Some NGO's cry foul over change to Calif. sardine management when it contradicts their view
Published by permission of SEAFOODNEWS.COM
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Opinion] By D.B. Pleschner - December 16, 2014(D.B. Pleschner is executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association.)
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.
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Dungeness landings likely down 50% in California, 40% in Oregon; lowest volumes in 8 years
Posted with permission of SEAFOODNEWS.COM | by John Sackton December 11, 2014
Graph: Seafood Datasearch, based on state and federal dataSubscribe to SeafoodNews.com to view original post.
At Asia-Pacific summit, Kerry gives wrong advice for world’s fisheries
Environmental sustainability was one of the top concerns at the mid-November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing, as shown by the potentially groundbreaking climate agreement reached between the United States and China. The fate of the world’s oceans, from issues ranging from climate change to overfishing, was also in the spotlight, being mentioned by Secretary of State John Kerry as one of many challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region. Unfortunately, the solutions we’re focusing on are not enough to solve the problems that our marine environments face.The APEC summit is the most recent instance in which the US has touted the expansion of marine preserves as a tonic for global overfishing, especially as climate change and ocean acidification threaten to radically alter our ocean ecosystems. This past September, the Administration created the largest marine reserve in the world when it expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, moving this strategy to the forefront of our international ocean policy. Secretary Kerry hailed this development as “critical” at the summit, going on to note, “most of the fisheries of the world are overfished.”But Secretary Kerry gets some key facts wrong here. For one, most of the fisheries of the world are not overfished. In 2014, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) placed that number at 29 percent, and reported that approximately 70 percent of the stocks that they assessed were being fished within biologically sustainable levels. If the U.S. is going to promote sustainability worldwide, it should acknowledge current management successes.And more importantly, these Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) aren’t sufficient to solve some of the most pressing issues affecting our oceans, despite our nation’s recent enthusiasm for promoting them.MPAs are certainly very useful for certain conservation goals. They can protect vulnerable habitats like coral reefs as well as benefit some species of fish that make those habitats their home. But their widespread adoption presents several challenges and raises several concerns. The biggest issue is that—especially in the developing world—people still need to fish. It’s a valuable source of employment, and an even more valuable source of protein. The FAO estimated that in 2011, 2.3 billion people relied on fish as a significant source of animal protein. A shift from seafood to other, land-based food sources like meat and agriculture may actually increase greenhouse emissions and pollution, making these threats to our oceans even worse.MPAs are also a much more limited tool than currently acknowledged. They do little to help certain stocks of highly migratory fish, like tuna, which don’t remain in any closed area long enough to reap much of the benefits. Even stocks that stay in one place might not benefit for long. With climate change putting increasing pressure on stocks to migrate from their traditional territories to cooler waters, the spatial limitations of an MPA are a poor fit for the habitat changes that are likely to occur. Similarly, MPAs provide little protection against the increasingly prominent effects of ocean acidification. Effectively dealing with these growing climate problems is going to require a long-term strategy that is simply outside the reach of fisheries management.Fishing isn't likely to go away anytime soon, and a global conservation strategy that’s too reliant on keeping fishermen out of an ever-expanding set of ocean reserves has some obvious political, economic, and practical limits. Adopting more sustainable management measures for some of the world’s largest fisheries, many of them in APEC member countries, would likely have a much greater impact.So what’s the best way to address the problem of overfishing and prepare for climate change? We need to promote a combination of strategies at the international level that have worked so well in some of the world’s best managed fisheries, such as New Zealand, Norway, Iceland, and here in the United States. When effectively implemented, measures like limiting the size of fish that can be caught, controlling how much fish is caught, and restricting the ways in which fish can be caught all produce effects similar to those seen in successful MPAs. They also have the benefit of sustaining fishing economies and maintaining fish as a viable source of food.No conservation measures, whether on climate, or pollution, or overfishing, can be sustainable in the long-term unless they confront economic and political realities. Promoting better fishing, rather than simply displacing or banning it all together, is far more likely to win support among the developing world, which can’t afford to sacrifice a critical way of life.Hilborn is professor of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington and the author of Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know by Oxford University Press. Rothschild is dean emeritus of the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology. Cadrin is the immediate past president of the American Institute of Fisheries Research Biologists. Lassen is the founder and president of Ocean Trust.
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Northern California lands large share of state's robust market squid catch
Published with permission of SEAFOODNEWS.COM[Monterey Herald] By James Urton - December 8, 2014 -The squid fishery in California remains robust, and this year’s catch has been unusually strong in Monterey Bay. In a typical season only about 20 percent of market squid are caught off Northern California. But this squid season — which runs from April to March — more than half of the state’s catch have come from north and central coast waters.“We really had quite a banner year,” said Monterey harbormaster Stephen Scheiblauer.By initial estimates, at least 75 percent of the Northern California squid catch came from waters in and around Monterey Bay. Scientists and squid fishermen do not fully understand the reason for this flip.“For Monterey, it was amazing,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association.There have been other seasons where Northern California outshone Southern California in squid hauls. But, since 1980, all of those years have preceded or fallen during El Nino climate shifts, which bring warm water to the California coast, starting with Southern California and moving north. It’s believed squid follow the cooler water.“These squid really respond to ocean conditions,” said Pleschner-Steele.The state is not currently in an El Nino pattern. But, it is possible that recent El Nino-like shifts in ocean conditions drove market squid farther north.“The last couple of years, especially in Northern California, have been good for squid,” said Neil Guglielmo, captain of the 70-foot fishing vessel Triumphal.Since squid season began April 1, commercial boats have hauled nearly 60,000 tons of market squid through Northern California ports, with a dock value of approximately $38.3 million. This is the largest squid season north of Point Conception in history and more than double the previous record set in the 2002-03 season. This year, Eureka reported its first squid landings.“We fished squid this year where we never fished before,” said Guglielmo.For much of this season, Guglielmo took the Triumphal from its home port near Ventura up the coast to Monterey and points farther north to haul in squid. He reported squid as far north as Crescent City.“We just followed them up there,” said Guglielmo. “There was so much squid.”This season was also a record for Monterey Bay, with an estimated 45,000 tons of squid caught in its waters, according to marine biologist Briana Brady with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.These record hauls also bring welcome economic benefits to ports. The local squid industry supports approximately 1,500 seasonal and full-time jobs, according to Scheiblauer. Ten squid fishing boats are based in Moss Landing and Monterey. In addition to landing fees at wharfs and the dock value of catches, the squid season brings economic benefits in the form of room and board for crew, fuel for boats, ice, cold storage facilities, transportation and processing for each boat’s catch. The Monterey area includes three resident buyers for squid.“They’re still a big part of our culture and economy,” Scheiblauer said.Ample food supplies and undisturbed spawning grounds help sustain market squid along the California coast. But, based on past squid fishing seasons, their numbers can still fluctuate along 10- to 15-year cycles, according to Brady.Market squid are relatively small, often measuring about a foot in length, and prefer to eat small invertebrates, plankton or each other. Their short six- to 10-month lifespan makes it difficult for biologists to estimate the size of the entire market squid population off California to manage the fishery sustainably.Instead, beginning in the last decade, regulators crafted a squid fishery management policy around a handful of core regulations. No more than 118,000 tons of squid can be harvested in California waters during the annual season. This limit was based off annual squid harvests in the late 1990s and early 2000s.“We’re happy with that maximum cap,” said Pleschner-Steele. “It’s a good, conservative number.”The state also uses a limited-entry permit system for squid fishing to control the number of fishing boats in California waters. In addition, marine-protected areas in Southern California and Monterey Bay keep approximately one-third of squid spawning grounds along the coast off limits to fishing. Finally, no commercial vessel may fish for squid between noon Friday and noon Sunday. This weekly moratorium gives squid in non-protected areas opportunities to spawn, according to Scheiblauer.As of Nov. 20, the statewide catch for market squid is nearly 115,000 tons. Since the maximum squid harvest cannot exceed 118,000 tons, this season is drawing to an early close. Under a voluntary co-management agreement between the squid fishing industry and Fish and Wildlife, larger fishing vessels ceased harvesting squid last month so smaller boats can “mop up” the remaining allotment of squid.Based on reports from squid fishermen, this year there will still be plenty of squid left behind. But, in the wake of this season’s unusual squid bounty for Northern California, no one is willing to predict what might be in store for next year. In two previous El Nino cycles, desolate squid harvests in Northern California followed one or two years of largesse.“You could have a boom year like this year and next year there’ll be nothing,” said Scheiblauer.But, even after those turbulent oscillations, the squid fishery stabilized around a sustainable mean. That long-term trend gives others cause for cautious optimism.“If the water doesn’t go crazy,” said Guglielmo, “I think we’ll be fine.”
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Squid harvest has been bountiful in Monterey Bay
Fans of calamari have much to be thankful for this holiday season.The squid fishery in California remains robust, and this year’s catch has been unusually strong in Monterey Bay. In a typical season only about 20 percent of market squid are caught off Northern California. But this squid season - which runs from April to March - more than half of the state’s catch have come from north and central coast waters.“We really had quite a banner year,” said Monterey harbormaster Stephen Scheiblauer.By initial estimates, at least 75 percent of the northern California squid catch came from waters in and around Monterey Bay. Scientists and squid fishermen do not fully understand the reason for this flip.“For Monterey, it was amazing,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association.There have been other seasons where northern California outshone southern California in squid hauls. But, since 1980, all of those years have preceded or fallen during El Nino climate shifts, which bring warm water to the California coast, starting with southern California and moving north. It’s believed squid follow the cooler water.“These squid really respond to ocean conditions,” said Pleschner-Steele.The state is not currently in an El Nino pattern. But, it is possible that recent El Nino-like shifts in ocean conditions drove market squid further north.“The last couple of years, especially in northern California, have been good for squid,” said Neil Guglielmo, captain of the 70-foot fishing vessel Triumphal.Since squid season began April 1, commercial boats have hauled nearly 60,000 tons of market squid through northern California ports, with a dock value of approximately $38.3 million. This is the largest squid season north of Point Conception in history and more than double the previous record set in the 2002-2003 season. This year, Eureka reported its first squid landings.“We fished squid this year where we never fished before,” said Guglielmo.For much of this season, Guglielmo took the Triumphal from its home port near Ventura up the coast to Monterey and points further north to haul in squid. He reported squid as far north as Crescent City.“We just followed them up there,” said Guglielmo. “There was so much squid.”This season was also a record for Monterey Bay, with an estimated 45,000 tons of squid caught in its waters, according to marine biologist Briana Brady with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.These record hauls also bring welcome economic benefits to ports. The local squid industry supports approximately 1,500 seasonal and full-time jobs, according to Scheiblauer. Ten squid fishing boats are based in Moss Landing and Monterey. In addition to landing fees at wharfs and the dock value of catches, the squid season brings economic benefits in the form of room and board for crew, fuel for boats, ice, cold storage facilities, transportation and processing for each boat’s catch. The Monterey area includes three resident buyers for squid.“They’re still a big part of our culture and economy,” Scheiblauer said.Ample food supplies and undisturbed spawning grounds help sustain market squid along the California coast. But, based on past squid fishing seasons, their numbers can still fluctuate along 10-15 year cycles, according to Brady.Market squid are relatively small, often measuring about a foot in length, and prefer to eat small invertebrates, plankton or each other. Their short 6-10 month lifespan makes it difficult for biologists to estimate the size of the entire market squid population off of California to manage the fishery sustainably.Instead, beginning in the last decade, regulators crafted a squid fishery management policy around a handful of core regulations. No more than 118,000 tons of squid can be harvested in California waters during the annual season. This limit was based off of annual squid harvests in the late 1990s and early 2000s.“We’re happy with that maximum cap,” said Pleschner-Steele. “It’s a good, conservative number.”The state also uses a limited-entry permit system for squid fishing to control the number of fishing boats in California waters. In addition, marine protected areas in southern California and Monterey Bay keep approximately one-third of squid spawning grounds along the coast off limits to fishing. Finally, no commercial vessel may fish for squid between noon Friday and noon Sunday. This weekly moratorium gives squid in non-protected areas opportunities to spawn, according to Scheiblauer.As of Nov. 20, the statewide catch for market squid is nearly 115,000 tons. Since the maximum squid harvest cannot exceed 118,000 tons, this season is drawing to an early close. Under a voluntary co-management agreement between the squid fishing industry and Fish and Wildlife, larger fishing vessels ceased harvesting squid last month so smaller boats can “mop up” the remaining allotment of squid.Based on reports from squid fishermen, this year there will still be plenty of squid left behind. But, in the wake of this season’s unusual squid bounty for northern California, no one is willing to predict what might be in store for next year. In two previous El Nino cycles, desolate squid harvests in northern California followed one or two years of largesse.“You could have a boom year like this year and next year there’ll be nothing,” said Scheiblauer.But, even after those turbulent oscillations, the squid fishery stabilized around a sustainable mean. That long-term trend gives others cause for cautious optimism.“If the water doesn’t go crazy,” said Guglielmo, “I think we’ll be fine.”James Urton can be reached at 726-4453.
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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.
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Monterey historic boat could get new purpose
Built by Sicilian born boatbuilder Angelo Siinno in Monterey around 1927-1930, the General Pershing may be repurposed into a classroom on the bay. David Royal — Monterey Herald
The Siino family has contributed a lot to the history of Monterey and their latest idea could give back even more.They said this week they are aiming to turn the largest boat Sicilian-born Angelo Siino, one of Monterey’s most famous shipbuilders, ever crafted into an educational tool.The General Pershing boat is roughly 60 feet long, 15 feet wide and was built around 1927 at Monterey Boatworks and used to film “Captains Courageous” in 1937 and other films. It is still seaworthy.“Our goal is to make it back to being useful for the heritage of Monterey. We’re calling it Classroom on the Bay. We want it to be a teaching vessel,” said Siino’s granddaughter, Janet Martinez, 68, of Aromas.Martinez said they need help restoring the lampara boat, which she estimates could reach up to $150,000. They have been repainting it for the last three weeks.She said they hope to partner with a nonprofit or get grants to accomplish their vision.In the meantime, she has written a book called “Master Boat Builders of Italy.” Revenue from sales will be used for the project.Given the boat was built during the heyday of the sardine industry, she said students could be taught the history of Monterey aboard, as well as modern classes about the ecology of the Bay.Angelo Siino moved to the United States from Sicily in 1903 and to Monterey in 1914. He died in 1956.He built 15 boats from scratch and did it without blueprints, Martinez said.“To this day, I don’t know how they did it,” she said.He taught his craft to sons, Raymond and Frank, who became celebrated ship builders.The General’s original owner was Neno DiMaggio, cousin to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, who named it after Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, the World War I figure under whom Neno DiMaggio served.It eventually ended up in San Francisco under the ownership of fisherman Frank Watada. He gave it back to the Siino family in 2003.The General hit the news in 2008 when a colony of seabirds called Brand’s cormorant took up residence on it and required U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists to get them out.Martinez can be found at Boatworks most days painting the boat but can also be reached at mmpublishing@gmail.com.
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Kayakers Blown Out to Sea Rescued by Squid-Fishing Boats
High winds blew six kayakers out to sea, where squid-fishing boats and lifeguards on Jetskis rescued them
Six kayakers were blown a mile out to sea, and rescued by squid fishing boat crews, as 50-mile-per-hour Santa Ana winds cropped up suddenly in Malibu Sunday.Sustained winds of 47 miles per hour, and a gust of 81 mph, were recorded in the hills above Malibu Sunday, as the six kayakers were blown south.A large fleet of squid-fishing boats from Port Hueneme had been clustered near Point Mugu, taking advantage of ocean currents that concentrate squid there.At least two of the kayaks were snared by the squid fleet to prevent them from being blown further out to sea. Lifeguards then used "Jetski"-type watercraft to tow the kayaks back to shore at about 9 a.m.The rescue was a joint operation of lifeguards from Ventura and Los Angeles counties, and California State Parks.Paramedics examined the kayakers at Countyline Beach and pronounced them fine. Lifeguards said the people had been fishing just west of the Los Angeles-Ventura county line.Winds had been calm in western Malibu at 7 a.m., but were blowing at up to 50 miles per hour at Leo Carrillo Beach, straight out to sea, when the rescue occurred.In Malibu, power lines were reported down on Latigo Canyon Road, one mile uphill from Pacific Coast Highway. Traffic was getting through in the area, a deputy said, and no fire was reported."When the winds are blowing offshore, it's a bad time to kayak," observed LA County Lifeguards Capt. Dan Murphy. "Make sure to have a signal device, and a personal flotation device."Earlier in the day, four paddleboarders were reported in distress to LA County lifeguards at around 11:30 a.m.They were out in sustained 45 mph winds that stopped them from paddling back to shore, so the Malibu watch boat picked them up.The hurricane-force, 81 mph wind gust was reported at a Mesonet weather station operated by a homeowner near Saddle Peak, at the 1,500 foot elevation. It was reported on the National Weather Service website at 10:15 a.m. That was not an official NWS reading, however.Along the beach, palm fronds, eucalyptus branches and tumbleweeds were observed blowing across PCH at 8 a.m.
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