New Gear May Bring an End to Gill Net Use

To fishermen, bright green and yellow gill nets are a cheap, efficient way to catch halibut, flounder and rockfish without huge boats and armies of manpower.

To environmentalists, the nets are death traps that snare sea birds by the tens of thousands, along with seals, porpoises and rare sea otters. Tangled in the nets, the animals drown.

Now, after years of battling over the fishing method that exploded along the California coast in the early 1980s, the antagonists and government officials say they may be near a solution.

Fishermen in Northern California are experimenting with alternative fishing gear, nets that may be less dangerous to mammals and birds. If the new techniques work, and if the government provides low-interest loans or grants to help fishermen buy or modify gear, gill nets could be a thing of the past.

At the same time, other steps are being taken in an effort to solve the problem.

Monitoring Programs

Five monitoring programs have been undertaken by the state Department of Fish and Game to determine how many mammals and birds are being killed by gill netters and how the deaths affect the overall wildlife populations. The programs cost almost $1 million.

Many areas have been closed to gill nets. In other areas, depth limits have been set because of the danger to threatened species, such as the southern sea otter.

Studies of the movements and habits of rare mammals like the harbor porpoise are under way to see whether net deaths are endangering the overall population.

“The problem’s not over with yet,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns. “It’s a continual problem. But at least the process of finding solutions has begun.”

The search began in 1982, after thousands of dead sea birds washed up on beaches from Monterey Bay to Point Reyes, about 30 miles north of San Francisco.

Used by Vietnamese

The deaths were traced to increasing use of gill nets along the coast, particularly by Vietnamese refugees who used the technique in their native land. El Nino, a warm-water phenomenon, hurt fishing about that time, leading some salmon fishermen to switch to gill nets.

The gill nets, made of fine plastic monofilament, are lighter and easier to work with than the twine nets that many fishermen used before. Weighted at the bottom and with floats on top, the nets are set along the sea bottom near shore.

Fish swim into the mesh of the vertical nets, then get caught by their gills. Some environmentalists argue that gill nets are harder for marine animals to see than twine.

Offshore, fish continue to be caught from large boats with trawling nets.

The introduction of gill nets hit sea bird populations harder than a big oil spill would have, said David Ainley, senior biologist at the Point Reyes Bird Observatory.

Ainley said about 20,000 common murres died in gill nets in the San Francisco area in 1982. The population in the nearby Farallon Islands, estimated at 90,000 in 1982, had dropped to about 30,000 by 1984, he said.

State officials and environmentalists, trying to determine the extent of the bird kills, discovered that other animals also were dying in gill nets.

Last year, an estimated 1,000 harbor seals out of a population of about 14,000 along California’s coast died after getting tangled in the nets, said Sarah Allen, an ocean researcher who has studied the seals for 11 years.

More than 1,000 sea lions, which are larger than harbor seals, also die each year, but there is less outcry because they breed rapidly enough to replace those lost to gill nets.

Also affected is the harbor porpoise, a four-foot-long mammal so elusive scientists know little about its habits.

As few as 3,000 harbor porpoises may exist along the coast, said Doyle Hanan, an associate marine biologist for the Fish and Game Department. He estimates that 300 of the porpoises were killed by gill nets from April 1, 1983, to March 31, 1984, about 225 the following year, and an estimated 200 in 1985-86.

Only about 1,400 sea otters remain along California’s central coast, according to Carol Fulton, executive director of Friends of the Sea Otter. Although state and federal laws make it a crime to kill them, the state estimates 80 to 100 otters die in nets every year.

Bill Maxwell, marine resources supervisor for the Fish and Game Department, said a 1982 study of the Monterey Bay bird kills resulted in legislation closing some areas to gill netters. Since then, the depth limit in the otter territory around Monterey Bay has been extended from 60 to 90 feet, meaning that nets must be dropped in water that deep, out of most otters’ diving range.

‘Scalpel Approach’

Throughout the controversy, the department has tried to use “the scalpel approach,” responding to specific problems rather than issuing blanket regulations, Maxwell said.

The restrictions have produced some bitterness among fishermen, Grader said.

“At the same time, they recognize that something’s got to be done,” he added. “I don’t think that everybody likes it, but there’s a certain amount of realism.”

High hopes rest on a bill by Assemblyman Sam Farr, now pending in the state Senate. The bill would allocate $450,000 in low-interest loans to help fishermen develop alternative fishing gear.

Meanwhile, two former gill netters in the Half Moon Bay area are experimenting with a Scottish seine, a type of net used primarily in the North Sea. The seine brings fish up live, which means non-target species can be returned to the sea, Grader said.

Another experiment by former gill netters will begin this month, said Chieu Pham, executive director of the Vietnamese Fishermen’s Assn. Two smaller boats, rather than one large one, will be used to pull a trawl net.

“We might be able to replace the gill net industry,” Pham said. “The environmental groups will have nothing to say about it anymore.”