Monterey >> The federal agency responsible for national marine resources announced this week it was withdrawing a proposed rule that was meant to reduce the number of endangered whales, dolphins and sea turtles getting tangled in mile-long West Coast fishing nets.
The National Marine Fisheries Service said Monday it was throwing out the pending limit on the West Coast’s sword-fishing industry. The regulation, which was recommended by the Pacific Fishery Management Council after a two-year process that included input from those in the fishing industry, set a strict limit on the number of animals that can be injured or killed in a fishery on the drift gillnet fishery.
“The fisheries looked into the reasoning and found it would put economic hardships on the fisheries,” said Gary Burke, a commercial fisherman who participates in the swordfish driftnet fishery and is also on the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel. “The hard caps would possibly cause them to close down.”
But Geoff Shester, a senior scientist and the California Campaign Director for Oceana, racked up the decision to the new Trump administration and its “blatant disregard for recommendations of its own fishery advisers.”
In doing so, he said the Fisheries Service is not only ignoring the will of its federal fishery advisers, but the state of California, congressional members and more than 22,000 members of the public who weighed in to support the caps.
“All this time and energy and money and to see this whole thing flushed down the toilet – that’s really what happened here,” said Shester, noting how rare it is for such a proposal to be withdrawn. “This was a conservation action that became a target by the administration based on the purported economic costs as the rationale.”
According to Oceana, roughly 60 different species of marine life including many types of whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, sharks, tunas and sea turtles drown or become critically injured in these nets. Officials at the non-profit also say drift gillnets harm recreational fishing opportunities because approximately one quarter of the animals pulled from the nets are dead.
Shester said the ruling provides further evidence that fishery managers must phase out the use of harmful drift gillnets and expedite authorization of deep set buoy gear to catch swordfish – a gear type that has proven to profitably catch swordfish without catching endangered species, according to Shester.
“This is actually creating a new fishery with more jobs,” said Shester. “But why wouldn’t you better try to prohibit the gill nets in the meantime?”
Burke said the fishery is already well within the guidelines of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and that the use of deep set buoy gear hasn’t proven to be economically viable yet.
“It would not replace what the driftnet catches,” said Burke, noting that the drift gillnet fishery has long tried to avoid the incidental catch of endangered species in the ocean.
According to a report by the Associated Press, the National Marine Fisheries Service decided that safety measures already taken were adequate. Pinging warning devices on the nets that could be heard by some of the creatures have helped reduce the numbers of whales and turtles getting caught in the nets according to a Fisheries Service spokesman.
“This fishery been around for over 35 years and there’s been a lot of ups and downs,” said Burke, noting that it was the non-governmental organizations that pressured the Pacific Fishery Management Council to come up with hard caps for the fishery.
“NGOs have been attacking this fishery because it has some bycatch,” added Burke, “but they believe that one whale entanglement is too many.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Carly Mayberry can be reached at 831-726-4363.
