Posted on 07/03/2011 3:45:43 PM PDT by george76
As a lifelong commercial fisherman from Rhode Island who is involved with the regulatory process, I have one simple question to ask: Just what are we trying to accomplish with fish quotas?
Federally, the science that drives the stock assessments and sets the quotas is so bad that industry has taken it upon itself to provide a better snapshot of many stocks of concern. Predictably, the picture is not nearly as dire as our federal scientists would lead us to believe.
Recently, a side-by-side comparison was done, using the new multi-gazillion-dollar research vessel paid for with your tax dollars and a simple run-of-the-mill stern trawler captained by a knowledgeable skipper from Virginia.
Not only did the much smaller commercial boat out-catch the government vessel by about 1,000 percent, but the government boat also totally missed many species that the smaller boat caught. This was while fishing side by side!
(Excerpt) Read more at projo.com ...
A major consumer advocacy group has released a new study of fishery job losses caused by the regulatory program being pushed by the Obama administration ...
Food & Water Watch last week released its global research report showing a common pattern of job loss to consolidation and profiteering through catch share management regimens, and leaders called on Congress to prevent further expansions of the regulatory scheme, which came with controversy to Gloucester and the New England groundfishery last year.
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x177907825/Consumer-group-joins-call-top-halt-catch-shares
Don’t take it personally Joe, when it comes to government destruction it isn’t just a local focus and fish are such a small part of their efforts in destruction that fish would show up as just residual noise on the radar screen.
Great video of the Transatlantic sailboat race start.
Including the Maltese Falcon, the largest privately
owned sailing vessel in the world. That’s what they
said anyway, an awesome ship.
I urge everyone to read the Declaration of Independence and reflect on whether our Founding Fathers would ever have thought that our elected officials would grant unfettered powers to administrative agencies, who evidence less respect for the citizens of the nation than the king from whom they declared independence...
It’s time for Congress to end the tyrannical reign of rogue administrative agencies like NOAA before they completely undermine our nation
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x1692751076/Congress-leaned-on-to-fix-NOAA
Sorry, link at site.
So true.
The worst kind of tyrant is the petty tyrant.
Thanks for the ping! Off to the sticks now. Catch ya in about 12 days!
Hell.
The government isn’t just out after the fishermen -
They are our to destroy each and everyone one that they can turn into their personal slaves.
Slaves through taxation, slaves through discriminatory laws,
slaves through class envy, slaves through any means it takes to build the power structure that is government today.
Declare yourself an Indian tribe and problem solved
State exempts tribes from marine life restrictions
By SUDHIN THANAWALA, Associated Press
Saturday, July 2, 2011
San Francisco, CA (AP) —
State wildlife regulators have given tentative approval to a plan to restrict fishing off parts of Northern California that they say addresses Native Americans’ concerns about the possibility of losing their fishing rights and cultural practices.
But a tribal representative says the plan still falls short of what the tribes were seeking.
In a 4-1 vote on Wednesday, the state Fish and Wildlife Commission selected its preferred alternative for marine protection areas from the Oregon border south to Point Arena in Mendocino County. The plan exempts tribes from restrictions on harvesting marine life in certain areas on the North Coast.
But the tribes say they would still be restricted from other areas. They would also need to have a state fishing license and tribal identification and present evidence that they have historically gathered marine life in that area.
Enjoy and be careful
Same for any small, self providers like ranchers and farmers
No private commercial enterprise is too small to be affected, even targeted by Obama’s anti-private enterprise, anti-American intentions.
Gubbament scientists are best understood as ‘Chicken Little in a Agency Issue white lab coat’.
“No Crisis, No Cash” is their core belief.
All must accept “Agenda Uber Alles” as the rallying cry in their labs, and in their shrunken little minds.
Why are we not surprised that Goobers from an Agency were not able to catch very many fish? For if they did have a good catch, their crisis would not be supported AND shortly neither would they.
A goober without its gooberment check is an ugly thing.
Deceitful, too.
As a retired commercial fisherman and friend of Joel’s I can attest to the truth of what he says. NMFS is not really concerned with “saving the fish”. They are only concerned with saving their jobs. They are a bunch of rabid enviros that don’t want ANYONE touching their fish. That means all you recreational fishermen are going to lose your ability to fish in the coming years, just as the commercial industry is now. Government really is the beast.
Government fish counts can no more be trusted than academics’ global warming temperatures!
Fishing for a Living
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
A look at the realities of commercial fishing in the Santa Cruz Harbor
“The fleet is dying. There’s nobody left,” says Christian Zajac, spinning a fishing hook in his hands and standing on the deck of his 1932 Monterey-style fishing boat.
Zajac has been fishing black cod, salmon and rockfish in the Santa Cruz Harbor for 30 years, and has seen the Diaspora of fishermen first hand. He says the decline began within the last 15 years when restrictions were placed on fishing for rockfish in designated areas along the coast, and then plummeted further as the salmon population declined.
“At least four whole docks had fishing boats 15 years ago, now there are probably only 10 full-time fishermen left,” says Zajac.
According to Harbormaster Chuck Izenstark there are currently 35 commercial fishing boats in the Santa Cruz Harbor. Ten years ago there were twice as many. Izenstark says that in the 1990s, the harbor fishermen brought in hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish a year—mostly salmon. Now, he says only 100,000 pounds of fish are landed each year.
Salmon season opened again this week after a hiatus in June and a near complete closure for the last three years.
“We haven’t had a wide open full traditional season in maybe 20 years,” says salmon fisherman Mike Stiller.
Stiller has been fishing mostly salmon from the Santa Cruz Harbor since 1972. He is president of the local Commercial Fishman’s Marketing Association, Inc. and a board member on the California Salmon Council.
He says that although he’s happy to be fishing salmon again this year, the season’s been slow.
“What saved us was [that] around Santa Cruz the fish were big,” Stiller says, noting that the industry average for a season is about an 11-pound salmon and that this year, “we averaged a couple days of 18-19 pound salmon.”
Out of all the fish landed in the Santa Cruz Harbor, salmon is the most lucrative fish on a per pound basis, Stiller says. This year was no exception. Instead of the usual pricing of $3.50-$4 per pound, the fish was going for $6.50 a pound. But he attributes this in part to increased demand, and says it probably won’t last.
“That’s why it’s now $18.99 a pound in the grocery store and $30 in restaurants,” says Stiller.
He reminisces about fishing 30 years ago—when things were cheaper, fuel was $.70 a gallon and fishermen got $4 a pound for their salmon.
Stiller says the last six or seven years of salmon fishing have been particularly bad, and many fishermen have abandoned their craft in search of something more profitable.
He remembers when fishermen would pull up to the dock and sell fish straight off of their boats. That can’t happen anymore—to do so sellers have to carry a resale license and required equipment. He goes on to say that other things have changed, too. Now they don’t used barbed hooks and there are no trawlers in the harbor like in years past. “We use hook-and-line fishing,” Stiller says. “You’re only catching with bites, not what’s in the way.”
This method allows a high percentage of shakers (undersized salmon) and other by-catch to survive.
“All won’t live but it’s a high percentage [that do],” Stiller says. “It’s one of the most inefficient fishing [methods] there is but it’s the most sustainable.”
Zajac says that being sustainable has cost many fishermen their livelihood.
“Small-boat fleets need something to fall back on besides salmon and one of those things is to allow us to catch more rockfish,” Zajac says. “If we can’t access that, we’re doomed.”
In 2003, NOAA Fisheries established coastal commercial Rockfish Conservation Areas (RCAs) to “protect and assist in the rebuilding of stocks of lingcod and seven species of rockfishes, all of which were formally declared overfished by NOAA Fisheries,” according to the California Department of Fish and Game.
These areas prohibit fishing for rockfish in huge swaths of sea along the continental shelf. According to Zajac, 50 percent of harbor fishermen left when the RCAs were established. He stuck around, but says he has to go 10 miles out to sea in very deep water to fish for rock cod, and is required to have a VMS satellite on his boat so his boat can be tracked and potentially fined for stopping in the protected area.
“There’s a huge abundance of rockfish on the [continental] shelf that we can’t access,” he says.
According to Fish and Game, “When stocks of the seven rockfish species are rebuilt, the RCA will likely be removed.”
Because of the ban, Zajac sees people instead buying rockfish from Canada and Mexico.
“The local markets are buying fish from other countries when there’s fish right here in our waters,” he says. “If they open up the shelf it’d put less pressure on the salmon because we’d have something to fish for.”
But salmon is a different story, Stiller adds.
“When you don’t fish for three years and there’s still no fish, you can’t blame it on overfishing,” he says.
The problem, he says, lies further up the Sacramento delta where the fish spawn. “They can’t get past [and] across all the manmade diversions,” he says.
Salmon eggs hatch in the Sacramento River and come down to the delta. To do so they have to go through pumps and deal with droughts.
Stiller says there needs to be at least 122,000 spawners in the Sacramento River in order to sustainably fish. Two years ago it dropped down to 40,000.
“No matter what, there’s not enough fish and to put a commercial fishing fleet on top of it exacerbates it,” Stiller says. “It may not be [our] fault but still [they] can’t let [us] fish. We’re out there to kill fish, but you want to do it in a sustainable way—you have to.”
Still, Zajac says, despite the withering fishing industry in the Santa Cruz Harbor, the fishermen will forever be optimists.
“While everyone else is going over to San Jose, I’m going out into a sea with an endless horizon,” he says. “The best days are the days when you catch fish and the weather’s calm. You forget the days that the weather beats the crap out of you. That optimism is the only thing keeping this skeleton fleet alive. To have to move a boat because two humpback male whales are breeching 30 feet out of the water and coming toward you is something that makes you feel like part of nature, a very small part of nature.”
Stiller says being a fisherman is hard on family and social life, but there’s a sense of camaraderie among fishermen like none other.
“We take care of each other out there,” he says, adding, “There isn’t anyone that does this that couldn’t make more money doing something else. It’s a hard life to do unless you like the fishing life.”
He gets into a rhythm whether he goes out to sea three days at a time or fishes locally. He’ll dip into Soquel Hole, a finger off the Monterey Canyon and a traditional spot to fish for salmon. Then there’s Three Trees up the coast—but only old-timers know that one because the three pine trees that marked the spot were cut down years ago, he says.
Days before he’s set to go salmon fishing later this week, Stiller has food packed on the boat and his sleeping gear on board. “I’m ready to go,” he says.
Bfl
Tell Joel that he has FRiends here.
Saw a show tonight-—don’t know what channel—free tv—can’t afford Dish, anymore.
Crab fishermen(sp?)....
It was their “last haul” before regulations put in place equality of results between the fishermen.
The captain of the ship was so upset about regulations, he refused to talk, then the show ended with no explanation.
But, we KNEW it was the obamanation.
If only the she/he in the Blight House (thanks, freeper! I’m stealing it!) and Manchelle couldn’t get lobster anymore.
Having spent roughly 14 years being involved with Federal and State fisheries management issues, I find at least two fundamental truths-
First, All fishery issues are political.
The bureauocracies react to both positive and negative pressures which are organized and persistent.
Second,Fishermen are rarely organized and/or persistent in their stands.
While effectively influencing specific issues,segments of the fishery will battle one another as readily as they will battle intrusive government regulation.
The largest threat, in this man’s view, is not NOAA. Rather it is the Environmental Industry which uses tax-exempt dollars to fund full-time “volunteers” on the advisory panels and work groups.
This industry constantly ratches up its goals to justify its fund-raising. The phrase “Save the ....” includes a never-ending definition of what “saved” means.
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