conducting genetic tests to see if king crab might have the ability to adapt.

“It’s not unreasonable to assume, for example, that they might move, that some form of rapid evolution will occur, that they may become somewhat more robust,” said Andre Punt, a University of Washington professor who worked on the research and assesses crab for fishing regulators.

But the situation also might be worse than first thought. Souring seas could hit crab at several additional stages of development or attack their food.

“They could be impacted in other parts of the water column,” Punt said. “The prey that they’re eating could be impacted.”

Ocean acidification is also not the only marine-world change under way. Warming seas, also caused by carbon emissions, could compound crab’s troubles.

“Anytime you’re working with an organism at the edge of its threshold and you add another stressor, that’s going to be an issue,” Foy said. “When you’re working in the subarctic environment like we are in the Bering Sea, these animals are always living at the edge of their tolerance in one season or another.”

And while king crab’s future has everyone scrambling, the future for snow crab, which brings in more money, could be equally disconcerting.

No two crab species react same way

No two Alaskan crab species have responded to CO₂ exactly the same way. They seem to react differently depending on where they live at certain stages of their lives.

Golden king crab, for example, live extremely deep, below 1,000 feet, where waters already are naturally rich in CO₂. That appeared to make them highly tolerant of sea-chemistry changes.

Meanwhile, baby Tanner crab exposed to high CO₂ died at a higher rate than normal — but nowhere near as often as king crab. Foy suspects that’s because young Tanner crab live in water that already experiences vast swings in pH, depending on tides, time of day and photosynthesis.

Tanner crab probably are used to more variations than king crab, which remain on the outer continental shelf.

While snow crab are genetically similar to Tanner crab, their young spend more time at moderate depths.

But with snow crab, scientists have struggled to perform extensive tests. The animals are just too hard to keep alive in the lab.

It’s also hard to know how Foy’s results will translate to other species in other waters.

A related king crab species has recently been seen by the millions in Antarctica, where it is devouring shellfish and starfish. Scientists are debating whether or not the crab is native.

Will more acidic conditions kill these creatures or drive them out? Since they often occupy far deeper water, does that mean they instead might thrive?

“There’s a lot of ifs, ifs, ifs,” said Aronson, who documented Antarctica’s crabs during a cruise in 2010. “I’ve found that the number of times the surprise with carbon-dioxide emissions has been undesirable far outweighs the times it’s been desirable.”

The weird purgatory for these signature creatures unnerved Brett Robinson, who captains Stone’s Arctic Hunter.

“It’s scary as hell, if something doesn’t get figured out,” Robinson said. “I don’t know.”

“I guess you won’t have to fish for them” in the future, he added. “They’ll figure out how to grow these things in an aquarium or something.”

Hatchery may be part of future

Scientists in Seward, a thousand miles from the fishing grounds, are working toward just that.

For years, a shellfish hatchery has been learning how to raise baby king crab from scratch. The program started as an experiment to see if baby crab could be transplanted near Kodiak Island, where massive crab populations crashed in the 1970s and 1980s. But the rising threat from acidification has insiders closely watching their work.

Crab are most susceptible to corroding seas as babies, when a mere fraction of young survive even in perfect conditions. At the Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery, survival can be 500 times higher.

Still, no one expects this operation could ever replace wild king crab. The orders of magnitude required to get enough crab to populate the Bering Sea would be ridiculous.

But perfecting the science could provide options, such as the ability to repopulate a few previously devastated areas.

“We’re hoping that it never gets to the point that they rely on the hatchery for that kind of work,” hatchery manager Jeff Hetrick said. “If we get to that point I think we’re in trouble. But it is a possibility.”

The idea that crab might be partially grown in a lab instead of the ocean frustrated Mizrain Rodriguez, another Arctic Hunter crewman. But it also saddened him to think that humans could be doing such damage to the sea.

“Every single animal on this planet lives in balance with its surroundings except us,” Rodriguez said. “We see it. We understand it. But we don’t want to do anything about it. It seems like we are on this destructive path.”

View the original post here.

D.B. PLESCHNER: Some Inconvenient Truths about California Squid Marketing

Greenberg missed the boat on a number of issues, including the overall carbon footprint of seafood, but equally important, the reasons why most of the squid that California exports is consumed overseas!

Read the original Paul Greenberg op-ed in the Los Angeles Times

August 5, 2014 (SeafoodNews.com) — The following opinion piece appeared today on SeafoodNews.com:

In his op-ed to the Los Angeles Times last week, author Paul Greenberg could have dodged some critical misstatements and inaccuracies about the marketing of California squid – the state’s largest catch.

All he had to do was check with local sources, including the California Wetfish Producers Association, which represents the majority of squid processors and fishermen in the Golden State and promotes California squid.

Instead, Greenberg missed the boat on a number of issues, including the overall carbon footprint of seafood, but equally important, the reasons why most of the squid that California exports is consumed overseas!

To set the record straight, here are some inconvenient truths you wouldn’t know about squid by reading last week’s op-ed:

First, size matters and price rules when it comes to California market squid, which are one of the smallest of more than 300 squid species found worldwide. The U.S. “local” market really prefers larger, “meatier” squid, notwithstanding Greenberg’s ‘locavore’ movement.

Greenberg acknowledged the labor cost to produce cleaned squid in California adds at least $1.50 per pound to the end product. In fact, local production costs double the price of cleaned squid, due to both labor (at least $15 per hour with benefits) and super-sized overhead costs, including workers’ comp, electricity, water and myriad other costs of doing business in the Golden State.

Del Mar Seafood is one processor in California that micro-processes cleaned squid at the request of markets like the CSA that Greenberg mentioned. In fact, virtually all California squid processors do the same thing at the request of their customers. But at 1,000 pounds per order, we would need 236,000 CSAs, restaurants or retail markets paying $1.50 more per pound to account for the total harvest. If the demand were there, we’d be filling it!

Greenberg also misconstrued the issue of food miles. Respected researchers like Dr. Peter Tyedmers, from Dalhousie University in Canada, found that transport makes a minor contribution to overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, when considering the carbon footprint of seafood (or land-based foods). Mode of production is far more important.

Here’s another surprise: California squid is one of the most efficient fisheries in the world – because a limited fleet harvests a lot of squid within a short distance of processing plants.

Studies show that the California wetfish fleet, including squid, can produce 2,000 pounds of protein for only 6 gallons of diesel. Squid are then flash frozen to preserve freshness and quality. Keep in mind that even with immaculate handling, fresh squid spoil in a few days.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, even with product block-frozen and ocean-shipped to Asia for processing, California’s squid fishery is one of the ‘greenest’ in the world. One recent survey estimated that about 30 percent of California squid is now either processed here or transshipped to Asia for processing (other Asian countries besides China now do the work) and re-imported.

China, although important, is only one export market that craves California squid. With a growing middle class billions strong, Chinese consumers can now afford California squid themselves. Many countries that import California squid prefer the smaller size, and California squid goes to Mediterranean countries as well. In short, most of the squid that California’s fishery exports are consumed overseas. Why? The U.S. palate for squid pales in comparison to Asian and European demand.

Also important to understand: California squid is the economic driver of California’s wetfish industry – which produces more than 80 percent of the total seafood volume landed in the Golden State. California squid exports also represent close to 70 percent by weight and 44 percent of value of all California seafood exports. Our squid fishery contributes heavily to the Golden State’s fishing economy and also helps to offset a growing seafood trade imbalance.

The sad reality is that price really does matter and most California restaurants and retail markets are not willing to pay double for the same – or similar – small squid that they can purchase for half the price.

Nonetheless, we do appreciate Greenberg’s pitch for local seafood. Our local industry would be delighted if, as he suggested, all Californians would be willing to pay $1.50 a pound more for California squid. We may be biased, but in our opinion California squid really is the best!

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

What seafood guzzles the most gas?

CWPA note: California’s wetfish fisheries are the most efficient in the world (2,000 pounds of protein for 6 gallons of diesel).

Please download ‘Fishing Green‘ from our website californiawetfish.org — (under the Fast Facts link).