The dramatic recovery of many groundfish species along the West
Coast is a testament to the innovation, cooperation and persistence
by fisheries managers and fishermen alike under the landmark
Magnuson-Stevens Act of 1976.
Pacific whiting, sorted by
size
Photo: National Marine Fisheries
Service
One of the latest innovations, formally approved last month by
the National Marine Fisheries Service, is “electronic monitoring,”
which allows the use of video and other equipment in place of the
human observers needed to ensure the accuracy of harvest
reports.
The faster-then-expected recovery of depleted populations —
including canary rockfish, bocaccio, darkblotched rockfish, and
Pacific Ocean perch — has led to dramatically increased harvest
limits this year. NMFS estimates that increased fishing will add
900 jobs and $60 million in income this year alone. Recreational
anglers are expected to go fishing an additional 219,000 times,
mostly in California with some of those outings in Oregon and
Washington, according to a
news release.
Going from a federally declared disaster in 2000 to today’s
recovery of most stocks was the result of a monumental change in
fisheries management and fishing culture. One of the biggest
changes was a shift to “catch shares,” in which each commercial
fisherman receives a percentage of the allowable harvest each year,
an issue I first wrote about a decade ago
(Water Ways, Dec. 11, 2009).
The Pacific Fishery Management Council decided yesterday that it
was time to consider, within its management plans, how large-scale
fishing at certain times and places can create ripple effects in
the food web.
The council adopted a new
Fishery Ecosystem Plan to help manage West Coast fisheries,
broadening the view of how fishing can shape the entire ocean
community.
“It’s the beginning of a paradigm shift in fisheries
management,” Paul Shively of Pew Charitable Trusts told Jeff
Barnard, environmental reporter for the
Associated Press.
In the past, managers have tried to figure out what level of
fishing can be sustainable. Now, in theory, they will also consider
how a reduction in the numbers of certain fish can affect marine
creatures that might want to eat them or be eaten by them.
“We’ve always managed our oceans on a species-by-species level,”
Shively noted. “By developing an ecosystem plan we begin to look at
how everything is connected in the ocean.”
“We now enter into a new era of more sophisticated fishery
management. We heard strong public testimony calling for more
protection for unmanaged forage fish, and the council’s adoption of
this motion today formalizes the council taking this up this as a
fishery management action.”
Jane Lubchenco, former director of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, said the agency has been talking about
the ecosystem-based approach since the 2006 renewal of the
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
“Taking an ecosystem approach to fisheries management is widely
viewed as an enlightened approach to fishery management, because it
recognizes that the target species of interest exists within a
broader ecosystem,” she said in Barnard’s piece. She is now a
visiting professor at Stanford University,
The Fishery Ecosystem Plan does not replace existing management
plans, including those for salmon, groundfish, highly migratory
species or coastal pelagic species. But it does call for the
consideration of more factors before making management decisions,
and it mandates an annual “State of the Ecosystem” report.
One initiative connected to the plan calls for the prohibition
of targeted fishing for unmanaged forage fish until the impacts are
better known. Eight other initiatives will discuss how harvest
affects stocks, bycatch, habitat, fisheries safety, fisheries jobs,
response to climate change, socioeconomics, and other factors.
“When fishing reduces the population of one species, there are
ripple effects throughout the marine food chain. For instance, if
the human species takes more krill out of the ecosystem, the
populations of other animals that prey on krill might decline.
“But it’s not just a question of how much krill we take. Where
and when we take it are also important. Penguin chicks need to find
food when they fledge at the end of their first summer. For certain
species of seals, which carry their pregnancies through winter,
wintertime forage is critical. By identifying where and when these
critical periods occur, scientists can advise fishery managers on
how best to reduce the impacts of fishing on the other species we
care about.”
I discussed the ecosystem plan briefly in the
latest installment of a series of stories dealing with Puget
Sound’s ecosystem and indicators chosen by the Puget Sound
Partnership. We call it “Taking
the Pulse of Puget Sound.”
Forecasts for Puget Sound salmon runs call for lower returns
this year compared to last year, but officials with the Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife are emphasizing “promising” chinook
fishing off Washington’s coast and Columbia River.
Each year, sport fishers
line the banks of the Skokomish River as they try to catch the
prized chinook salmon. / Kitsap Sun file
photo
Preseason forecasts were released yesterday, launching the North
of Falcon Process, which involves state and tribal salmon managers
working together to set sport, commercial and tribal fisheries.
Federal biologists and regulators keep watch over the negotiations
to ensure compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
For a complete schedule of meetings leading up to final
decisions the first week of April, go to the WDFW’s North of Falcon
page.
With regard to fishing opportunities, Doug Milward, ocean salmon
fishery manager for the agency, had this to say in yesterday’s news
release:
“It’s still early in the process, but we will likely have an
ocean salmon fishery similar to what we have seen the last two
years, when we had an abundance of chinook in the ocean but low
numbers of hatchery coho.”
For years, I’ve heard complaints about tribal fishing. Frankly,
many people who complain about tribal fishing, or commercial
fishing in general, have no understanding of treaty rights or how
individual salmon stocks are managed.
Tarboo Bay
Washington Department of Ecology photo
Most don’t care about the work that goes into long-range
management plans, preseason forecasts or computer models of harvest
options, which make it possible to manage fisheries with
concurrence of state, tribal and federal entities. Most folks with
concerns wouldn’t think of accepting the public invitation to join
the annual discussions about harvest.
Occasionally, however, someone raises a concern that resonates
with managers and biologists who understand the issues. Such is the
case with fishing in Tarboo Bay, a story I told in
Friday’s Kitsap Sun.
It all comes down to a simple proposition: If salmon management
plans are working, then why aren’t we getting more chum and coho
into Tarboo Creek? Should we be content with ongoing productivity
well below what the stream appears capable of supporting?
Putting politics aside, should the overall management plan for
Hood Canal strive for some minimum escapement or maximum
exploitation rate on individual streams? Oh, what a complex plan
that would be! But if low escapement creates sustainability
problems on any stream, then someone needs to take a serious look
and not be hampered by plans that consider Hood Canal coho and chum
as aggregate stocks for all Hood Canal.
Maybe we should elevate Tarboo Bay to a test case, first with
some monitoring to determine the stock composition of the tribal
beach seine in question. If it turns out that this is an
all-or-nothing fishery, then one answer would be to move the
closure line farther out into Dabob Bay, as managers for the state
and two tribes agreed to do.
Beyond that, however, perhaps more attention should be given to
individual streams, their carrying capacity and trade-offs between
harvest and escapement. Interesting studies have been conducted for
listed species and a few other stocks in Hood Canal. See “Mid-Hood Canal
Juvenile Salmonid Evaluation…” But the need to improve
escapements of all species remains a concern.
I’m tempted to say that this is an emperor-has-no-clothes moment
when it comes to fisheries in Hood Canal, but I don’t believe
that’s accurate. It may seem that everybody understands the problem
and nobody wants to speak out. In reality, the problems are many;
they vary from place to place; and lots of people are speaking
out.
Maybe it is more like a house of cards that continues to grow.
Many weaknesses are found in the structure, but only so many can be
fixed at one time. So people just keep going, hoping for the
best.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has developed a
management framework to address these kinds of issues. See “21st Century Salmon and
Steelhead Initiative.” It seems like a good start, but the
agency must not forget that restoration comes together
stream-by-stream for harvest as well as for habitat.
Consider these goals, among others, spelled out in the
initiative:
— Expand selective fisheries to increase opportunities for
recreational and commercial fishing on hatchery fish and reduce the
harvest of wild salmon.
— Implement in-season DNA stock identification to direct
fishing to areas with low impacts on wild salmon.
— Improve fishery monitoring to assure that impacts to wild
fish are accurately assessed.
— Ensure compliance with fishing regulations.
— Monitor numbers of juvenile fish that migrate to marine areas
and adult fish that return to fresh water to spawn to determine
effectiveness of conservation and recovery actions.
— Work with our tribal co-managers in each watershed to develop
joint state/tribal hatchery and harvest management objectives and
plans.
— Coordinate law enforcement with our tribal partners.
As local groups — including the tribes — work hard to remove
barriers to salmon passage and improve habitat in specific streams,
there is a growing recognition that individual streams can support
more salmon than has been possible in the past. Maybe it is time to
test the limits of the habitat for selected streams, understanding
that decreased harvest in the short term could well translate to
greater terminal fisheries in the future.
The Kitsap Sun published an
editorial today about the Tarboo Bay fishery.
