THE PACIFIC COAST FEDERATION
OF
FISHERMEN'S
ASSOCIATIONS
From Fishermen's News of April, 2001
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Home Page As you know, I am a commercial fisherman and President of a federation of associations representing working men and women in the commercial fishing fleet who share my vision of sustainable fishing by protecting habitats for fish and humans.
Fishing is one of Humankind's oldest occupations. Fish have long been a staple in the diet of most societies. Fishing was America's first industry. While the early Pilgrims may have given thanks over a plate of turkey, it was codfish that actually made their colony sustainable. Likewise, it was fishing for salmon here on the Pacific that long sustained native peoples along our coast from central California to Alaska, and it was those fish that fed the first gold miners. Fishing has certainly had a major influence on our communities along the California coast, probably no where more so than here in Monterey with the sardine fishery - a fishery that thrived, collapsed and is now coming back again. Of course sardines have not been the only major fishery of the waters offshore Monterey; this area once supported a major abalone fishery and today is a major center of for commercial salmon fishing off the U.S. Pacific coast.
It is from the perspective of a professional fisherman that I want to discuss a shared vision for sustainable fisheries - and that, by its very nature, means healthy habitats for both fish and humans. The vision many of us in the working fishing fleet have for our coast and its resources is, in fact, a vision I believe that is shared with all of you who care about our coast, our ocean waters, our coastal watersheds and wetlands, our bays and estuaries
Why do I believe there is a shared vision among fishing men and women and those who care about or live along the California coast? Well, consider this:
Commercial fisheries are a key indicator of the state of our oceans. Thriving fishing communities depend on abundant fish stocks which, in turn, depend upon a healthy marine ecosystem. For fisheries, environmental productivity and economic prosperity are one in the same.
So what is needed for sustainable fisheries, and how does that tie-in to human needs and coastal protection? Looking at our fisheries, obviously the first thing we have to do is control our own activities. That means fishing within the biological limits of a fish population, or simply put, not overfishing. We have had fishing regulations in place now for centuries. Here in California, some of our first fishing regulations - on oysters in San Francisco Bay and on salmon - were passed soon after statehood. Obviously, however, many of our fishing regulations have not been adequate and today many stocks are just hanging on because the regulations were either inadequate or not enforced. But the point is we do have a regulatory structure in place that has been, or is now finally, addressing the impacts of fishing on fish stocks. In fact, the Precautionary Principle calls for low levels of fish harvest where there is significant uncertainty about a fish population's sustainability.
Fishing, too, must be regulated so that it does not cause waste - that is taking fish for which there is no lawful market, or catching other marine species such as mammals, seabirds or turtles. This unwanted harvest is called 'bycatch,' and is something we are working to reduce or eliminate in those fisheries where it may be a problem. Moreover, fishing must be regulated to assure that our gear does not destroy habitats - whether it be anchoring on a coral reef or a heavy trawl net being dragged along rocky areas and pinnacles on the sea floor. There are now statutes and regulations in place to control fishing to prevent over-harvest, to reduce bycatch and to protect essential fish habitat from the impact of fishing gear. Furthermore, where these regulations and statutes are not being implemented, private groups, including fishermen, are suing to have them enforced. Fishing men and women, such as those my organization represents, know that responsible fishing is one of the foundations of sustainable fisheries.
The other foundation for sustainable fisheries, and where there is ultimately a shared vision among fishing families and those who care about our coast, is the protection of habitat. As we have found in so many fisheries, merely controlling fishing is not enough. In many cases fish populations are continuing to decline even when all fishing has ceased, simply because of habitat destruction. By habitat destruction I'm talking not only about the physical loss that may come from the destruction of a reef or the damming of a river, but also pollution, impaired flows, and even the invasion of ecosystems by non-native species. While we have done much to control fishermen, our industry has still done little to control those who destroy fish habitat. There is an old English saying that goes:
The law doth punish man or woman who steals the goose from off the common, but lets the greater felon loose who steals the common from the goose.
As I have mentioned, there are laws in place to stop the destruction of marine habitat by fishing methods. All we have to do is get those enforced. There are, however, many other sources of habitat destruction in the marine environment that affect not only fish but our whole coast and its quality of life. These include the constant threat of catastrophic oil spills. California has passed a major oil spill prevention act, as has the Congress. There is a moratorium currently on new oil drilling along the coast, and we have moved a lot of tanker traffic further offshore to prevent the possibility of grounding and provide more response time in the event of a spill or sinking.
The problem is that the moratorium on new oil drilling has to be renewed annually. Because of recent price hikes at the pump and the state's current energy 'crisis,' some are now calling for new drilling. We have got to stop that. The risks are too great for our fish, for fishermen, for our wildlife and for our coast, all to get a few days worth of fuel to be blown out the tailpipe of an SUV. Further, it is time we called on Congress to overturn the recent Supreme Court decision prohibiting state regulation of tanker traffic in inland waters to allow states to impose tougher standards to protect against accidents and spills. It is also time to call for a speed up in the transition to double-hulled tankers.
The long-term solution, of course, is to begin in earnest the development of clean, renewable sources of energy. Renewable energy source development is not just about addressing current shortages, or global warming. It's about protecting our coast. It's about protecting fish. It's about protecting one of our most ancient of endeavors - fishing.
Where oil drilling has occurred, the oil companies must clean up their mess. We require our children to clean-up after themselves, certainly we ought to require the 'adults' running these multi-billion dollar companies to clean-up after themselves, as they agreed to, once they have ceased pumping from an offshore oil rig. There is a big difference between a rig and a reef. Make no mistake, rigs discarded below the surface and on the seabed are refuse - garbage - not natural systems. The oil companies may have duped some amateur fishermen into believing oil platforms are good for fishing, but the professional fishermen will tell you those rigs and all the garbage and toxic drill muds associated with them don't belong in our oceans.
Protecting habitat also means we stop using the ocean as a giant refuse heap. Our oceans can no longer be viewed as a garbage dump. Here in California, we have already had to ban fish taken from some ocean waters in southern California because of pollution, much of it from previous dumping of chemicals such as DDT. If we are to have abundant and healthy fish populations, then ocean dumping of deadly substances and toxic dredge spoils must be stopped. The disposal of all other manner of refuse into the ocean must cease, including discarding into nearshore waters the debris from poorly designed or failed highways.
Protecting habitat means that we clean-up the water flowing into the ocean from all sources, including storm drains and agricultural run-off. It means rethinking how we treat waste water. In this water short state, shouldn't we be reusing our waste water, not chlorinating it and piping it to the sea?
Now there are some who think we can protect fish and protect our coastal waters by simply locking up twenty or thirty percent of our ocean waters in what are called 'marine protected areas,' and then making them no-take zones. Yes, there are natural structures in some ocean waters that need protection from activities that would destroy them - coral reefs for example. Yes, there may be key spawning or nursery areas for certain resident species of fish or shellfish where they should not be taken simply to protect them and allow for the seeding of surrounding waters. Yes, we have to protect biological diversity. But that doesn't mean we have to stop all activities or harvest. We need to protect our fishing grounds, not lock them up. Here in California we did the right thing in creating four national marine sanctuaries whose original purpose was to prevent oil drilling and to preserve fishing, not eliminate it.
Remember also, polluted waters and oil spills know no boundaries. When there is a major oil spill, currents don't respect beaches and shorelines. When there are toxic laden waters, currents don't respect the areas where fish congregate. Algal blooms and dead zones don't respect lines drawn in the ocean. To protect our coast, our marine environment and our fisheries, we don't have to and we don't need to set aside vast areas as 'no-take zones,' but we do have to protect all ocean waters from pollution and spills, and from the impacts of industrial development. Until we can control currents, if any ocean waters are vulnerable to spills and pollution then no ocean waters are protected.
Finally, protecting our oceans and our coasts, of course, is about more than stopping pollution and spills at sea, and is about more than protecting bottom structures or kelp forests. It means controlling our activities on shore - controlling coastal development, for example. We know, for instance, that a full 85 percent of all commercially valuable fish are dependent on wetlands during some period of their life. Yet in California we have lost 95 percent of our coastal wetlands. Wetlands, too, are important for water quality, waterfowl and all nature of critters.
We can no longer talk about trading wetlands or no net loss of wetlands. We not only have to stop any further encroachment on the remaining five percent, we need an aggressive program to begin restoring and recreating wetlands. Healthy wetlands are good for fish, they're good for birds, they're good for our souls.
Our estuaries - those places where the fresh water from our rivers and streams mix with the sea to create those brackish, biologically rich waters - are also critical to the health of so many fish and shellfish, herring and oysters and crabs among others. Yet today many estuaries are threatened because of the continued diversions of the rivers and streams that feed them the necessary fresh water. To the north of us is San Francisco Bay, the single most biologically important estuary along the Pacific coast of North and South America. Yet this international treasure, this great Bay and its Delta that hosts a once abundant species of native oysters (Ostrea lurida), contains the largest herring fishery south of British Columbia, and shelters what was once the largest Dungeness crab nursery area along the Pacific Coast is threatened as more and more of its freshwater inflows are diverted southward. In some years more than half of the Bay and Delta's historic inflow is diverted, severely harming the productivity of that magnificent ecosystem.
Now what, you may ask, has San Francisco Bay to do with Monterey, or the coast of San Luis Obispo or even California's Lost Coast? The answer is that we are not part of isolated environments, but part of one large one. It's all connected. Fish swim. Harming San Francisco Bay and the Delta affects salmon fishing, and consequently fishing communities, in places as far away as Santa Barbara or Coos Bay. The loss of Dungeness nursery grounds in San Francisco Bay affects crab fishermen in Monterey Bay. The loss of that productivity has a ripple affect up and down the coast and throughout the economies of all our coastal communities.
Of course, it's not just estuaries that are affected by a loss of freshwater inflows. The diversion of massive amounts of water from our rivers and streams, including the total de-watering of rivers such as the San Joaquin for nearly 150 miles, has had a devastating toll on salmon fishing. The fishery for salmon does not occur in isolated rivers but all along the whole of our coast. Thus, the inadequate flows for salmon in rivers such as the Columbia, the Yuba, the Trinity, the Klamath, and, of course, the San Joaquin, affects that fishery all along the coast in Santa Barbara, here in Monterey Bay, up on the north coast, and offshore the Oregon and Washington coasts. These impacts on fishing, in turn, affect whole coastal economies, including limiting opportunities for sport fishing, the availability of fresh locally-caught salmon in restaurants and markets, and the jobs and quality of life in our coastal communities. Our coast and the quality of life in its communities is thus impacted by habitat losses, including those caused by dams and diversions hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away. It's all interconnected.
One of the things that quickly became apparent to me when I served five years on the StateFederal "CALFED" Bay-Delta Advisory Committee is that California does not have enough water in normal and dry years, never mind drought conditions, to support existing needs. Yet this state's population, which cannot meet its present water needs, is expected to grow to 50 million people by 2020.
Dams and reservoirs, canals and water diversions don't create any new water. All they do is reallocate what already exists. In reality they reallocate it from the fish, from fishermen, from coastal jobs and food production, and from our coastal economies. No, if we're going to solve our water shortage and protect the habitat of the fish, protect the environment, protect agriculture, or even assure water supplies for our coastal towns we need to do things differently.
Water conservation, efficiency and reuse can help us get by in the short term. In the long-term we will need to get our water from the west, not the north. That means desalinization to provide our growing urban population with a dependable water supply without threatening fisheries, farms and the environment. If California can be the leader in computers and biotechnology, why can't we apply that same know-how now to developing cost-effective, energy efficient and environmentally-friendly desalinization technology to meet our needs, and then export that technology to other water short parts of the world? Instead of exporting our dam builders to destroy the world's great rivers and displace societies, why not export technology that can save those rivers? Why can't we use our know how to be the leader in developing clean, renewable energy supplies from wind and solar, and even from tidal and wave energy?
The current 'energy crisis' hysteria not only threatens to shut off our lights and computers, but could prove deadly to our fisheries if not carefully guided. Proposals for new offshore oil drilling pose a threat to our marine environment. Changes in operations at our hydro-electric dams, or even proposals for new dams, threaten our remaining salmon resources. That in turn affects our coast economies, for salmon has long been one of the principal fisheries supporting coastal fishing communities.
We cannot let dam operators run our rivers solely to squeeze out every last kilowatt or, more accurately, to maximize their profits. Our rivers must be preserved for fish, for recreation, for our enjoyment and for our souls, not just to run televisions and air conditioners. Those rivers are important to our coast because they provide everything from the fresh water needed by estuaries to the sand necessary for beach replenishment. Living rivers should not be treated just as factories.
Clean, renewable energy sources must be developed to save our oceans, our coasts, our rivers, our fisheries. In a recent essay in Science, Terry Collins of Carnegie Mellon University wrote:
"We face an important choice for energy research: either we attempt to improve energy sources that are inherently flawed with respect to sustainability, such as fission or fossilized carbon, or we work toward new approaches for the sake of sustainability."
Let me now turn from energy to invasives. Invasive species, that is, non-native aquatic plants and animals are one of the latest and greatest threats to the health of our marine ecosystems. However, invasive fish and aquatic plants are not new to this coast. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, fish culturists were busy little beavers moving live fish between the coasts in sealed box cars. In recent years, however, invasive aquatics have become a significant problem and pose a serious threat. The increase in global trade and the opportunity for nasty critters to move around in ship's ballast water or in air cargo containers or on trucks, not to mention the increase in the aquarium trade and the disposal of fish and plants from those tanks, has led to massive bio-invasions by non-native plants and animals. The problem is not just zebra mussels in the Great Lakes or Mitten crabs in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, we've also got problems right here along the coast with invasives such as Culerpa and green crabs.
In recent years there has been a great deal of research done on invasive species and progress has been made in preventing their spread at least by ship's ballast water. The problem is, we still need to educate people not to dump non-native fish and plants from aquariums, or anywhere else, into our waterways.
Furthermore, we have to start controlling aquaculture operations. Fish farms in Washington State and British Columbia have caused a significant invasion of Atlantic salmon into the waters of Puget Sound and off Vancouver Island that threaten native Pacific salmon stocks, including those listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Aquaculture, which has been around in one form or another for the past 3,000 years, can increase our overall fish and shellfish production if it is done carefully, in the right places and with the right species.
If it is not done right, however, aquaculture can lead to aquatic invasions when fish escape net pens; it can cause the introduction of diseases as occurred here in California, when 'withering foot disease' was introduced and which now seriously threatens our native abalone stocks; it can lead to the destruction of habitats as has occurred with shrimp farms; and it can cause pollution. With the exception of oysters, to protect our coastal waters and our native fish populations, we must insist that state permitting officials only allow aquaculture in the coastal zone that is completely contained; that is, in tanks and not in open ocean waters or bays.
Finally, with regard to invasives generally, if we're going to protect our native fish we've got to begin programs to contain and reduce invasive populations where they have established themselves. The inaction on this front by agencies has been inexcusable. It's not enough just to study the animals or prevent new incursions, we've got to begin eradicating those invasive species that have become established before they get totally out of hand. Fishing men and women are willing to do their part to help in this effort, but we can't do anything when agencies just make excuses and refuse to act. Part of our vision for our coast is the full participation of fishing men and women in the prevention and control of aquatic invasions.
Whether we're developing fishing regulations necessary for sustainable fisheries, or developing protective measures for fish habitat, or preventing and controlling invasives, we need good information and we need to increase our knowledge of the oceans. That means closer collaboration between fishermen and scientists, between those who harvest the ocean and those who study it. Here on Monterey Bay we have some great research institutions, from Stanford's Hopkins Marine Laboratory, to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the Cal State Moss Landing Marine Laboratory and University of California Santa Cruz' Long Marine Laboratory. Indeed, we have a number of leading marine research institutions along our coast.
In the latest issue of National Fisherman, my industry's principal trade publication, editor Jerry Fraser I think said it best:
"Most fishermen today are scientists. Some have formal educations, some do not, but all use intuition, observation and experience to understand the oceans on which they work and live, and the fish on which they depend. Surely the sea is a laboratory and it is without question easier to write a term paper than it is to spend a year extracting a living from the depths one can never hope to see. In recent times, science as practiced by fishermen since St. Peter has been institutionalized by governments, courts and advocates for the environment and knowledge born of life at sea has been discredited as anecdotal. Who, I wonder, is the wiser for this? At last, though, I sense a sea change. I sense a growing awareness that in the search for truth, fishermen are a constant, not a variable. Maybe it is not too late."
Let's be leaders now in bringing the fishing and academic institutions together to expand our knowledge so we can better protect habitats, so we will have sustainable fisheries, sustainable coastal economies and, ultimately, a sustainable planet. When we protect habitats for fish - stopping pollution, preventing the destruction of coral reefs, halting sedimentation and run-off from development, and curbing the loss of wetlands and freshwater inflows, we protect ourselves.
Part of the vision I have, and I think most in the fleet that my organization represents has, is that, in addition to the biological aspects of protecting our ocean and coastal environments, we not forget that those who work along the coast need to be able to live on the coast. Our coasts cannot become the enclave of the rich at the expense of all others. We must not let our coastlines become an amalgam of row castles and expensive resorts for the very wealthy. There must be room for the fisherman's cottages and the bungalows of marine scientists. Our oceans must be made safe for fish and all manner of aquatic life, but likewise our coastlines must be made safe so that those who work along it can live in it.
It is my belief that fishing communities are the best gauge of the health of our oceans and our coast. Thriving fishing communities indicate better than anything else that our oceans and coastlines are healthy. Thriving fishing communities will tell better than anything else what our societal priorities are and what kind of society we have. Fishing, this most ancient and noble of human endeavors, will be the measure of how well we protect our oceans and the quality of life along our coast.
Our fishery problems are nowhere close to being licked yet. However, there is good reason to believe that we are finally waking up to the fact that we have both the right and the means to shape the future of ocean policy toward one in which the fish, our children and ourselves will all live.
Habitat is finally being recognized for what it is: an issue in which we all have a huge stake. Quality of life issues cannot be compartmentalized. This is why the cornerstone of my vision is our common ground. The sooner that we find that common ground, the sooner that vision will be implemented. If we are going to make a difference, we need the best minds to help us repair the marine fabric in which we have ripped so many holes. By enhancing the productivity of marine species, we are creating opportunities for meaningful contact with the history and traditions that make up our shared heritage. By implementing this shared vision, would it not be nice to stop merely accepting the kind of coastal communities and ocean resources that we get and start demanding the kind of coastal communities and ocean resources that we want?
To have a vision, you must be a visionary. I urge all of you to be visionaries. Let's make places where there are fishing communities, fishing boats and fresh, locally-caught fish in markets and restaurants, where the waters support diverse native populations of marine life, where fishing men and women work together with those exploring the ocean's mysteries, a place where our children and their children's children can find happiness, solace and a connection with nature.
Pietro Parravano is the current President of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA), the west coast's largest organization of commercial fishing families. PCFFA's Southwest Regional Office can be reached at: PO Box 29370, San Francisco, CA 94129-0370 and by phone (415)561-5080. PCFFA's Northwest Regional Office can be reached at: PO Box 11170, Eugene, OR 97440-3370 and by phone (541)689-2000. PCFFA's web site is at <http://www.pcffa.org> or PCFFA can be reached by email at <fish1ifr@aol.com>.