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By: Richard Alves
Data Sources Traps and stick gear (with a 150 hooks and 50 traps allowable maximum) are commonly deployed in a concentrated arrangement effectively saturating individual reefs and coves with fishing gear. As populations of slow growing, residential fish become fished-out, fishing effort moves on to other areas. Under a general quota system this practice continues. Banning the use of traps and limiting fishing to hand lines would greatly reduce the ability to deplete areas by lessening the geographic intensity of fishing effort. Further, the proposed gear restriction would very likely make fishing in marginally productive areas unfeasible setting the stage for rebuilding of depleted stocks. An overall quota system does not take into consideration the residential nature of nearshore fish, consequently the prospect for ongoing and systematic geographic depletion of residential fish continues under a quota system.
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California Commercial Rockfish catch statistics from 1993 are available at the Marine Life Management Website:
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/mlma/reports/
There are no Bycatch records
Common opinion throughout the industry is that the sportfishing catch in California is around 10% of the total catch. Although all commercial passenger fishing vessels (CPFVs), a.k.a. party boats are required to submit their catch reports monthly to DFG, we could not find the information published. By talking to landing owners and doing some rough math (boats X days fishing X average load X average bag wt), we arrived at a total catch figure of around 3,000,000 pounds of rockfish taken in 1999, the last full year of fishing. This would place the commercial catch at 30 million without counting bycatch. "In any public hearing I've ever attended, no one has ever suggested the sportfishing catch was over 15%," Will Morrow owner of Wil's Fishing Adventures told me. So even an exaggerated sportfishing catch rate of 20% would place the commercial catch at 15 million pounds. Through the Marine Life Management Act website, DFG has published catch figures for about 20 species of rock fish. Excluding ling cod the total commercial catch in 1999 was 1.1 million pounds. There is obviously a big discrepancy in numbers. Bycatch is any species or that was not intentionally targeted but was captured as a result of fishing. This can also include fish discarded at sea because the meat spoiled before it arrived at port. According to the Pacific Marine Conservation Council, bycatch runs between 15 and 40%. Round that number off to 20% and we arrive at a conservative number for the 1999 California commercial groundfish catch of around 18 million pounds. Limiting commercial fishing vessels to the use of rod-and-reel gear would eliminate most bycatch.
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