Fishing Group Assails State’s Sea Management

A Southern California sportfishing group has denounced the state’s ocean-fisheries management as too fragmented to protect fish populations, but the group stumbled when trying to ease the long-term tensions between recreational and commercial fishermen.

In a 10-month study released Tuesday, the National Coalition for Marine Conservation-Pacific Region called for more state research on fish populations within 3 miles of shore, the area over which the state has nearly exclusive jurisdiction.

It blamed a 58% decline in the commercial landings of fish caught off California from 1970 to 1985 on the lack of research to show when overfishing is occurring. Such numbers indicate that near-shore populations of fish may be in trouble, but no one knows for certain, said Robert W. Knecht, a Santa Barbara marine policy analyst who helped write the report.

Instead of finding out, the state’s three-pronged regulatory apparatus lurches from crisis to crisis, intervening to protect certain species only after damage already has been done, the study says.

‘Multiplicity of Actors’

“The Legislature, the Fish and Game Commission and the Department of Fish and Game are all involved in the fisheries-management process,” the study written for the coalition by natural resources consultants says. “This multiplicity of actors appears to be responsible, at least in part, for the extent to which politics appear to play a significant role in fisheries management in California.

“The Legislature appears to feel a special need to become involved if commercial fishing interests are threatened by proposed changes in management measures.”

The $100,000 study blamed commercial fishermen’s small profit margins on the regulatory problems and suggested that better state management--including the possibility of limiting catches--would be the best way to ultimately improve the commercial revenue picture.

But, despite such statements acknowledging the money troubles of commercial fishermen, the sportfishing group also emphasized data indicating that recreational fishing has a much smaller impact on fish populations but greater economic value than does commercial fishing.

It also included an analysis by natural resources economist Dennis M. King, which concludes that though commercial fishing in California waters generates more than $1.3 billion in direct and indirect economic impacts for the state, its annual net economic value to the state is only about $20 million. That contrasts with an $800-million net economic value for sportfishing, he said.

Reason for Difference

The huge difference comes because the average costs of operating commercial vessels largely cancel out the average revenues gained from selling the catch, King’s analysis said.

For sportfishing, the analysis uses past surveys of the dollar value sportfishermen put on their activity, subtracts the costs they actually pay, and calls the difference the net economic value.

Such statistical techniques don’t sit well with Zeke Grader, the executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns. Based in Sausalito, the federation is an umbrella group of 20 fishermen’s groups.

He discounted King’s conclusions and added: “The national coalition really doesn’t have much credibility, so I don’t know how seriously any policy-makers are going to take this.”

Philip Meyer, a Davis economist who studies fishing along the West Coast, said King’s analysis assumes that the resources put into commercial fishing could be put to other, more profitable use. But for many fishing communities, unemployment is the fishermen’s only alternative. The analysis also relies on averages of vessel costs and revenues that can give a misleading picture, he said.

“I consider averaging to be a very dangerous statistical process,” Meyer said. “It leads, in my mind, to (these) kinds of questionable conclusions. I think one has to be very careful in California to recognize that it’s an extremely diverse state. The kind of judgments and conclusions that go down in one part of the state may not work in another area.”

For his part, King explained in an interview that the statistical techniques he used are part of an emerging field that is trying, for the first time, to put dollar values to society on the “psychic” benefits of recreational fishing.

“This non-market valuation approach is probably the mushiest thing in resource economics,” he acknowledged. “It says, ‘Hey, we know what it costs recreational guys and we know what it costs commercial guys. But what is it worth?’ For commercial, you have the market value of the fish, but what do you have for recreational? This is an attempt to set a figure on it.”

He said that, regardless of the controversy, the bottom line for the state is whether it continues to support through tax write-offs the commercial fishermen who don’t turn a profit. The study notes that only 24% of the commercial fishing fleet had fish catches worth more than $10,000 in 1985.

James Rote, chief adviser to the Joint Legislative Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture, said the study’s economic conclusions will probably prove controversial. But he said some legislators already endorse its call for better regulation of fisheries.

The coalition, which has about 1,000 members--most of them in Southern California--intends to take the report across the state over the next year to try to gain a public consensus on how regulation of fisheries should be changed, said Johnnie Crean, the group’s president.