Sardine’s Return May Be Boon to Southland Anglers

Jack Woolen has been fishing Southern California’s coastal waters for albacore, marlin and yellowtail since the late 1940s. The other day, he was talking about the reappearance of an old, dear friend.

The sardine.

You remember sardines.

They used to come out of San Pedro canneries in cans, millions of them. Now they come from Norway. You put a fat, salty sardine on a cracker and wash it down with a cold beer.

In California, the sardine fishery collapsed in the early 1950s, a victim, most agree, of overfishing.

Sport fishermen, like Woolen, remember sardines, too.

“For yellowtail, the sardine is No. 1, a superb bait,” said Woolen, of Cardiff by the Sea.

“When you’re in a school of yellowtail and you bait up with a sardine, you’ll get a yellowtail, and I mean right now. The sardines in the five- and six-inch class, we called those racehorse sardines. Yellowtail would hit those so fast it was like they were watching it come through the air, when you’d cast it.

“And for white sea bass, nothing was better than a sardine. You’d put a live one on the bottom, with a sinker.”

For striped marlin, Jerry Garrett of Newport Beach recalls fishermen once weren’t really armed unless they had sardines in their bait tanks.

“A big sardine, nose-hooked and on a slow troll, that was a great bait in the early 1950s,” he said. “For yellowtail, sardines were better than squid.”

For several decades, fishermen have spoken in the past tense about sardines. Oh, they were around, but their numbers were so low, no one could find them consistently. Marine biologists have used the term “economically extinct” to describe sardines in recent decades.

No more. The sardine is back. Make room in the bait tanks. But hold the crackers.

“We have solid evidence the sardine fishery is increasing in size,” said Dr. Alec MacCall, a La Jolla-based biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

“When our estimate of the sardine biomass goes over 20,000 tons, then a 1,000-ton commercial fishery is opened. That’s still a small fishery, but our best estimate is that it’s growing at something like 20% per year.”

Biologists aren’t ready to say, however, that a boom in the sardine population will be a boon to sport fishermen.

“It’s quite likely white sea bass would be a major sardine predator,” MacCall said. “But remember, sardines would also be a prime food source for marine mammals like sea lions and dolphins, as well as pelicans.”

It’s also doubtful that sardine canneries would reappear up and down the California coast, such as was the case in the 1940s, when John Steinbeck was putting Monterey on the map.

A number of factors have changed the sardine fishing picture since sardines declined three decades ago. Most importantly, the old canneries are either gone or have long since been converted to trendy restaurants or waterfront shopping malls. In addition, the price of waterfront real estate probably is beyond the reach of anyone wanting to build a sardine cannery.

All things considered--even including the fact that sardines are now worth about $200 a ton off the boat--it’s probably cheaper to import them from Norway.

“A few are sold as bait for sport fishermen and some sardines are sold as fresh seafood items to Oriental markets, but that’s about it,” said Nello Castagnola, a San Pedro commercial fisherman. “There isn’t nearly enough yet out there for anyone to think about a canning operation.”

Roy Everingham supplies the entire San Diego party boat fleet with anchovies. Lately, his nets have also been bringing up a lot of sardines.

“I’ve seen more sardines lately than I have in 15 years,” he said. “So far, the only demand is from yellowtail fishermen. There’s some kind of relationship between anchovies and sardines. When anchovies are scarce, I find sardines. When sardines are hard to find, the anchovies show up.”

Charlie Davis of Huntington Harbour, another fisherman with fond memories of sardine abundance in the 1940s, thinks there’s a chance a sardine boom could mean a boom for both commercial and sport fishing interests.

“I’m not predicting anything, but if the sardines keep coming back like they are, I think you could expect a bloom of barracuda, yellowtail and white sea bass populations,” he said.

“I think there’s a relationship between sardines and albacore, too. Early in the 1950s, when the albacore came by inside the Catalina channel, I caught them with sardines.

“For marlin, I consider big sardines a superior bait to mackerel. And for big kelp bass, sardines are simply the best.”

Biologist Rick Klingbiel of the Department of Fish and Game said that surprisingly little is known about the interaction in the marine environment between game fish and sardines.

“No one did any food studies on white sea bass, for example, when sardines were abundant,” he said.

“We’re assuming sardines could become a major food source for some of these game fish, but we really don’t have data to support it. Call it gut-level biology.

“We know, for example, that bonito and mackerel, when they reach a certain size, feed primarily on anchovies. We don’t know what their choice would be if sardines were also available in similar abundance.

“For the last two years, there’s strong evidence sardines are increasing. In 1986, the 1,000-ton limit on the fishery was reached in July. This year, it was reached in April.

“The first signs of a resurgence was in 1983, when we found a lot of young sardines in our survey nets, more than at any time in the previous 20 years. Then we had another big spawn in 1986.

“I’m predicting we’ll see another jump in the biomass in the next couple of years. I’m as optimistic right now about the future of the sardine fishery as I’ve been in three years.”

The estimate of a 20,000-ton biomass is a fraction of what the sardine fishery once was off the California coast. In 1930, according to MacCall, the biomass was pegged at three million tons. Klingbiel said that California sardine fishermen took 732,000 tons in 1936.

“Sardines right now are available all the way up to Monterey,” Klingbiel said. “There’s not much directed effort (commercial fishing). They’re mostly mixed in with mackerel catches. There were just a couple of San Pedro boats targeting on sardines.”