Sightings

 

Lingcod

A lingcod, now protected from trawling, off the California coast near
Monterey Bay.
© Brandon Cole

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• California Marine:
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Marine Habitats

 

Saving Fish and a Fishing Industry: 3.8 Million Acres Off California Coast Protected From Trawling

By Colin Woodard

The waters off California’s central coast hide an extraordinary sea-scape of canyons, mountains and coral gardens. Yet this underwater landscape has been degraded by decades of bottom trawling, a fishing method in which heavy nets are dragged across the sea floor. Besides scooping up fish, trawling destroys plants, corals, ane-mones and a host of other creatures, leaving an ocean bottom less able to shelter, feed and grow marine life. As a result, populations of species such as rockfish (also called red snapper) have sharply declined around the central coast, along with the fishing ports that depended on them.

The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense, however, have found a way to help both the region’s fish and its fishermen, in a deal that was federally approved in May. “We’re not trying to shut down fishing, but rather help the fishing community shift to methods that are less destructive than trawling,” says Chuck Cook, director of coastal and marine programs for the Conservancy’s California chapter.

The coast needed fewer trawl fishermen and more no-trawl zones, places where the ocean bottom—and, in turn, the fish—could recover. Meanwhile, the fishermen of Morro Bay and other ports needed a way to get out of trawling without bankrupting their families. The Conservancy’s solution was to offer to buy out the fishermen’s trawling vessels and permits if the fishermen would support an expansion of no-trawl areas.

The result: the creation of three no-trawl zones covering 3.8 million acres, plus the retirement of a large part of the area’s trawler fleet, which the Conservancy will either recycle or convert for research or patrol use. The no-trawl zones were supported unanimously by members of the industry-dominated Pacific Fishery Management Council. Says Rod Fujita, a marine ecologist with Environmental Defense, “If you can understand the economic needs of the people who are causing an environmental problem and can address them without compromising your conservation goals, everybody wins.”