Deaths of 4 Sea Otters Lead to Tighter Curbs on Gill Nets

State fish and game officials say they will further restrict the use of gill nets in a small area of the Central Coast waters after the weekend deaths of four sea otters.

The sea otters--classified a “threatened” species--were entangled and killed in a fine-filament gill net near Monterey.

Al Petrovich, chief of the Fish and Game Department’s marine resources division, said he was informed that a state-paid ocean observer--looking through a land-based telescope--saw a fisherman take the four dead otters from his gill net off Ragged Point. The number of dead otters reported was unusually high for one net and brought documented deaths of the threatened marine mammal to six this year.

“We’ve had them trickle in periodically, one here and one there,” Petrovich said about dead otter reports. “But not four.”

Petrovich said the state is now drafting an emergency measure that would allow commercial boats in the Ragged Point area to use their gill nets only in water 180 feet or deeper. Existing regulations permit gill nets in water as shallow as 120 feet. Petrovich said the boats use gill nets on the Central Coast to catch halibut, which bring fishermen as much as $2.25 a pound.

The use of gill nets in California coastal waters is a simmering controversy, which has pitted commercial fishermen against environmentalists and recreational fishermen. Operators of commercial boats say the nets are efficient, but the environmentalists say the fine-filament mesh indiscriminately kills endangered marine mammals such as porpoises and otters.

Environmentalists and game fishermen are currently gathering signatures to place a measure on the November ballot to ban the use of gill nets in the coastal waters of Southern California.