California Coast & Ocean

A federal buyout program has reduced the number of fishing vessels, enabling those that remain to get their trip limits. The Nature Conservancy is now negotiating with several of the seven federal bottom-trawl permit holders for the purchase of their groundfish permits and, in some cases, their vessels. It is also exploring a possible temporary lease-back, to help these fishermen to prepare for the transition.

The Nature Conservancy is eager to establish a long-term relationship with the central coast fishing industry and ports, said Chuck Cook, the conservancy’s project director of coastal and marine affairs for California, partly because these fishermen agreed to the establishment of large no-trawl zones—3.8 million acres between Point Conception and Point Sur. The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) decided last June to establish these zones. They go into effect in May 2006, protecting some of the most richly diverse marine ecosystems along the California coast, as well as historic fishing grounds.

By agreeing to protect these areas, Cook pointed out, the groundfish fishermen agreed to close existing and potential fishing grounds in an area about the size of Connecticut. Now the Nature Conservancy intends to help create a more robust fishery and working wharf while at the same time protecting underwater habitat.

“The PFMC has taken many painful steps to conserve fish stocks,” Fujita noted. At the state level, the Marine Life Management Act, “one of the best and most precautionary fishery laws in the world,” according to Fujita, has led to reductions of nearshore quotas and permits to conserve nearshore fish species and ecosystems such as kelp forests.

These conservation measures may improve the prospects for fishermen in the future, but now they impose further hardships. “Depleted fish stocks are no longer our problem here in Morro Bay,” Algert says. “Most days we never even have a boat leave the harbor, since the regulatory regime doesn’t let them fish.” To survive, commercial fishermen must adapt to the current conditions and options.

With that in mind, the Fishing Heritage Group was formed early in 2005. A collaborative effort by Environmental Defense, the Nature Conservancy, fishermen, Central Coast harbors, and others, it is “creating a vision of selective fishing, catching lower volumes but bringing in much higher