FROM:

FISHLINK SUBLEGALS 12/8/00
A WEEKLY QUOTA OF FISHERY SHORTS CAUGHT AND
LANDED BY THE INSTITUTE FOR FISHERIES RESOURCES
AND THE PACIFIC COAST FEDERATION OF FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATIONS
VOL 2, NO. 23, 8 DECEMBER 2000

Forget science, forget the law, the California Fish & Game Commission today, 8 December, voted to reallocate a substantial portion of the available harvest of three nearshore fish stocks - capezon, kelp and rock greenling, and sheepshead - from commercial fishermen to recreational anglers and divers. At its Friday meeting in Eureka, the Commission, along with its advisors from the Department of Fish & Game (CDFG), based this "interim management decision" largely on information gathered from an internet chat-room set up originally by sport fishermen for the nearshore fishery. At no point in the deliberations, except for the presentation by PCFFA, was there any discussion of the requirements of law - the Marine Life Management Act (MLMA) and its neashore provisions that gave the Commission authority over this fishery. And, there was almost no discussion on what science existed for managing the stocks or what was even needed. Instead, the Commission and Department choose to act on self-serving statements and hysteria generated from the chat-room.

The Commission voted to go with a 50 percent of optimum yield (OY) and had even considered going with a lower percentage of OY. The cutback to half of the OY (based for now on past landing data, with no fishery-independent information) was not disputed by commercial fishermen, since there is little information presently on the status of these stocks. The dispute, rather, came about from Fish & Game's Marine Region's staff method of getting to 50 percent OY. Under that method, rather than cutting each fishery equally, staff arbitrarily decided to reallocate the catch reducing the commercial share of capezon, for example, by 80 percent while increasing the sport allocation of that same stock. The Commission, also acting on the CDFG staff recommendation, voted to increase the recreational take of greenling. Thus, the commercial take under the 50 percent OY, was reduced substantially while the sport take will actually be increased for two of the three species of concern. This is in direct violation of the MLMA.

"When we [PCFFA] drafted the Nearshore Fisheries Act and then supported its inclusion in the MLMA and worked hard for passage of that legislation, we naively thought we could get fair treatment by the Commission - that both it and the Department would follow the law. Boy, were we wrong," said an angry and exasperated Zeke Grader following the meeting. The PCFFA Executive Director, went on to say, "it was no accident the Legislature has kept most commercial fishing regulation away from the Commission for the past 60 years out of a justified fear that hunting and fishing cronies of an incumbent governor, given the chance, would screw any commercial fishery where there was also a sport take. And that's what happened today, the Commission and Department just cloaked this blatant reallocation in conservation clothes."

Under the MLMA, CDFG and the Commission must develop a fishery management plan by 2002 for this fishery. To date, no advisory committee has been put together, as required by the law, to assist CDFG and the Commission in developing the plan. Instead, they have relied simply on the nearshore chat-room. In other actions today, the Commission, acting again on advice from CDFG's Marine Region staff, voted to require landings of 5,000 pounds of pink shrimp in each of three years between 1994-99 to qualify for a pink shrimp permit and have had 90,000 pounds of pink shrimp landings during that same period to be eligible to transfer the permit. These recommendations were contrary to those developed by CDFG's Pink Shrimp Advisory Committee, and apparently came from the agency's Restricted Access Policy Team (RAPT) without discussing it with the advisory committee. For more information on the above and other issues taken up by the California Fish & Game Commission go to: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/fg_comm .

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