Future Looks Uncertain to Gill-Netter

Two miles out of Ventura Harbor, Jay Kemsley hoists a 400-yard-long gill net onto his boat, picking whole kingfish out by hand and tossing overboard the remains of others half eaten by sea lions.

The former Coast Guard officer sets his three anchored nets overnight five or six days a week. He has been fishing for kingfish and halibut since early 1985, as one of the last to be granted a state gill-netting permit.

But his occupation is now on the brink of extinction.

California voters made Kemsley and the state’s 600 other licensed gill-netters an endangered species last November, when they approved a referendum banning the practice in state waters. To protect marine mammals sometimes killed in the nets, the voters rendered illegal a fishing method employed since biblical times.

Kemsley and about 20 fellow gill-netters in Ventura County may continue to fish this way until January, 1994. Then they must adopt a different method or find another occupation.

Kemsley, 36, of Ventura, worries that he may be unable to save enough money to move into another type of fishing. Crabbing, for instance, requires 200 to 300 traps that cost $50 each.

“I’ll probably go to another fishery, if I can get the money up,” Kemsley said. “But anything you can make money in in California is already limited entry.”

The prohibition approved by voters covers only state waters, which extend to three miles offshore. But gill-netters suspect that the ban will be enforceable in federal waters out to 200 miles.

“Since it’s banned in state waters, they probably won’t let us land fish here” that are caught outside the state limit, Kemsley said.

Indeed, fishing industry leaders said the sponsor of the referendum, Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress), got the state attorney general’s office to extend the gill-net ban last month to rockfish caught in federal waters. The state commercial fishermen’s association got a temporary restraining order against the extended ban and is challenging it in court.

Gill netting, also employed to catch swordfish, sea bass, and angel and thresher shark, has been closed to newcomers since late 1984, when Kemsley got his permit.

The fisherman grew up in Saticoy and attended Ventura College and Long Beach State. He entered the Coast Guard in 1976, a few credits shy of a marine biology degree. He worked search-and-rescue in the Pacific Northwest until 1979, when he left the service and enrolled in an apprenticeship to become a union electrician.

Kemsley’s craving for the sea prompted him to save up for the 42-foot trawler that he began working in 1985. He found his new career so much fun that “it took me a year to stop feeling guilty going to work fishing,” Kemsley said.

It has not necessarily been a lucrative occupation. Kemsley said he has earned anywhere from $13,000 to $45,000 a year before expenses, which include $3,700 in annual dock fees and $2,000 to $3,000 in fuel costs. He falls back on his former trade during lean times, and teaches an electrician training course at Ventura College.

Because of tight finances, Kemsley sold the trawler that he worked with a crewman last year and put $25,000 into a 24-foot boat that he equipped with little more than a pair of outboard motors and the large motorized spool to retrieve the nets.

Kemsley most recently has been fishing for kingfish with two of his 15-by-1,200-foot nets, and for halibut with a third. The web of the kingfish net measures 2 3/4 inches across; the halibut net, 8 1/2 inches.

The kingfish, or white croaker, weighs about half a pound and is sold primarily in Asian markets in Los Angeles. While younger fish can swim through the net, adults get their gills caught in it as they try to pass through.

As Kemsley retrieved his nets last Thursday, 20 to 30 sea lions repeatedly dove and resurfaced around them. Pulling in the last 200 yards, he found that the herd had consumed all or part of every fish snared in the far half of the netting.

Kemsley can legally shoot and kill the poachers, which he has done on more than one occasion. He said that five to 10 harbor seals and sea lions are inadvertently killed each year in his halibut nets, which, he contends, is insignificant because the sea lion population has been growing by 6% annually for several years.

Thursday, his net proved fatal for a black-feathered grebe that got entangled and drowned while trying to pilfer a fish. Kemsley said his nets inadvertently kill between two and five diving birds a year.

“You feel bad killing the animal, but it’s part of fishing,” said Kemsley, who landed nearly 80,000 pounds last year.

Kemsley estimated that sea lions consumed up to 200 pounds of his kingfish Thursday. At 45 cents a pound--the price he gets from his dockside wholesale buyer--Kemsley lost as much as $90 to the herd. The loss was significant on a day when his total catch of 173 pounds earned him $77.90.

Kemsley estimates that he has $40,000 invested in his boat and equipment. He could qualify for $9,000 from a state buyout fund created to subsidize gill-netters’ costs of switching to other types of fishing. But he has misgivings about the offer because he would then have to relinquish rights to his permit should the ban be lifted.

“To stop and throw your worthless gear away, take time off and learn a new fishery, most of us can’t afford that,” said Kemsley, who says he may try lobster or crab trapping if he can manage the cost. “If I can’t make the money to feed my family, I’ll probably pull my boat, try to sell it and go back to being an electrician.”