4/6/16 4/6/16

Federal regulators: Don’t even think about fishing for these forage species

Fishing boats line the dock along Timms Way in San Pedro. West Coast fishery managers banned the take of any forage fish (pelagic squid, herring), in a decision ratified by federal officials with a final rule issued this week, in state waters. The species aren't fished currently, and this is a move to protect them, in the event their numbers increase and become enough to sustain a productive fishery. (Chuck Bennett / Staff Photographer)

No one’s fishing in large numbers for lanternfish, bristlemouth, pelagic squid or a handful of other forage-fish species targeted for protection in California by federal regulators this week.And no one will be fishing for them anytime soon, under the new rule, which has been the subject of debate among fishers and environmentalists for more than five years. It aims to proactively protect the Pacific Ocean ecosystem by banning commercial fishing of round and thread herring, Pacific saury and sand lance, and certain smelts across the West Coast that are preferred meals of predators commonly fished here.“The fishery management council wasn’t interested in being surprised by a potential new fishery,” said Yvonne deReynier, a NOAA spokeswoman. “Because of this rule, now people can’t just decide they want to go fishing without checking in and getting permission from fishery management. This is a big-picture concern of our council. The council wants to ensure there are going to be enough prey for mid- and higher-level trophic species that feed on these.”Before the rule was finalized Monday, new forage-fish commercial fisheries could start relatively easily. Now they can’t begin without extensive study, regulation and permission by the Pacific Fishery Management Council to ensure they’re not overfished or otherwise harmed.Environmentalists cheered the decision, saying it’s a progressive shift in policy from more conservative, past actions of the Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service.“The way we’ve traditionally managed fisheries in U.S. waters is really a management-by-crisis. This turns that on its head,” said Paul Shively, a spokesman for The Pew Charitable Trusts, an organization that has advocated for the rule since 2010. “It’s really a forward-thinking rule they put in place. It will be interesting and exciting to see how this is used as a model for other fisheries in the nation.”For California anglers, however, the decision makes little sense.“Our concern is that this is very shortsighted,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association. “It’s basically a placeholder to stop a fishery before it starts. For the most part, there shouldn’t be any immediate impact to any fishery because it allows for incidental takes when fishers are looking for something else but come up with these species.”Pleschner-Steele said constantly shifting ocean conditions require quick adaptation by fishers to survive and provide the market with fresh, sustainable fish. This measure could cause unnecessary delays and costs to fishers who are already struggling with what they perceive as overly restrictive federal and state rules.“In light of climate change and ocean acidification, the indications are that it’s going to be pushing temperate fish north. So the fish that now reside in Mexico and South America could very well become abundant here,” Pleschner-Steele said. “We asked that this policy be reviewed in the next couple of years to see if there are impacts, and then to keep reviewing it because the ocean’s always changing.”Sardines and anchovies, which also are forage fish, aren’t included in this rule because there are existing management plans for them. While the rule applies only to federal waters at least 3 miles out from the coast, state fishery regulators are likely to follow suit, officials said.This decision is the second of its kind on the West Coast. In 2009, commercial fishing for krill — a red shrimp-like crustacean favored by many ocean species — was banned even though krill fishers didn’t exist. Both issues were brought to the forefront by environmental organizations worried about overfishing, and maintaining a supply of prey species for ocean predators, sea birds and marine mammals.“We started with krill in 2009, and then moved to larger species,” deReynier said. “The fishery management council began working on this in 2013, the first time they looked at fisheries across the entire ecosystem, but environmental groups were calling for it for years before that.”

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11/23/15 11/23/15

Ocean activists, fishers and scientists differ on heavy anchovy declines

Longtime bait fisherman, Mike Spears near the net aboard the In-Seine off the shores of Marina del Rey.

A new, beautifully produced but troubling public service announcement from Oceana features “Glee” television actress and singer Jenna Ushkowitz diving with sea lions off Santa Barbara.Fishing, she says, decimated Southern California’s historically booming stocks of Pacific sardine and Northern anchovy, a major food source for top ocean predators. Those stocks have dropped dramatically in the past decade, prompting reduced fishing quotas as starved sea lion pups and California brown pelican chicks die in record numbers.“Sea lions rely on forage fish for survival. But years of overfishing have put this important food source in jeopardy,” Ushkowitz narrates while underwater footage shows her swimming through kelp. “Join Oceana and help protect forage fish in the Pacific. ... We need to stop this and replenish.”The West Coast’s leading fishery scientists, however, disagree. They believe the fish are most likely enduring natural population fluctuations and are on the cusp of making a big comeback.Oceana, a nonprofit advocacy organization favored by celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, insists that fishing is the primary problem. The group lobbied aggressively to close the West Coast anchovy fishery, delivering nearly 40,000 letters from concerned citizens nationwide to the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a 14-member body that sets fishing policy for California, Oregon and Washington, before its meeting last week.“We are greatly concerned that management of the commercial forage fisheries off California, Oregon and Washington is leaving ocean wildlife without enough fish to eat,” said Oceana’s form letter to the council, signed by thousands of citizens. “Approximately three times as many sea lions washed ashore in 2015 compared to 2013. Similarly, California brown pelicans have been abandoning their nests due to lack of forage fish.”Oceana helped to close the Pacific sardine fishery earlier than usual this year by stoking public concern about declining stocks of the important food source. They hoped to do the same for Northern anchovies, but the council decided to allow anchovy fishing to continue this season until the current, relatively low quota of 25,000 metric tons is reached.Sardine fishing will not resume until researchers complete another assessment of their population numbers, though fishers report seeing tons of them in the water.Corbin Hanson, a fisherman who supplies Tri Marine Fish Co. on Terminal Island with catch from his family-run fishing boat, the Eileen, said anchovies and sardines are plentiful.“Anchovies are still here in large volumes,” Hanson said. “I was just driving through them (Thursday) night. To say there are no anchovies in this water is absurd. It comes from such an obtuse perspective on our ecosystem.“The anchovy population ebbs and flows a lot and, as fishermen, we know that it’s going to come back. The volatility in the anchovy stocks is present with or without commercial fishing.“I don’t find it comforting that organizations (like Oceana) can make knee-jerk decisions about our coastal ecosystem when they’re not even on the water. The research they’re using to formulate their opinion isn’t even recent.”Researchers agree environmental changes, not fishers, caused the population crash. New evidence points to a record-breaking boom in young anchovies and sardines farther north this year in Central and Northern California, and on the Oregon border, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center. Researchers say that they appear to have eluded study because the fish changed their spawning times and locations with the sustained warmer ocean temperatures.But the intense public scrutiny prompted fishery managers last week to re-evaluate how they count the fish in an effort to find out whether overfishing is truly a problem. They will hold a spring workshop to determine the best, most accurate way to estimate their numbers. They’re hoping to strengthen partnerships with Canadian and Mexican fishery managers to best estimate how many fish are out there. These fish are difficult to track because they often don’t travel in schools, and they move quickly with changing environmental conditions, researchers say.Historically, they’ve relied on landing data, and the acoustic-trawl method of using echo-sounding and sonar beams to develop underwater maps of fish densities. They also collect egg samples to determine how many fish are likely to be born in a season, and take aerial and ship surveys.“The fish move north, south, onshore, offshore, up and down in the water column. They’re here one day and gone the next. And they’re subject to big population swings, so it’s hard to get a true picture of the biomass at any time,” said Kerry Griffin, a staff officer for the council.“There are weird things going on in the ocean right now, with the ‘warm blob,’ El Niño, ocean acidification and toxic algae up and down the coast,” Griffin said. “We are gradually incorporating ecosystem-based management into our fishery-management plans.“And paying more attention to environmental and oceanic patterns is the first step to getting a better understanding of relationships between species and the environment.”

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3/10/15 3/10/15

Action Taken To Protect Fish At Bottom Of Ocean Food Chain

Preface: The Council took action to prohibit new directed fisheries on a list of currently unmanaged, largely unfished forage species this week which brings the following species and species groups into all four of the Council’s FMPs as ecosystem component (EC) species: • Round herring (Etrumeus teres) and thread herring (Opisthonema libertate and O. medirastre) • Mesopelagic fishes of the families Myctophidae, Bathylagidae, Paralepididae, and Gonostomatidae • Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus) • Pacific saury (Cololabis saira) • Silversides (family Atherinopsidae) • Smelts of the family Osmeridae • Pelagic squids (families: Cranchiidae, Gonatidae, Histioteuthidae, Octopoteuthidae, Ommastrephidae (except Humboldt squid, Dosidicus gigas), Onychoteuthidae, and Thysanoteuthidae) The above species would be known as “Shared EC Species,” meaning that they are shared between all of the FMPs

A new rule prohibits new fisheries on forage fish species including silversides, shown here.Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble/Flickr

by Cassandra Profita OPBWest Coast fishery managers adopted a new rule Tuesday that protects many species of forage fish at the bottom of the ocean food chain.The rule prohibits commercial fishing of herring, smelt, squid and other small fish that aren’t currently targeted by fishermen. It sets up new, more protective regulations for anyone who might want to start fishing for those species in the future.The Pacific Fishery Management Council unanimously voted to adopt the rule at a meeting in Vancouver, Washington. The council sets ocean fishing seasons off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California.The idea behind the new rule is to preserve so-called forage fish so they’re available for the bigger fish, birds and whales that prey on them. It’s part of a larger push by the council to examine the entire ocean ecosystem when setting fishing seasons.Environmentalists who have been advocating for the rule for years celebrated the approval.“If we’re going to have a healthy ocean ecosystem in the long term, we have to protect that forage base,” said Ben Enticknap of the environmental group Oceana. “These are the backbone of a healthy ocean ecosystem.”Enticknap said many of the forage fish subject to the new rule are already being fished elsewhere in the world. Little fish at the bottom of the food chain are used to make fish meal for aquaculture, and they’re increasingly in demand as food for people as other fish populations decline.Previous rules only required managers to be notified of a new fishery on non-managed forage fish species. Now, the council will require a more rigorous scientific review to prove that the new fishery won’t harm the ecosystem before it is allowed.“Really, it’s being precautionary,” said Enticknap. “It’s getting out ahead of a crisis rather than waiting for a stock to collapse and then having to have serious consequences for fisheries after the fact.”The rule has gained broad support — even from the fishing industry, according to Steve Marx of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Valuable commercial fish such as rockfish, salmon, halibut and tuna all prey on forage fish.“The fishing industry support has been pretty strong because everybody understands how important these small forage fish are to the fish they like, that they make a living off of,” he said.Rod Moore, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association, congratulated the council on moving forward with the rule.“It’s rare to get this sort of consensus support from commercial, environmental and recreational sectors, and I think you have it on this one,” he said.Before voting, council members discussed the best way to allow existing fisheries to catch some of the forage fish species incidentally – as they’re targeting other fish.The council directed staff to continue developing the details of the rule so that it doesn’t constrain existing fisheries, but it does discourage fishing boats from targeting forage fish.Councilors instructed staff to hold fishing boats accountable the forage fish they catch and consider discouraging development of at-sea processing of forage fish species into fish meal.

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3/5/14 3/5/14

Has There Really Been A Sardine Crash?

Sardines have been a hot news topic in recent weeks. Environmental groups and others have claimed that the sardine population is collapsing like it did in the mid-1940s.The environmental group Oceana has been arguing this point loudly in order to shut down the sardine fishery. That’s why they filed suit in federal court, which is now under appeal, challenging the current sardine management.So what is the truth about the state of sardines? It’s much more complicated than environmentalists would lead you to believe. In fact, it’s inaccurate and disingenuous to compare today's fishery management with the historic sardine fishery collapse that devastated Monterey's Cannery Row.Read the full story here.

3/5/14 3/5/14

Viewpoints: The state of sardine populations

Sardines have been a hot news topic in recent weeks. Environmental groups and others have trumpeted that the sardine population is collapsing like it did in the mid-1940s.The environmental group Oceana has been arguing this point loudly in order to shut down the sardine fishery. That’s why it filed suit in federal court, in a case now under appeal, challenging the current sardine management.So what is the truth about the state of sardines? It’s much more complicated than environmentalists would lead you to believe.In fact, it’s inaccurate and disingenuous to compare today’s fishery management with the historic sardine fishery collapse that devastated Monterey’s Cannery Row.In the 1940s and ’50s, the fishery harvest averaged 43 percent or more of the standing sardine stock. Plus, there was little regulatory oversight and no limit on the annual catch.Today, the allowed annual U.S. catch totals roughly 5 percent and coastal sardine exploitation averages less than 15 percent of the northern stock.Read the full story here.

1/15/14 1/15/14

As sardines vanish from Southern California coastal waters, fishermen rely on squid and anchovy

Larry Derr was as prepared as any longtime Southern California bait fisherman for the disappearance of the Pacific sardines he has pulled up by the ton since the 1980s.He can fish anchovies instead and, if those become scarce, there's been a local surge in market squid to keep him in business.But the fickle sardines have been so abundant for so many years - sometimes holding court as the most plentiful fish in coastal waters - that it was a shock when he couldn't find one of the shiny silver- blue coastal fish all summer, even though this isn't the first time they've vanished.And the similar, but smaller, anchovies have proven a poor replacement since sardines became scarce. Fortunately, a boom in market squid has propelled Derr and other coastal pelagic fishers.In three days of nighttime fishing last week, Derr barely cleared a measly 20 scoops of anchovies to sell."A couple days ago we caught a ton of anchovies," Derr said, keeping a vigilant eye for the telltale red mass on the In-Seine's sonar during a predawn hunt Saturday. The screen remained black with irregularly dispersed green dots representing schools too small to fish. "We want this to be solid red."Though sardines aren't as valuable as tuna or rockfish, they're an important food source for larger fish, marine mammals like sea lions, dolphins and whales, and sea birds that can spot them from the air and dive for them.Some have attributed recent rashes of sea lion pup and pelican deaths to the sardine population decline, which began a few years ago and was officially recognized in December when the fishing quota was dropped to just 5,446 metric tons for all of California, Oregon and Washington from January to June. In the same time period last year, the quota was 18,073 metric tons.The Pacific Fishery Management Council lowered the quota in November after years of sardine stock decline from 2006, when 1.4 million tons were estimated to be swimming around the north Pacific. This year, their numbers are believed to be less than 400,000 metric tons.Read the full article here.

10/30/13 10/30/13

Cyclical sardine stock decline sets off efforts by greens to suspend West Coast fishery

GRANTS PASS -- Concerned sardine numbers may be starting to collapse, conservation groups are calling on federal fishery managers to halt West Coast commercial sardine fishing to give the species a better chance to rebound.“If they continue fishing them hard, they will go down a lot faster, and it will take them longer to recover," said Ben Enticknap, of the conservation group Oceana, that wants a suspension through the first half of 2014.The fishing industry counters that while there are signs sardines are going into a natural cycle of decline, fishery management has taken precautions to prevent overfishing, which was common in the past.Stock“Today’s precautionary management framework cannot be compared to the historic fishery, which harvested as much as 50 percent of the standing stock," said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, which represents sardine fishermen and processors. She is also vice chairman of a committee that advises the federal Pacific Fishery Management Council on sardines and related species.Current harvest rates range from 15 percent to 25 percent, depending on the size of stocks.The council plans to vote Sunday in Costa Mesa, Calif., on an interim harvest quota for the first half of 2014. The council has no specific proposal before it, council staffer Kerry Griffin said.The latest sardine assessment prepared for the council says that stocks at the start of 2014 are expected to be 28 percent of their peak in 2006, when they hit 1.4 million metric tons. The current management plan for sardines says a decline of another 60 percent, to 150 metric tons, would require halting fishing off the West Coast.Landings in Oregon, Washington and California have been valued at $9 million to $15 million a year. Most of the fish are exported to Asia, where some are canned and others used for bait for tuna.Read the full story here.

4/6/13 4/6/13

Pacific coast forage fish protection strongest in the world

D.B. PleschnerRecent stories may have left some people with the wrong impression regarding the Pacific Fishery Management Council's upcoming decision on April 9 to adopt the Pacific Coast Fishery Ecosystem Plan (FEP).These stories have implied rampant overfishing of forage species like sardines that the FEP supposedly will address by reducing catch limits on these fish in order to maintain a food source for bigger species like salmon and albacore.However, this simply isn't true.The council authorized development of the FEP to "enhance the Council's species-specific management programs with more ecosystem science, broader ecosystem considerations and management policies that coordinate Council management across its Fishery Management Plans (FMPs) and the California Current Ecosystem (CCE)."The FEP's first initiative proposes to protect unmanaged lower trophic level forage species such as Pacific sandlance and saury, which are currently not fished, by "prohibiting the development of new directed fisheries on forage species that are not currently managed by the Council, or the States, until the Council has had an adequate opportunity to assess the science relating to any proposed fishery and any potential impacts to our existing fisheries and communities."In contrast, anchovy, sardines and market squid, officially known as coastal pelagic species (CPS),

are already well managed under both federal and state fishery management plans, which prescribe precautionary harvest limits.

Consider the visionary management of Pacific sardines, the poster fish for ecosystem-based management. A risk-averse formula is in place that ensures when population numbers go down, the harvest also goes down. Conversely, when more sardines are available, more harvest is allowed, but the maximum cap is set far below the maximum sustainable harvest level.In 2011, the U.S. West Coast sardine fisheries harvested only 5.11 percent of a very conservative stock estimate, leaving nearly 95 percent of the species for predators and ecosystem needs.Does that sound like overfishing to you? Of course not, and scientists agree.A 2012 study by a panel of 13 scientists from around the world known as the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force concluded that while overfishing of forage species is problematic on a global scale, the West Coast is not being overfished.Indeed they noted that the Pacific Coast 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."Knowledgeable people know that this is no accident. Fishing families have historically worked with regulators to protect our wetfish fisheries.In fact, more than a decade ago, the Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted a management strategy for CPS harvested in California and on the West Coast, maintaining at least 75 percent of the fish in the ocean to ensure a resilient core biomass. The sardine protection rate is even higher.California also implemented a network of no-take marine reserves throughout our state's waters. Reserves established at specific bird rookery and marine mammal haul-out sites -- for example near the Farallon Islands, Año Nuevo, and Southern California's Channel Islands -- were enacted to protect forage fish. More than 30 percent of traditional squid harvest grounds are now closed in reserve.Hopefully these facts will prevail and dispel the hype. California has been recognized by internationally respected scientists as having one of the lowest fishery harvest rates in the world. It's one of only a few areas deemed "sustainable." (Rebuilding Global Fisheries, Science 2009).

REPRESENTING CALIFORNIA’S HISTORIC FISHERY