From Tom Roff, Fishing Vessel "Diane Susan"
As a fisherman working out of Morro Bay for over 25 years and an active member of several local commercial fishing associations, I find the concepts proposed in the February 2012 SLO Coast Journal, "Proposal For Protecting Local Fishing Fleet: Create a Heritage Fishing Area," tremendously misleading, naive and poorly researched. I would also like to point out that the authors of the article did not consult the local commercial fishing community that they claim to be aiming to protect.
The article states:
"The overall concept of a designated heritage fishing area is to create a large sustainable fishery (already in its infant efforts) in which only local family run and operated fishing boats are permitted to fish until the fish stock is healthy enough to allow outside family run and operated boats to participate. How outside boats participate in the local fishery would be up to the local fishery organizations. A heritage fishing area in the SLO County coastal waters could be protected and supported by marine sanctuary designation or by an extension of a national marine sanctuary."
It ignores the years of cutbacks and restructuring the local fleet has endured. Local commercial fishermen started calling for changes in fishery management in 1980. A letter to Pacific Fisheries Management Council[PFMC] from then Morro Bay Commercial Fisherman's Organization president, Captain Ed Ewing, stated that the current [1980] federal management practices for groundfish were unsustainable. We were the first to call for changes and have worked hard to ensure that the valuable resource that we harvest will be available for future generations.
These changes have limited the amount of fish and areas that can be harvested. There are now size limits, trip limits, monthly quotas, gear restrictions, Marine Protected Areas, a Rock cod Conservation Area, 3.8 million acres of no-trawl zones, seasonal closures, human observer and vessel monitoring system requirements, and rigorous permitting and reporting requirements. These restrictions have caused our landing to be a shadow of the 80's and 90's. Additionally, in 2000, the federal government purchased and retired ten local deep water trawl permits and the Nature Conservancy purchased six local trawl permits in 2005. Since 2007, there has been one trawl vessel working intermittently in Morro Bay. (See: Morro Bay Fishing is Back From the Depths)
The commercial fishing industry in Morro Bay holds much more than a historical and cultural significance for the community. It is a generator of jobs and spending, as well as a provider of locally and sustainably caught seafood. From the opening of one of the earliest processing facilities (Morro Bay Fisheries) in the 1940s to generating earnings of over $9 million in 1995, the commercial fleet has landed fish at Morro Bay docks and continues to generate employment opportunities for skippers and deckhands, offloaders, mechanics, ice and fuel employees, transporters, processors, wholesalers, retailers, restaurants, and other support services. 2010 the local fleet landed 4.2 million dollars of sustainably caught seafood. The commercial fishing industry is currently providing jobs in the face of California’s 12.4% unemployment rate, the highest in decades (Bureau of Labor Statistics, News Release, February 2011). (Read Full Report)
The next part of the sentence " in which only local family run and operated fishing boats are permitted to fish until the fish stock is healthy enough to allow outside family run and operated boats to participate," means we should fish on weak stocks or ignore the best science that has set the stocks on the road to recovery? Does that mean if I want to fish off Monterey or Ventura, local organizations can say "you are from Morro Bay and you have your own fishing heritage area go home"? Our local businesses need all the fishing boats that come here. We need to sell ice, fuel, trucking, and rent slips to have a viable infrastructure that will survive for the future. Telling the out of town boats they can't harvest the quota that they are legally entitled to [federal groundfish quotas] will retard the growth we need to maintain our port. We locals need the dock workers to have enough work, the marine mechanic to stay in business, the refrigeration guy, the fishing gear store, the local truckers trucking, etc. (See: Morro Bay 2011 Commercial Fisheries Economic Impacts)
The article states:
"A heritage fishing area in the SLO County coastal waters could be protected and supported by marine sanctuary designation or by an extension of a national marine sanctuary."
The real reason to include the fishermen seems to be to advance a sanctuary agenda. We don't need more protection by the federal government or any other entity.
I — and many other fishermen — supported Leon Panetta's legislation to establish the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary[MBNMS] and believed him when he said that the sanctuary would not involve itself in fishery management. Ask the people who live and work in the Monterey area about all the meetings and underhanded moves the staff of the sanctuary has piled on them.
The sanctuary staff gets paid to go to meetings. We citizens don't. I was the fisherman representative on the Davidson Seamount Expansion initiative committee [seven meetings and travel to Monterey — unpaid]. SLO County hasn't been burdened with this extra level of "protection" and shouldn't be. Ask farmers that have land that adjoins the Monterey Sanctuary if their lives have been shaken up with more meetings and regulations? Ask the local town governments if they are enjoying the meetings? It cost Moss Landing several years of meetings and untold thousands of dollars to get sanctuary approval to dredge their harbor.
The article states:
"Additional reasons for the decline in commercial fish stock may continue as threats to the fishing community: Once Through Cooling (OTC) at power plants, ocean pollution, wastewater outfall, agriculture waste, oil spills, storm-water runoff, overfishing, and the threat of corporate commercial fishing fleets overwhelming the local family operated boats."
This is another overstatement of the "local" situation. The chart you displayed is a generalization and is inflammatory. If you examined the Central Coast in depth, you would find that the species we are currently landing are sustainable. We have the Rock Cod Conservation Area [RCA] in our back yard. We aren't allowed to fish in this area.The RCA has a federal rebuilding plan. In 1980 we warned the PFMC the harvest rate of shelf [50-150 fathoms] rock cod was unsustainable. The rock cod are showing a remarkable comeback [according to annual federal trawl surveys] and, with careful management, will soon begin to add value to our local economy — both sport and commercial. Is the suggestion that we fish this area prior to it being "recovered" and exclude other fishermen that don't live in SLO County?
The fall Chinook are harvested locally and are well managed while in the ocean. The only reason salmon are having a problem is pumping too much water from the delta for Central Valley agriculture and for Los Angeles. A sanctuary on the Central Coast won't change this. Our area offers a unique salmon season. Its open when other northern areas are closed to protect species of concern [Klamath and Winter run Kings]. Are we to tell the northern fishermen "sorry you don't live here so you can't fish here?"
Cal Poly has several ongoing projects that study our local fish stocks and have found the stocks to be in excellent shape. This has allowed California Fish and Game CA [DF&G] to raise the quota on certain nearshore species. Once again harvest with science and the precautionary approach we fishermen (and the Marine Interest Group) help develop.
SWN Presents - A True Fish Tale: Ft. Bragg Now from Bruce Tokars.
Management
The Marine Interest Group [MIG]
MIG was formed during the last effort to create a marine sanctuary on our Central Coast. Twenty citizens from many diverse groups held meetings for a year starting in January 2003. They examined the benefits and negatives of a marine sanctuary in our area. They studied the fisheries management, water problems, socioeconomics and a host of other pertinent issues. The executive summary prepared at the end of 2003 indicated that four members of the group felt extending MBNMS was good and two wanted a Central Coast Sanctuary. (Page four has a list of members.)
What did the other eleven want [only 17 were at the final meeting]? Read page 21 of the executive summary attachments. The MIG process evaluated our local waters and came up with a list of suggestions that are being used today to make our Central Coast a better place to live and work. When the MIG started, the fishermen saw it as a tool of the sanctuary movement, but went to meetings and supplied information. A large majority of MIG members saw ways to help the Central Coast move in a sustainable direction without allowing outsiders have control of our local resources.
The Marine Life Protection Act [MLPA] created a network of coastal closures and restricted fishing areas. When the legislation was being written it had a fair amount of support from the fishing community because we, as stakeholders would have a seat at the table. The reality is that fishermen attended [uncompensated] over sixty meetings and held no positions on the Blue Ribbon Task Force [BRTF], the deciding body.The MBNMS was also a considered a stakeholder and had paid staff pushing their wish list of closures throughout the process. While MBNMS doesn't regulate fishing, they lobby the regulators.
The bottom line was closures exceeded the California DF&G biologists recommendations and put several fishermen out of business, hence less landings in 2007. The entire MLPA process was politically motivated, from the appointments to the BRTF to the selection of the final recommendations presented to the California Fish and Game Commission. The five year review is due this March and hopefully some of the restrictions will be relaxed. As the MLPA process progressed throughout the state it became evident the Central Coast fishermen lost more fishing grounds and suffered more financial hardship than any other area in the state. Sources inside the Department of Fish and Game stated that mistakes were made on the Central Coast, but will that change our situation? I doubt it.
The article concludes:
"While fishermen are often blamed for the loss of fish stocks, business as usual continues with killing and endangering marine life by polluting our coastal waters with wastewater, toxic run off, and once-through-cooling at power plants [Slo Coast Journal/December 2011]. Our coastal waters are part of our environment. We depend on these waters for food, surfing, tourism, recreation, jobs, and oxygen. We need to work with the fishermen to study and protect our treasured waters. A national marine sanctuary with a local sustainable heritage fishing area could become world famous and truly be the marine treasure of San Luis Obispo County."
Last month the editor of the Journal asked me for permission to use some photographs that are on the Central Coast Joint Cable/Fisheries Liaison Committees website [slofiberfish.org]. I was given a preview of your article and I suggested that we should talk about your Heritage fishing idea. You are right, you need to work with fishermen as did the MIG. Some of your articles have good information and diligent research, but this time you missed the mark. The "heritage" idea is illegal and unnecessary. The sustainable fishing movement on the Central Coast is moving forward without a sanctuary.
We fishermen don't need any more layers of control. We don't have time for more meetings. How many millions of our tax dollars would it cost to have a sanctuary? Why did the Morro Bay City Council [after talking to their peers in Monterey] vote not to get involved with MBNMS? The County Board of Supervisors aren't interested either. The same goes for fishermen.
