Fishers balk at proposal to designate Pacific Ocean national monuments

Fishing has long been a vital part of San Pedro’s history. Fishing boats still line the wharf near Ports O’ Call. (Scott Varley / Staff Photographer)

West Coast fishers, including those that supply Los Angeles and Long Beach with local seafood, are incensed at a “secret” proposal from environmentalists asking President Barack Obama to create new national monuments in the Pacific Ocean.

Dozens of California fishing businesses and their representatives signed a letter this week asking Obama to ignore suggestions to block fishing in open-ocean areas rich with sea life by designating them as offshore marine monuments.

Environmental groups made the proposal in a “secret effort” to lobby the president to declare that many Pacific Ocean seamounts, ridges and banks are national landmarks, according to the letter.

The five-page environmental proposal, “The Case for Protecting California’s Seamounts, Ridges and Banks,” argues that these parts of the ocean should be preserved for scientific research. Seamounts and ridges are craggy underwater mountains, and banks are shallow areas near deep ocean drop-offs.

“These special places are home to thousand-year-old corals thriving against all odds in the dark, cold depths,” the proposal states. “And they attract a remarkable variety of migratory predators such as sharks, tuna, billfishes, seabirds, and endangered sea turtles, which congregate to fuel up on the food produced by nutrient-rich upwelling currents.”

Similar proposals have been made for the waters off the East Coast and Hawaii.

“We’re trying to head it off before the president considers nominating these as national monuments,” said Mike Conroy, president of West Coast Fisheries Consultants. “A lot of environmental groups are pushing this. And it’s his last year in office so he’s looking to make his legacy.

“If this proposed action is taken, many local harvesters will be impacted. Loss of access to their fishing grounds, without a public process, will likely cause irreparable harm to the San Pedro fishing community and the consumers they serve.”

Obama has taken up progressive environmental initiatives to combat climate change and transition to energy sources that don’t rely on fossil fuels. He also has designated dozens of new national land monuments — most recently, the Stonewall Inn in New York City, the site of a police raid that sparked the LGBT-rights movement. But it’s not yet clear whether he will move on this issue.

Craig Jacobs, a Long Beach fisherman who has also delivered to the South Bay region since the 1990s, said the proposal would devastate his business. He often spends several days a week fishing in the Cortes and Tanner Banks some 110 miles west of San Diego for lobster, California sheephead, rock crabs, cabezon, halibut, white sea bass, yellowtail and other species.

“It’s going to put so much more pressure on all the Channel Islands” if these oceanic national monuments are created,” he said. “Everyone that fishes at Cortez and Tanner banks will have to go somewhere else and there’s already too much compaction with the marine-protected areas.”

California was the first state to block fishing in 2012 at designated marine-protected areas, which include Point Vicente and Abalone Cove off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The protected areas forced Jacobs and others to fish farther out to sea and to look for new species to target.

“I used to just stay in the Los Angeles and Long Beach area and occasionally go out to Catalina,” Jacobs said. “Now I have to fish offshore. And now they have this seamount closure hanging over us. That’d be right up there with disastrous.”

Tuna pile up on the deck of the Captain Kevin fishing vessel after returning to San Pedro from a longline fishing run. (Daily Breeze staff file photo)