11/17/21 11/17/21

Ahead of Magnuson-Stevens Act Hearing, Studies Question Need for Additional Forage Fish Restrictions

November 16, 2021 — Editor’s note: The following was released ahead of today’s House subcommittee hearing on the Forage Fish Conservation Act. Watch the full hearing here. Today, the House Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on Water Oceans and Wildlife will hold a hearing on H.R. 5770, the Forage Fish Conservation Act, which would impose new rules on how fisheries managers regulate certain small, schooling, short-lived, pelagic fish and invertebrates that serve as food sources for larger predator species. Two recent studies have raised questions about the need for additional restrictions, and point to existing provisions in the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) that are already ensuring the sustainability of “forage fish” and the species that depend on them.In addition to the Forage Fish Conservation Act, the subcommittee will consider two bills that would reauthorize and amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA). H.R. 4690 is the Democratic Majority’s re-authorization of MSA, sponsored by Subcommittee Chair Jared Huffman (D-California) and H.R. 59, sponsored by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska).Proponents of the Forage Fish Act point to the need to keep forage fish populations at extra-precautionary levels, above existing overfishing limits, so that they can better provide for the needs of predator species. But a study released this summer in the journal Conservation Biology, and funded by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS), found that, for many predator species, managing forage species at these levels are unlikely to bring additional conservation or environmental benefits. This is especially true in already well-managed and well-monitored fisheries, such as those in the U.S. managed under the existing Magnuson-Stevens Act.“Management of forage fish populations should be based on data that are specific to that forage fish, and to their predators,” said Dr. Olaf Jensen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the study’s authors. “When there aren’t sufficient data to conduct a population-specific analysis, it’s reasonable to manage forage fish populations for maximum sustainable yield, as we would other fish populations under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”Dr. Jensen and his co-author Dr. Chris Free of the University of California Santa Barbara discuss the results of the paper at greater length in a video released earlier this year. They are joined by scientists Dr. Doug Butterworthof the University of Cape Town, and Dr. Éva Plagányi of CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, who offer their independent assessment of the study and their own conclusions on its findings.To reach these conclusions, the study examined decades worth of abundance data for 45 different predator species and their prey, and found that only 13 percent of them showed any positive impact from having additional, higher levels of forage. Instead, it found that other environmental factors have a far greater influence.The results of the study reinforce the conclusions of an earlier 2017 study published in Fisheries Research, which found that the fishing of forage fish species had a much smaller impact than previous studies had indicated, and that forage fish were best managed on a case-by-case basis, rather than on broad rules applied across species.

Original post: https://www.savingseafood.org/news/washington/ahead-of-magnuson-stevens-act-hearing-studies-question-need-for-additional-forage-fish-restrictions/

4/3/18 4/3/18

Proposed Magnuson Stevens changes are reasonable

“Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”Macbeth, Act III, Scene II I am wondering how much commercial fishermen know about acting? At a guess I’d say probably as much, or as little, as most actors know about commercial fishing, even award-winning ones. This thought arose following the recent appearance in these pages of an opinion piece on fishery management by a member of the acting profession in an attempt to wield political influence.The thespian in question is also an Oceana board member, a well-funded environmental group antithetical to America’s oldest industry. This group has been known to advance claims which fail to resonate with real scientists. One particularly misleading report ‘Wasted Catch,’ launched by Oceana on a credulous public in 2014, drew a letter of censure from all eight of our nation’s regional Fishery Management Councils. Among other things the letter stated:“While we acknowledge that there are no laws requiring Oceana reports to accurately represent the best available scientific information or to undergo peer review, to do so would be in the best interest of all involved parties. This is why we suggest that you retract the report until it is reviewed and corrected.” http://www.mafmc.org/newsfeed/wasted-catchThe Magnuson Stevens Act which governs fisheries in federal waters requires reauthorization and it is currently under review. Changes proposed in a bill now before Congress were denounced by this Oceana advocate as “counter factual, anti-science, anti-conservation.”The frothy plea to our congressman is for maintenance of the status quo in fishery management. And the argument carries weight because it comes from a well-known actor? Well sir, Nature isn’t listening. And the modest proposals in H.R 200, intended to remove some of the onerous provisions burdening our fishermen, have generated a predictable response from environmentalists who dismiss realities which do not fit their agenda. Change is needed.The act as written, for example, calls for rebuilding all stocks to maximum sustainable yield simultaneously and imposes timeline to achieve that. I called my friend Dave Goethel for his take on that. “That ignores Nature. It’s a biological impossibility,” he said. “Something will always be overfished. The reason haddock are up and cod are down now is because they occupy the same ecological niche.”Dave is a working commercial fisherman with a degree in marine biology who served two terms on the New England Fishery Management Council. He doesn’t act but he has been fishing for 50 years. Fishermen, he said, are simply hoping to introduce a little flexibility on these rigid rebuilding timelines which were imposed more or less arbitrarily when the act was written.Another change sought by fishermen concerns the use of the emotive, and misleading, term “overfishing.” Unfortunately ‘overfishing’ is generally believed by the public to be a consequence of greedy fishermen taking too many fish out of the water. Overfishing is defined as the removal of more fish from a stock than the population can replace through natural reproduction. Depletion of a particular species in a given area can result from factors other than fishing such as natural mortality or increased predation. Environmental factors such as changes in temperature or salinity also cause population shifts. Dave used Northern shrimp as an example. “There has been no shrimp fishery for five years and no bycatch,” he said. “Five years is the life span of a shrimp. Yet they are still considered by regulators as overfished with overfishing occurring. How exactly can that be? The answer is in the definition. ‘Overfished’ and ‘overfishing’ are currently absolute terms.”Fishermen would like to see more realism introduced to stock rebuilding goals and timelines and it seems to me that these proposals are reasonable and their input should be valued. Oceana appears to view change as a threat to their mission which, from my perspective, seems to focus in large part on keeping people from fishing. They do not listen to fishermen. There is some irony in an environmental activist advocating for the status quo in New England in the face of major ecological changes and with fishermen such as Dave Goethel suffering economic hardship, constrained by catch limits derived from unrealistic biological expectations.I read, this week, news of the death of Louie Kamookak, an Inuit whose precise directions, shared with Canadian archaeologists, led to the discovery in the Arctic of the ships of the ill-fated Franklin expedition. This was a mystery that confounded searchers for generations. As a boy, Kamakook absorbed the rich oral history of his Inuit elders, including the tale of white men dragging boats over the ice. His knowledge was ignored for years by European scientists and explorers while dozens of expeditions ended in failure. Paul Watson, the author of a book about Franklin, was quoted saying: “Louie showed that traditional knowledge really does mean something.” The traditional knowledge of our fishermen here in New England also means something, although it too has been largely ignored by people who seem to believe they know better and that is another change that is long overdue.

10/25/17 10/25/17

Testimony of Ray Hilborn to U.S. Senate subcommittee

Testimony of Ray Hilborn to U.S. Senate subcommittee.

Subcommittee to Continue Hearing Series on Magnuson-Stevens ActWASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, will convene the hearing titled “Reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act: Fisheries Science,” at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 24, 2017. The hearing is the fourth of the series and will focus on the state of our nation’s fisheries and the science that supports sustainable management.Witnesses:- Mr. Karl Haflinger, Founder and President, Sea State, Inc - Dr. Ray Hilborn, Professor, University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences - Dr. Michael Jones, Professor, Michigan State University Quantitative Fisheries Center - Dr. Larry McKinney, Director, Texas A&M University Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico StudiesHearing Details:Tuesday, October 24, 20172:30 p.m.Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast GuardThis hearing will take place in Russell Senate Office Building, Room 253. Witness testimony, opening statements, and a live video of the hearing will be available on www.commerce.senate.gov.

9/15/16 9/15/16

RELEASE: Ten Years after Magnuson-Stevens Act, U.S. Fisheries are the Best Managed in the World

Washington, D.C. — United States fisheries are the most sustainably managed in the world. Critical legislation has governed federal fisheries for the past four decades, and the enactment of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act, or MSRA, 10 years ago provided science-based management measures that have maintained the health of the U.S. ocean ecology and economy.However, it is time to think about what comes next for the U.S. fisheries industry. The Center for American Progress has released a report looking at the successes of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and offering science-based recommendations to maintain and improve the health of U.S. fisheries over the next 10 years. The report was released at an event on the legacy of the MSRA featuring former Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco; Maria Damanaki, global managing director for oceans at the Nature Conservancy; and Margaret Spring, vice president of conservation and science at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.“It is no fluke that U.S. fisheries are among the best managed in the world,” said Michael Conathan, Director of Ocean Policy at CAP and co-author of the report. “The success of our science-based fishery management regime that has evolved over four decades of legislative oversight has made the resource far more sustainable while sustaining coastal economies. Now in the 21st century, federal fisheries face daunting challenges, including ocean warming and acidification stemming from climate change. The MSRA and its predecessors have made U.S. fisheries the healthiest in the world but it is now time to update these efforts to ensure their sustainability into the next century.”The paper makes the following recommendations:

Regulators should work to account for changes in fishery dynamics that fishermen around the country are already experiencing as a result of climate change, including ocean acidification and warming.
Ecosystem-based management should be prioritized as a tool to facilitate a holistic fisheries management.
To increase accountability and data collection, NOAA should aggressively pursue the development and deployment of electronic monitoring systems for fishing vessels.
Congress should appropriate additional funding for ocean observation and baseline research to facilitate data collection and stock assessment science.
Using the MSRA’s strong international provisions, the Obama administration should finalize regulations aimed at curtailing illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing abroad.
U.S. leaders and government officials should press the International Maritime Organization to expand application of its vessel monitoring and registration standards to include all fishing vessels operating on the high seas.

Click here to read the report.Click here to watch the live stream of the event.

3/31/15 3/31/15

Rep. Don Young's MSA Reauthorization Bill Focused on Flexibility and Science

Taking the lead on legislation he’s been involved with since it first passed in 1976, Alaska U.S. Rep. Don Young introduced a bill March 4 to reauthorize and amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act.The act, or MSA, governs all U.S. federal fisheries, which take place in the exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, between three and 200 miles off the coast. The MSA was most recently reauthorized and updated in 2006.Young introduced H.R. 1335 on March 4 with three regional cosponsors: Reps. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., and Amata Coleman Radewagen, R-American Samoa.Young’s proposed version of the MSA is titled the “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act.” His philosophy is to let the councils, who have more intimate understandings of their stocks and more responsiveness than the Department of Commerce, have more control of their respective operations, and to update the act to account for better scientific governance and more attention to economic effects.The revised act has several amendments regarding stock rebuilding protocols, council transparency, catch limits, pollock cooperative quota limits, the definition of “overfished” or depleted stocks, data collection, MSA authority in relation to other federal responsibilities, and the definition and role of subsistence.The MSA governs eight regional councils in the federal waters off the U.S. coast. Alaska’s waters, fished mainly by fishermen from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest states, fall under the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s authority.Some changes make provisions for more flexible planning. The plans for rebuilding depleted fisheries will remove the current mandatory 10 years for rebuilding plans and allow councils to phase in rebuilding plans over a three-year period to limit damaging effects to fishing economies.Some changes expand the MSA’s authority to govern fisheries according to economic needs as well as biological. Under one amendment, councils may take into consideration “changes in an ecosystem and the economic needs of the fishing communities” when establishing annual catch limits.Moving away from overfishing as the main term for depleted stocks is a key part of the new MSA’s revisions to scientific policy.“They blame any decline in stock to overfishing,” said Young. “That’s not true. There could be climatic changes; there could be something else. We want to give (councils) a more scientific basis.”Stock rebuilding plans will account for more causes than overfishing, such as predation and environmental variations.Young’s reauthorization would replace all uses of the word “overfished” with the word “depleted.” Annual reports “shall distinguish between fisheries that are depleted (or approaching that condition) as a result of fishing and fisheries that are depleted (or approaching that condition) as a result of factors other than fishing.”The distinction is important, as some stocks will decline in the total absence of fishing. Young said his attention was first brought to the difference between terms in the western Aleutian Islands, where certain stocks like Atka mackerel were depleted not due to overfishing, but predation by Steller sea lions.Some provisions offer more control in setting harvest use caps. In an amendment specific to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, Young has authorized the council to set the maximum Bering Sea Pollock harvest use cap for “individuals, corporations, or other entities,” such as cooperatives at no more than 24 percent compared to the previous use cap of 17 percent.Young said the amendment is intended to allow for profitability for pollock fleets but not over-consolidate to the point of excluding entry into the fishery.Young’s reauthorization also includes a kind of declaration of sovereignty for the act’s authority to govern fisheries. Under one amendment, any conflict between the Magnuson-Stevens Act and the National Marine Sanctuaries Act or the Antiquities Act of 1906 will fall under the authority of the MSA. Any required changes to fisheries under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 will also fall under MSA authority to examine and implement.“As far as I’m concerned, the only thing that manages fish is the Magnuson-Stevens Act,” said Young. “Not the Antiquities Act. Not monuments. When they set an area off for the Antiquities Act that drives out commercial fishermen, they’re managing for fish. It’s an attempt to get commercial fisheries out of the ocean. They’ll deny it, but they know it.”Young has vocally opposed the executive authority under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act and the Antiquities Act of 1906 to establish monuments and antiquities that amount to national parks or wildlife refuges, such as the recently-nominated President Barack Obama proposed on Jan. 25 to set 12 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, aside as wilderness, effectively halting any oil development. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young all drafted letters of disapproval.On Jan. 27, Obama also designated 9.8 million acres of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas as a marine sanctuary, halting oil and gas leasing in those areas as well as ANWR. In 2014, Obama used his power under the Antiquities Act to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine Sanctuary.Only days before the ANWR designation, on Jan. 22, Young introduced H.R. 330. The bill would restrict the president’s authority to independently create national monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906.Council process will be altered to provide for more public transparency and involvement. Council Scientific and Statistical Committees “shall develop such advice in a transparent manner and allow for public involvement in the process.”The Department of Commerce will maintain a public archive of all Scientific and Statistical Committee audio, video, and transcripts.Each council itself will be required to make available on its website a webcast, audio recording, or live broadcast of each meeting. Each will also provide audio, video, or a searchable audio or written transcript of each meeting of the Council and of the meetings of committees within 30 days of the meeting’s conclusion.Any proposed fishery requires a fishery impact statement before implementation. Under Young’s amendment, the impact statement shall “assess, specify, and analyze the likely effect and impact of the proposed action on the quality of the human environment.”Each statement shall be made available to the public not les than 14 before the final decision takes place.Another broadly-focused amendment concerns data collection and confidentiality. The amendment would require that the Secretary of Commerce issue regulations for electronic monitoring, and allow for the replacement of onboard monitors with electronic monitoring, if the council has determined that electronic monitoring yields comparable results to the observer program. All regulations regarding electronic monitoring must be issued within one year of the MSA’s reauthorization.Catch shares in certain regions will require a more democratic process. In the New England, Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico, all catch shares will require a referendum approval by the majority of permits holders eligible to take place in the fishery. In New England, the referendum may include fishing crew members who earn a significant portion of their livelihood from fishing.Specific to Alaska, Young defines subsistence in his reauthorization, and provides for subsistence fishing experience as criteria for North Pacific council seat selection.

Subscribe to Seafoodnews.com | read original post here.Peggy Parker, Science and Sustainability EditorSeafoodNews.com 1-781-861-1441

3/19/15 3/19/15

Ray Hilborn's Commentary on Capitol Hill: Magnuson Has Given the US Sustainable Seafood

Hilborn published an opinion column today in the Hill, a newspaper targeting Congress and Congressional Staff. He makes the case that with the Magnuson Stevens Act the US has acheived sustainable fisheries.

This year marks 40 years since the passage of landmark Congressional legislation that fundamentally overhauled how the $90 billion U.S. commercial fisheries industry is managed. It established a unique public-private partnership in which the industry, working with scientists and both federal and local authorities, would regulate fishing according to agreed-upon scientific standards for environmental sustainability, even as the industry stretched to meet skyrocketing demand for seafood. As the world's marine science and fisheries experts convene in Boston this week at the International Boston Seafood Show, the implications of the bold decisions taken in 1976 on U.S. fisheries should be assessed in light of a race to the bottom of the seas elsewhere due to overfishing.Prior to 1976, federal regulations for marine fisheries were virtually non-existent, leading to rampant exploitation of our oceans and fisheries. But the Magnuson Stevens Act changed that in two important ways. First, it eliminated foreign fleets from a 200-mile exclusive economic zone, reserving these waters for U.S. vessels alone. And second, it established a system of regional management councils to regulate federal fisheries, laying the foundation for a strict and transparent science-based approach to fisheries management that has enabled the U.S. to emerge as a model of seafood sustainability around the world.Under the provisions of the Magnuson Stevens Act, regional fishery councils in the U.S. are required to use the best available science in setting harvest levels, identify and protect essential fish habitat, abide by the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Act, and enact protections from fishing activities that are detrimental to other species.Over the years, various amendments to the Magnuson Act have further refined and improved its structure. Most importantly, following the painful collapse of the nation’s oldest fishery—New England bottom fish, including haddock and redfish—significant amendments in 1996 resulted in a stronger focus on protecting habitats and establishing a requirement for a 10-year rebuilding timeline.Today, the U.S. has essentially eliminated overfishing, with only 9 percent of stocks now fished at rates higher than would produce long-term maximum yield. In a report released this month by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, 98 percent of U.S. fisheries received a “Best” or “Good” rating, with only 2 percent on the “Avoid” list. While 17 percent of stocks are still considered “overfished”, most of these are on the road to recovery. And in New England, bottom fish stocks have made a spectacular recovery, having increased six-fold since the mid-1990s.Technically speaking, some stocks will always be “overfished” – fish stocks fluctuate naturally and the managers can only control what they harvest—but the U.S. management system, using scientific advice, is designed to take such fluctuations into account, and will completely stop harvesting when stocks reach low levels. Consumers and retailers should buy U.S.-caught fish with confidence that the fishery is managed through an open, transparent, and sustainable process.However, consumers and retailers are often confused by the numerous non-governmental organizations providing consumer advice on what stocks are sustainably managed. Legitimate concerns about overfishing in the 1990s led to the rise of these watchdog NGOs, and today there are literally dozens of seafood advice web sites that provide often conflicting advice. A stock may be listed as a “best choice” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but still be on Greenpeace’s “red” list. The same stock of fish may be rated “green” or “red” by the same organization depending on how it is caught.Why the conflicting information? Quite simply, providing seafood advice is now a big business, both with direct payment from retailers to those giving advice, and by fundraising campaigns to “save the oceans” that fail to acknowledge that the existing U.S. fisheries management system provides for sustainability. Indeed, despite the fact that it is widely agreed among scientists, fisheries managers, and government regulators that U.S. fisheries are well managed, some NGOs now gain so much revenue from companies that sell seafood and concerned citizens, that they simply cannot admit the U.S. success.The interests of marine stewardship are far better served should NGO’s direct their attention to places where fisheries management is not science-based and effective. While there is always room for improvement, the U.S. has a system in place that can adjust to sustainability concerns, while many other countries do not routinely monitor the abundance of their fish stocks, nor have management systems in place to reduce harvest when abundance goes down.Moving forward, the U.S. government and NGOs should promote the U.S. management system and its successes as a model for the world. The race to the bottom in countries that routinely overfish is ultimately self-defeating. Convincing fisheries that sustainability preserves jobs as well as stocks is a monumental task. But the U.S. has the benefit of 40 years of evidence—a thriving industry with one of the lowest levels of overfished stocks—to back it up.

Hilborn is a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington and author of "Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know."

9/18/13 9/18/13

VIDEO: Dr. Ray Hilborn on Federal Fisheries Management and Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) -- September 17, 2013 -- Last Wednesday, Dr. Ray Hilborn, of the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources during a hearing on the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Following his testimony on Capitol Hill, in which he adhered to the Congressional hearing's five minute time limit, Dr. Hilborn sat down with Saving Seafood's Executive Director Bob Vanasse for an in-depth discussion of his recommendations, and to give his presentation in full.Dr. Hilborn explains how an emphasis by fisheries managers on eliminating overfishing has led government agencies to ignore other important aspects of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which mandate the protection of fisheries resources alongside concerns for the socio-economic well being of fishermen and their communities.Dr. Hilborn aruges that that the U.S. has largely "solved" the problems surrounding overfishing and that underutilization of the resource should be of greater concern to fisheries managers.The video begins with Dr. Hilborn's evaluation of U.S. fisheries policy under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, his recommendations for the reauthorization, and concludes with a question and answers.http://vimeo.com/74758206Watch the full video here.Read the original post here.

5/24/12 5/24/12

California is Global Leader in Managing Forage Fish

Note: This article also appeared in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, North County Times, Salinas Californian, and online, on Saving Seafood and Science 2.0.

Written By Steve Scheiblauer

More than 150 years ago, immigrant Chinese fishermen launched sampans into the chilly waters of Monterey Bay to capture squid. The Bay also lured fishermen from Sicily and other Mediterranean countries, who brought round-haul nets to fish for sardines. This was the beginning of the largest fishery in the western hemisphere – California’s famed ‘wetfish’ industry, imprinted on our collective conscience by writers like John Steinbeck. Who doesn’t remember Cannery Row? It was the plentiful schools of fish – especially sardines that stretch from the Gulf of California to Alaska during cycles of abundance – that provided opportunity for generations of enterprising fishing families to prosper. These families helped build not only Monterey, but the ports of many other California cities, like San Diego, San Francisco and San Pedro – the fishing hub of Los Angeles. But now, this historic industry – named for the fish that were canned wet from the sea – is under attack by extremist groups who claim overfishing is occurring. That allegation is false; fishermen have long recognized that a sustainable fishery was good for both people and fish. When the sardine resource began its storied decline in the late 1940s, wetfish fishermen levied an assessment on their catch and contributed to the beginning of the California Cooperative Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI). A cooperative effort between the National Marine Fisheries Service, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Fish and Game, CalCOFI now is one of the preeminent research efforts worldwide. Research has since documented the dynamic fluctuations in coastal pelagic ‘wetfish’ stocks, including sardine and anchovy, which alternate their cycles of abundance - sardines favoring warm water epochs and anchovy preferring cold. Core samples from an anaerobic trench in the Southern California Bight found alternating layers of sardine and anchovy scales over a period of 1,400 years. Turns out, sardine stocks would have declined naturally even without fishing pressure. Today the wetfish industry maintains its commitment to research with cooperative efforts ongoing for both sardine and squid. Even though the canneries are gone due to their inability to compete on a now global marketing stage, our wetfish industry is still the backbone of California’s fishing economy – responsible for more than 80 percent of the volume and more than 40 percent of dockside value in 2010. Fast forward to earlier this month, when an in-depth study by a panel of 13 hand-picked scientists provided recommendations on policies to protect forage fish – like anchovy, sardines and market squid – that larger species feed on. The study by the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force concluded that overfishing of forage species is unfortunately occurring on a global scale. But interestingly, these scientists also identified the west coast, as different, noting that California is, “ahead of other parts of the world in how it manages some forage fish.” The region has “stricter monitoring and more conservative limits that could serve as a buffer against future crashes.” The Lenfest Report provides a strong case that forage fish are managed better in California and the Northern California Current than anywhere else in the world. Overall, forage fisheries here account for less than two percent of total forage production (including both fished and unfished stocks), leaving 98 percent for other marine life. Knowledgeable people understand that this is no accident. Fishing families have worked and are working with regulators to conserve California’s fisheries and coastal waters. In fact, after a 20-year moratorium on sardine fishing, California adopted strict fishing regulations when the sardine resource rebounded. The federal government assumed management of coastal pelagic species in 1999 and approved a visionary management strategy for the west coast ‘forage’ fish harvest, maintaining at least 75 percent of the fish in the ocean to ensure a resilient core biomass. The sardine protection rate is even higher at about 90 percent. Even so, some environmental groups are calling for deep and unnecessary cutbacks in sardine fishing in California, as well as substantial harvest reductions in other forage fish fisheries, including herring, anchovies and squid. Touting studies with faulty calculations, activists are lobbying federal regulators to massively limit fishing, if not ban these fisheries outright. Apparently the facts don’t matter to groups with an anti-fishing agenda. Their rhetoric leaves those not familiar with the fishing industry with the impression that overfishing is a huge problem in California. We hope decision makers will see through the rhetoric when developing harvest policy for California’s historic, and still important, wetfish fisheries. Ed's Note: Steve Scheiblauer is the harbmaster for the city of Monterey.

Read the full opinion piece online on Capital Weekly.

Written By Steve Scheiblauer

REPRESENTING CALIFORNIA’S HISTORIC FISHERY