Sportfishermen Again Try to Cut Gill Nets : Decades-Long Battle May Reach Another Showdown on the 1988 State Ballot

The publisher of a sportfishing magazine has come up with a novel idea for solving the decades-old conflict between sport fishermen and commercial gill net fishermen:

Ban the gill nets.

Ken Kukuda recently received permission from March Fong Eu, California secretary of state, to circulate petitions for an initiative he hopes will appear on the 1988 state ballot.

Kukuda calls his proposed initiative the “Ocean Resources Emergency Protection Law.” If it qualifies for the ballot and is passed by the voters, the measure will put gill nets in the history books. It would outlaw the use of a gill net, trammel net “or any other entangling net” in ocean waters within 75 miles of California’s coast.

Sportfishing interests in Southern California have opposed the use of gill nets for years, complaining that the nets kill many nontargeted fish, such as striped marlin.

More recently, environmental organizations have joined the fray, citing deaths of marine mammals and birds allegedly caused by gill nets.

Greenpeace, for example, calling gill nets “curtains of death,” says that Japan’s salmon drift-net fleet alone incidentally kills about 5,000 Dall’s porpoises a year. The organization also claims that Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean gill nets yearly kill hundreds of thousands of sea birds and lesser numbers of turtles.

Gill nets are monofilament-webbed nets, hung vertically in the ocean with floats at the top and weights at the bottom. They trap, and eventually kill, any fish, marine mammal or bird that becomes entangled.

The state Department of Fish and Game says there are 1,200 licensed gill netters in California. In 1984, in response to rising complaints of abuses by gill netters, the DFG ordered a moratorium on gill net permits, freezing the number at 1,127.

In Southern California, the principal target species of gill net fishermen are thresher sharks, herring, halibut, swordfish, rock fish, white croaker and barracuda.

Obviously, the commercial fishing industry will fight Kukuda’s initiative.

“I’m amazed, absolutely amazed,” said Robert Ross, president of the California Seafood Institute in Sacramento.

Ross implied that commercial fishing interests will be drawing from a deeper well than sportfishing groups when it comes time to finance the two campaigns in 1988, if the initiative qualifies for the ballot.

“We already have begun making plans to fight it, and it will cost a bundle,” he said. “I hope the proponents understand what it will cost them, if it winds up on the ballot. This is a contest between two ocean user groups. One amounts to 5% of the population, the other amounts to 95% of the population.”

Nello Castagnola, president of the California Gill Netters Assn., said that the initiative, if passed, would put several hundred gill netters out of work.

“There are about 1,100 gill net permits out, but only 300 or 400 people are fishing regularly with them,” he said.

“It’s very simple. The sport guys want to throw all of us out of work. They want the whole ocean to themselves. All those stories about whales and sea lions, that’s all propaganda. We have observers who come on our boats. They’ll tell you the same thing.

“The fish out there belong to all the people of California, not just to the sportfishermen. If you can’t spare the time to go out there and catch your fish, I’ll go out and catch it for you, right? OK, the way we see it, the little old lady in Pasadena who wants to buy some fish at the market has just as much right to do so as the sport guys do to go fishing.”

Kukuda is a newcomer to the sportfishing-commercial fishing wars. Two years ago, he was looking for a business to invest in, and came upon South Coast Sportfishing magazine, which was for sale in Santa Ana.

“At that time, I hadn’t done a lot of fishing myself, but I looked at how many people did sportfish in the ocean in Southern California and decided the market was there for a successful magazine operation,” he said.

Kukuda, 36, began looking into the politics and management issues of the saltwater fishing scene in Southern California and developed a rather feisty editorial policy toward the Department of Fish and Game. The agency, he says, is tilted toward the commercial fishing industry in its fisheries management policies.

“If it’s one thing I’ve heard over and over again from sportfishing people, it’s that the DFG sides with the commercial people on almost every issue,” Kukuda said. “In fact, some sportfishing people actually believe the commercial fishing industry is running the DFG.

“Gill net violations occur almost daily, and there’s virtually no law enforcement. So you complain to the DFG about, say, gill net violations in Santa Monica Bay (where gill nets are prohibited) and the DFG will say, ‘Well, we don’t have enough patrol boats.’ If you ask them how much they’d need for another patrol boat, they’ll tell you $650,000, which is ridiculous.

“The law requires a gill net fisherman who incidentally catches a striped marlin to turn it in to the DFG. You know how many were turned in in 1985? Three. A DFG biologist whom I won’t name told me it should’ve been about 150.

“The more I talked to those (DFG) people, the more I became convinced they couldn’t care less about the gill net issue and a lot of other issues. We had to sue them to force them to start collecting fish taxes they weren’t collecting from the commercial fishing industry.”

Putting the measure on the ballot, Kukuda said, will not be a problem. He pointed to a stack of about 50 letters on his desk, all of them from people offering to help circulate petitions.

To qualify for the ’88 ballot, Kukuda’s initiative needs the signatures of 581,186 registered voters, the required 8% of the votes cast for governor in the previous election.

“There’s no question we can get 600,000 signatures,” he said. “We’ve heard from the Audubon Society and the Izaak Walton League already. They both want to help. The Friends of the Sea Lion will help us. All of the sportfishing landings will have petitions.

“There’re a lot of people concerned with the plight of sea otters. We’re sure they’ll help, too. The Los Angeles Rod and Reel Club has promised 5,000 signatures.

“On Tuesday alone, I had three calls from political consultants.

“The commercial people will claim we’d be throwing a lot of their people out of work, but I don’t think that will be the case. Commercial fishermen impacted by the initiative can transfer to other fisheries, or develop different fishing gear. If any jobs are actually lost, we could go to Sacramento and ask for legislative relief.”

Kukuda, a graduate of UC Irvine, is no stranger to political wars. During the 1978 Proposition 13 campaign, he was one of Howard Jarvis’ attorneys.

“I don’t know as much as a lot of people about fishing, but I know a lot about politics in this state,” he said. “Sportfishermen have been trying for years to out-muscle the commercial fishing lobby in Sacramento and it’s never worked. And they’ve tried for years to get the DFG to tighten up on gill net regulations, and nothing’s worked.

“Well, I decided this can’t go on anymore, that it’s time someone stepped in and provided some leadership, and I’m the guy.”

Silent so far on the proposed gill net initiative is the San Diego-based National Coalition for Marine Conservation, a sportfishing-oriented group that has been active in gill net issues in recent years.

The NCMC takes credit for developing the legislation that bans drift gill-net fishing within 75 miles of the coast from June 1 through Aug. 15, and within 25 miles of the coast from Dec. 15-Jan. 31.

The NCMC also keeps tabs on gill net incidents involving whales. It says that between 35 and 40 whales have been entangled in gill nets since 1980, and that “in excess of 20” have been killed by the nets.

NCMC President Carl Nettleton said his organization hasn’t seen the proposed initiative yet but will study it soon.

“Gill net problems continue to plague this coast, and greater regulation continues to be needed,” he said. “Specific areas of problem are the continued overharvest of white sea bass and overharvest of stocks of California halibut.”

Bill Ford of the Friends of the Sea Lion Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach was an early supporter of the proposed initiative.

“We believe something like 1,500 to 2,000 sea lions and 1,000 harbor seals drown each year in gill nets in California,” he said. “Seals and sea lions can’t swim backward. When they see a fish caught in a monofilament net, they go toward it and get their heads caught in the net. The more they struggle, the more they become tangled.”

And so the story continues. Commercial and sportfishermen have been squabbling over fishery issues here since the turn of the century.

In the 1920s, Zane Grey, western author and avid Southern California sportfisherman, wrote:

“I can convince any honest man that if something is not done to stop this wholesale slaughter of fish, there will be no fish left.

“Years ago, the schools of sardines were endless. I sat in a launch with Charley Gardner while a school of sardines passed by us. They took half a day to pass. The school might have been 20 miles long. Where are such schools of sardines now? Gone! Gone, into fertilizer and oil--to make a few packers and canners rich.”

Grey was right about the sardine. The fishery here collapsed, in the early 1950s, and only in recent years has it shown signs of recovery.