Conservation Group to Finance Fisheries Management Study

Charging that resources off the coast are being squandered, a marine conservation coalition said Wednesday it would provide $100,000 to study the state’s management of ocean fishing.

The study will try to develop an outline for a new fisheries management body to halt the depletion of fishing stocks, said Johnnie Crean, president of the National Coalition for Marine Conservation, which is funding the seven-month project.

“The real problem is the system,” Crean said at a news conference Wednesday in Newport Beach. “The system can’t manage. We need a new system.” Crean, of San Juan Capistrano, advocated establishment of a fisheries management system centered around a nonpolitical scientific body.

Crean said the National Coalition for Marine Conservation represents 10,000 recreational fishermen who claim that the fish population isn’t nibbling like it used to and is edging toward extinction. He vowed that recreational fishing interests, often at odds with the interests of commercial fishing, will not influence the panel the coalition has hired.

Private consultants hired for the study include Biliana Cicin-Sain and Robert Knecht of Santa Barbara-based Knecht/Cicin-Sain Associates, who will concentrate on the political aspects of ocean management, and Dennis King, director of ICF Technologies in San Diego, who will focus on economic considerations.

‘Hard to Ignore’

With the consultants’ combined experience, King said Wednesday, the study will be “hard to ignore. . . . With good people, you can’t just put something like this on the shelf.”

Cicin-Sain said that the United States is lagging behind other nations in ocean management and that California is lagging behind other states in the country. The state’s last major study of ocean fisheries, she said, was conducted about 20 years ago, and California “is still caught in a ‘60s mentality.”

Because legislation is enacted when problems come to Sacramento’s attention, however, fish species are harvested until it is obvious there is not much left, Crean said, adding, “Then everyone goes running to the Legislature.”

Knecht compared the state’s policy of fisheries management to operating “on the lowest quarter of the tank,” and he asked, “Why not the upper three-quarters?”

But Al Petrovich, chief of the state Department of Fish and Game’s marine resources division, said the dwindling numbers of fish may only bother recreational fishermen who don’t get much satisfaction when the fish aren’t biting.

Sophisticated Equipment

He said sophisticated equipment is available to commercial fishermen and can keep the industry going despite declining numbers of fish. Whether fish populations are actually depleted, however, depends on one’s interpretation, he said.

King, who will head the research team, agreed in some cases. “State management techniques do not threaten all species,” he said. “They make recreational fishing not so exciting.”

But, he said, two-thirds of the 15,000 licensed, commercial fishermen in California have gross catches of less than $5,000 annually.

“There are too many vessels chasing too few fish,” King said. “Somebody’s going to have to bite the bullet.”

Crean said the study will be combined with a separate study by the marine coalition. A proposal should go to Sacramento next spring, he said.