Fishing News

Please note that the quote below by Geoff Shester incorrectly states that most of California Pacific Sardines go to tuna farms. In actuality, most CA sardines are exported for canning for human consumption. It should also be noted that the Lenfest Report identified CA’s forage fisheries to be one of the most precautionary, sustainable forage fisheries in the world. California limits harvesting to only allow 2% of the total forage pool, leaving 98% in the ocean for other marine life

Written by Miriam Goldstein

Sardines school off Baja California. Photo by Jon Bertsch.

I only eat anchovies with Caesar salad, and am rather fond of the tiny fish that add a bit of strong flavor to the romaine lettuce. I’m unusual for wanting to get even that close to the tiny, oily fish – sardines, anchovy, menhaden –  that used to be a staple of regular American food. That’s why Julia Whitty’s recent article in Mother Jones in which she encourages consumers to pause before they “ take a bite of that sardine sandwich” was so surprising. You won’t find sardines anywhere on the list of the top 10 consumed seafoods - or do you? Here’s why eating more sardines directly would actually be good for the ocean:

1) The United States Pacific sardine fishery is not overfished. This may be surprising to people who are familiar with the famous collapse of the Monterey (central California) sardine fishery, which was described by John Steinbeck in his book Cannery Row. Puzzlement over this collapse launched one of the most important long-term oceanographic investigations of all time, the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation, which continues to provide critical scientific information to this day. Over 50 years of investigation has shown that this crash actually WASN’T caused by overfishing – at least not directly.

Sardine and anchovy populations are actually  tied directly to large-scale climatic conditions – if they’re favorable, there’s lots of fish. If they’re unfavorable, the fish crash. Overfishing may have exacerbate the crash and slowed recovery, but it probably didn’t cause it directly. Some researchers are predicting a similar sardine crash this year due to unfavorable climatic conditions similar to those seen before the late 1940s crash, and are encouraging managers to decrease sardine quotes in order to speed post-crash recovery. (Though this is controversial – see this response).

Historically, sardine & anchovy fisheries in other parts of the world, such as the South American anchoveta fishery (the biggest fishery in the world) are less well regulated. Overfishing in these ecosystems leads to no room for error – if there is the slightest change in the climate that causes the  fish to reproduce less fast, the fishery crashes. Buy U.S. Pacific sardines.

2)   Americans should eat more sardines directly, and fewer sardines indirectly. Only about a quarter of the enormous U.S. sardine haul is eaten directly  - the rest are sold as bait or as fishmeal. All of the three most popular U.S. seafoods – shrimp, salmon, and canned tuna – are farmed with fishmeal or caught with bait. This is why Jennifer Jacquet developed her “Eat Like A Pig” campaign. Grist covered this issue in response to Whitty’s article as well:

Geoff Shester, the California program director at Oceana, talked to Grist contributor Clare Leschin-Hoar for the article, “Small fish, big ocean: Saving Pacific forage fish.” We followed up with him to ask his take on sardine-eating. In the case of Pacific sardines, he said that “the lion’s share go to bluefin tuna farms (ranches) in Australia, then to commercial longline bait in international tuna fisheries.” Overall, he says, “consumers are demanding the wrong things. Instead of demanding farmed salmon, which uses at least three pounds of forage fish to get one pound of salmon, people should be demanding the forage fish themselves.”

Also, sardines are healthy! They appear on the New York Times list of the  11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating. Also, food writer Michael Pollan’s Rule 32 (Don’t overlook the oily little fishes”) elaborates further:

Wild fish are among the healthiest things you can eat, yet many wild fish stocks are on the verge of collapse because of overfishing. Avoid big fish at the top of the marine food chain–tuna, swordfish, shark–because they’re endangered, and because they often contain high levels of mercury. Fortunately, a few of the most nutritious wild fish species, including mackerel, sardines, and anchovies, are well managed, and in some cases are even abundant. Those oily little fish are particularly good choices. According to a Dutch proverb: “A land with lots of herring can get along with few doctors.”

3)   Since sardine and other small forage fish like anchovies and menhadan congregate in single-species schools in the water column (see the awesome photo by Jon Bertsch at the top of this post!), there’s relatively little bycatch. Fishers are able to catch these fish, and only these fish, without accidentally killing a lot of other marine life. This is emphatically not the case with the longline tuna fisheries for which forage fish become bait. Fish farming operations have other significant environmental impacts, such as the infection of wild salmon stocks with farmed salmon parasites and damage to the ocean bottom communities. Eating sardines directly is far better for the ocean environment than filtering them through large predators caught accidentally with more large predators.

Read the full article on DeepSeaNews.

 

 

Juneau, AK – NOAA is proposing to remove the eastern Steller sea lion, currently deemed “threatened,” from the list of endangered wildlife, after a status review by its biologists found the species is recovering sufficiently.

“This proposal reflects the continued recovery of the eastern population of Steller sea lions and the strong conservation partnership among NOAA Fisheries, the states, the fishing industry, and other stakeholders,” said NOAA’s Fisheries Service Alaska Regional Administrator Jim Balsiger.

NOAA Fisheries began a draft status review of the eastern population, which ranges from Alaska’s Cape Suckling to California’s Channel Islands, in June 2010, and opened a 60-day public comment period. Within a few days, NOAA received two petitions, one from the states of Washington and Oregon, and the other from the state of Alaska, asking that the eastern Steller sea lion be removed from threatened status under the Endangered Species Act.

The draft status review, which was completed in March 2012, shows the eastern Steller sea lion population has met the recovery criteria outlined in the recovery plan, which was developed by NOAA Fisheries in 1992 and revised in 2008.

There were approximately 34,000 eastern Steller sea lions in 1997, when the eastern and western stocks were found to be genetically different from each other. Estimates in 2010 put the eastern population at about 70,000.

The western stock, which ranges from Alaska as far as the Russian Pacific coast, will retain its endangered status.

Read the full news release on the NOAA’s website.

By: Caroline Pomeroy, Cynthia J. Thomas and Melissa M. Stevens

LA JOLLA, CA – California Sea Grant is pleased to announce the availability of an online edition of “California’s North Coast Fishing Communities: Historical Perspective and Recent Trends.”

The 340-pp. technical report presents a historic, demographic and economic overview of the region’s four major fishing communities: Crescent City in Del Norte County, Trinidad and Eureka/Fields Landing in Humboldt County, and Noyo/Fort Bragg in Mendocino County.

Profiles of each community highlight major commercial and recreational fisheries, their values, fleet sizes and how they have changed over time. There is also key information on fishing infrastructure – such as docks, piers, slips, launch ramps and cold storage facilities – and market channels for local commercial catches. But perhaps the most interesting sections are those that describe the current challenges and outlooks for sustaining the fishing communities.

“It (the report) is an invaluable reference for fielding public and media requests about local fishing, because it explains the value of our fisheries to the overall port community,” said Dan Berman, Director of the Conservation Division for the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District.

“We know what is going on at our docks,” said Eureka-based fisherman Dave Bitts, president of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishing Associations and one of the more than 180 fishery participants interviewed for the project. “What the report has done is assemble our knowledge in a way that is accessible to academics, consultants and government workers.”

Fisheries managers, both state and federal, are required to consider the social and economic impacts of regulations. “Yet, in-depth social science information on California fishing communities has been quite scarce,” said Caroline Pomeroy, a California Sea Grant marine advisor based in Santa Cruz and the lead author of the report, explaining her motivation for pursuing the research.

The full report, executive summary and individual community profiles can be downloaded at the California Sea Grant Extension web page or through the University of California’s eScholarship open-access repository.

California Sea Grant is part of NOAA’s National Sea Grant, a network of 32 university-based programs.

SAN DIEGO – The sardine population is dwindling and that could have a major impact on San Diego’s economy and food supply.

On Tuesday, the research ship Bell M. Shimada made preparations to head out again. This time, scientists will survey coastal waters from Mexico to near Santa Barbara looking for sardines.

Southwest Fisheries Science Center scientist Roger Hewitt, Ph.D., said forage fish like sardines are critical.

“They feed everything that we care about,” he said.

Sardines feed not only people – which results in $12 million in commercial fishing revenue in 2010 – but they also feed birds and mammals such as whales and sea lions which are cornerstones of tourism.

“Sardines are used as bait,” said Hewitt.

They help fuel the massive sport fishing industry, which brings in more than 250 million a year for San Diego, according to the United Anglers of Southern California, citing a 1985 study.

The last coast-wide survey occurred in 2006 going from Baja California to British Columbia. Scientists will be using echosounding, which is similar to sonar.

Read the rest of the article on 10News.com.

On March 22, 2012, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans & Insular Affairs held an oversight hearing titled Empty Hooks: The National Ocean Policy is the Latest Threat to Access for Recreational and Commercial Fishermen. 

During that hearing, George Mannina testified on exactly what policy decisions are having on fishing in the United States. See his testimony below:

Testimony of George J. Mannina, Jr.

Before the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans, and Insular Affairs Regarding National Ocean Policy

March 22, 2012

Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of this Subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today.  I was privileged to serve as Counsel to this Subcommittee for eight years prior to becoming the Chief Counsel and Staff Director for the Republican members of the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee before it was merged into the Committee on Natural Resources.  During my years with the Subcommittee and Committee, and since that time, I have worked on numerous ocean policy issues.  I am testifying today in my individual capacity and not on behalf of any client or of my firm, Nossaman LLP, although one of our associates, Audrey  Huang, has worked with me on this testimony.

Read Mannina’s full testimony here. 

Written By Morgan True and Aarthi Gunasekaran

WASHINGTON –  Fishermen from across the United States descended upon Capitol Hill Wednesday to voice their displeasure with a federal bureaucracy they believe is regulating them out of business.

Politicians from both sides of the political aisle and both houses of Congress joined a crowd of several hundred current and former fishermen, along with industry advocates, in lambasting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its director, Jane Lubchenco.

One small boy wore a sign around his neck reading, “NOAA, Jesus was a fisherman. Why can’t I be?” Others waved signs declaring, “Show Me The Science” and “Let Fishermen Fish.”

A bevy of public officials spoke, including Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Scott Brown, R-Mass.
“What does it take to get fired at NOAA?” asked an incredulous Brown. He was joined on stage by a staffer holding a blown-up photograph of a $300,000 luxury craft whose purchase has been sharply criticized by NOAA’s inspector general — and which Brown has sought to make a symbol of the agency’s bureaucratic excess.

“The nation’s primary fishing regulator, NOAA, is being run by Washington insiders with a radical agenda to change the way that you do business and it’s wrong,” he charged.

In his remarks, Kerry focused on the theme of improving the science that guides regulation, declaring, “If [regulators] make judgments that are based on unsound science, no science at all or science you can’t believe in, then we are going to have a problem.”

Read the rest of the article on Seacoastonline.com

By Richard Gaines | Staff Writer

Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, conceded Monday his organization’s 2008 policy paper predicting a jellyfish-dominated oceanic catastrophe oversimplified the problem.

“Oceans of Abundance,” which was underwritten by the Walton Family Foundation and co-authored by NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, then an EDF official, foresaw “the collapse of global fisheries in our lifetimes,” to be replaced by “massive swarms of jellyfish” — unless the wild stocks were immediately privatized and commodified for “catch share” trading in the global investment market.

EDF’s Rader was responding to a Monday Times story about the publication in the February issue of BioScience on research that found no evidence of a trend toward an explosion of the jellyfish — or “gelatinous zooplankton” — filling the void left by the removal of more complex fishes.

The team was headed by ecologist Robert Condon of the Dauphin Island Sea in Alabama and 17 other scientists.

Written By Dan Bacher 

In the Klamath River, biologists are forecasting four times more salmon than last year – and an astounding 15 times more than in 2006, according to the PFMC. The ocean salmon population is estimated to be 1.6 million adult Klamath River fall Chinook, compared to last year’s forecast of 371,100.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) at its meeting in Sacramento on March 7, encouraged by predictions of plentiful salmon returns along the West Coast, released three alternatives for ocean salmon fisheries including those based on Sacramento River and Klamath River stocks.

In all three alternatives, the recreational ocean salmon season is slated to open on April 7 in the Fort Bragg, San Francisco and Monterey areas, from Horse Mountain to the U.S./Mexico Border. There are three opening date alternatives – May 1, May 12 and May 26 – for the Oregon and California Klamath Management Zones.

After hearing public comment on the alternatives, the Council will make a final recommendation at their next meeting in Seattle on April 1-6.

Written by Deborah Zabarenko | Environment Correspondent

The world’s oceans are turning acidic at what could be the fastest pace of any time in the past 300 million years, even more rapidly than during a monster emission of planet-warming carbon 56 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday.

Looking back at that bygone warm period in Earth’s history could offer help in forecasting the impact of human-spurred climate change, researchers said of a review of hundreds of studies of ancient climate records published in the journal Science.

Quickly acidifying seawater eats away at coral reefs, which provide habitat for other animals and plants, and makes it harder for mussels and oysters to form protective shells. It can also interfere with small organisms that feed commercial fish like salmon.

The phenomenon has been a top concern of Jane Lubchenco, the head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who has conducted demonstrations about acidification during hearings in the U.S. Congress.

Oceans get more acidic when more carbon gets into the atmosphere. In pre-industrial times, that occurred periodically in natural pulses of carbon that also pushed up global temperatures, the scientists wrote.

Human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, have increased the level of atmospheric carbon to 392 parts per million from about 280 parts per million at the start of the industrial revolution. Carbon dioxide is one of several heat-trapping gases that contribute to global warming.

Read the rest of the article on Reuters.

Written by

John Oswald | Staff Writer

A number of U.S. legislators are voicing their growing displeasure with NOAA’s catch shares program by asking the federal government to abandon the controversial fisheries management measure.

Simply, catch share programs take the total allowable catch for a fishery and divide it up into shares which are then bought by individuals, associations, communities or corporations. A main concern among those raising the cry against catch shares is that the policy consolidates the fishery in the hands of a few large operations to the detriment of individual fishermen.

On Oct. 6, Congressman John Runyan (R-NJ) sent a letter to President Obama urging him to reconsider the use of catch share programs for commercial and recreational fishermen. In his letter, which was also signed by Representatives Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Frank Guinta (R-NH), and Sandy Adams (R-FL), Runyan wrote,

“Excessive government regulations have played a large role in our continued economic crisis. One of these excessive regulations is the catch share programs for fishermen. These programs have proven to decrease the number of fishing boats, which can have long lasting unintended economic consequences, including the loss of jobs in the fishing industry.”

Less than a week later, U.S. Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Scott Brown (R-MA) introduced the Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011 which would require, among other things, that the Secretary of Commerce terminate new and existing catch share programs that result in a 15 percent or more reduction in the total number of fishermen in the program.

“Catch share programs are driving New Hampshire’s fishermen out of business. Five months after federal catch shares were implemented in New England, 55 out of the initial 500 boats in the fishery controlled 61 percent of the revenue, and 253 of the boats were sitting at the dock, unable to fish without quota,” Sen. Ayotte said.

And as recently as Wednesday, an article in the Gloucester Times of Gloucester, Mass, reports that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has requested that NOAA administrator, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, declare the catch shares program a disaster.

Read the rest here.