[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 11/13/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

November 13, 2008

 

1.  Top Items -

 

 

Commercial fishing frenzy criticized

Report calls practice wasteful, hazardous

San Diego Union Tribune – 11/13/08

By Mike Lee

It's known as the “race for fish” – the free-for-all at the start of each commercial season in which those who catch the most fish the fastest get the biggest payday.

The strategy often leads to huge loads of wasted seafood, unsafe fishing conditions and the depletion of ocean ecosystems worldwide, according to a report to be released today by a bipartisan group of politicians, scientists and policymakers, including California's secretary of resources.

 

The group is pushing President-elect Barack Obama and Congress to reform ocean fish management by switching from derby-style competitions to “catch shares,” which allot a percentage of the overall harvest to specific fishermen, allowing them to catch their quotas whenever they choose.

 

Today's report follows a landmark decision in San Diego last week to establish the most sweeping catch-share program in the country. It covers dozens of species of West Coast groundfish, including types of cod and sole, that are caught by commercial boats.

 

“We are right at the beginning of changing the way that we fish and acknowledging that the oceans are not limitless,” said George Sugihara, a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. “This is going to bring about a revolution in how fisheries evolve into organized, transparent markets instead of a race for fish.”

 

Catch shares are contentious partly because of the difficulty of setting fair quotas. But advocates say they make the harvest more profitable and sustainable while providing consumers with more fresh fish. The concept is emerging in the United States at a pivotal point for oceans, which are being hammered by overfishing, climate change and other factors.

 

“Catch shares will protect ocean productivity and diversity . . . for generations to come,” today's report states, adding that federal policy changes could quickly and inexpensively revive fisheries.

 

Under the new rules adopted Friday, about 175 commercial trawlers in California, Oregon and Washington will be allotted shares of the overall number of groundfish that can be caught. After the program takes effect in 2011, fishermen will be able to sell their stakes in the harvest much the way people do with company stocks.

Shares are expected to increase in value if the fish population expands, providing an incentive for fishermen to support the long-term health of the resource.

 

With fewer competitive pressures under a catch-sharing approach, fishermen could switch from trawl nets to more selective gear that causes less ecological damage and allows them to better target high-value types of fish, said Shems Jud, an analyst for the Environmental Defense Fund in Portland.

 

Fishing more carefully also should reduce “bycatch” – the unintended harvest typically discarded at sea. Studies say traditional derby-style fishing can result in 20 percent or more of catches being tossed overboard.

 

Not everyone likes catch shares. Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations in San Francisco, said selling shares of the harvest could give large processing companies too much power and hurt some ports.

His group blasted the groundfish quota plan as “a massive giveaway of a public resource that will lead to . . . a plantation-style fishery, turning fishermen into sharecroppers.” Consumer advocates at Food & Water Watch in Washington, D.C., raised similar concerns.

 

However, a recent paper in the journal Science documents how catch shares can halt or even reverse the global trend toward widespread demise of fish populations – one of the world's most pressing environmental problems.

 

“When you allocate shares of the catch, then there is an incentive to protect the stock, which reduces collapse. We saw this across the globe,” said Christopher Costello, an economist at the University of California Santa Barbara and the lead author of the journal article.

 

He compared the situation to buying a home instead of renting it. “If you own something, you take care of it – you protect your investment or else it loses value,” Costello said.

 

Individual fishing quotas have been adopted in Australia and Iceland and are credited with helping revive the Alaska halibut industry.

 

Sugihara of UCSD said catch-share programs are supported by science in some cases, but they don't make sense everywhere. Like other management tools, they rely on high-quality data to set the overall catch limits.

 

For consumers, catch shares could result in more fish and longer periods when markets offer fresh local fish as opposed to frozen imports, Costello said. He said prices generally are set by world markets, not local fishing rules.

 

West Coast groundfish represent a major test of the catch-share strategy. Federal regulators called the fishery a “disaster” about eight years ago. Several species in the class remain overfished.

 

The Pacific Fishery Management Council now manages groundfish through a complex system of fleetwide limits, gear restrictions, seasonal closures, in-season adjustments and other measures.

 

As is, “fishermen have little to no incentive to not fish. Any fish they don't catch, one of the other fishermen will,” said Frank Lockhart, a top official at the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle, which is responsible for setting the West Coast program's quotas.

 

The new program involves placing monitoring agents on board all of the trawlers. Federal officials said that will dramatically improve the quality of their data about harvests, ensure that quotas are strictly observed and encourage less bycatch.

 

“On balance, this approach to management of fish is much more intelligent, and there are better controls over the total impact on these stocks,” said Bob Fletcher of Point Loma, president of the Sportfishing Association of California.

 

Friday's decision capped more than five years of study by the fishery council. Board members said they were conflicted about the right course but decided to try something new.

 

“Without a change . . . fisheries are going to crumble,” said Stephen Williams, a council member from Oregon. #

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081113/news_1n13fish.html

 

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