Local Gill Netters Hope Court Will Rescue Industry

Andy Rasmussen will be out of work come Jan. 1.

He hasn’t quit his job, nor has he been fired. Rasmussen, a gill-net fisherman, lost his job by public vote.

In 1990, 55% of Californians voted to ban gill-net fishing in a three-mile zone along the California coast. The law will go into effect on New Year’s Day.

A coalition of environmentalists and sport fishermen backed the proposition, saying that gill nets, which are anchored to the ocean floor and stretched to trap fish, pose a threat to many marine mammals.

Although Rasmussen and the roughly 50 other fishermen who set their nets between Oxnard and Santa Barbara have had three years to prepare for their last catch, most cannot fathom what they will do when their fishery is closed.

“I have no idea what’s next,” Rasmussen said. “About 80% of my income is destroyed. My business is pretty much gone. I’ll probably be in an unemployment line on the first of the year.”

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The gill netters are staking their hopes on a lawsuit that challenges the proposition on constitutional grounds. A San Diego Superior Court judge will rule Jan. 6 on the gill netters’ request for an injunction, thereby allowing them to continue fishing at least until the lawsuit is heard in April.

But if the judge rules against them, the gill netters will be devastated, they say.

Their problem is that they cannot make an easy transition to another method of fishing, said Tony West, president of the California Gillnetters Assn.

Many, like Hank Hubble, one of about a dozen gill netters based in Ventura Harbor, built their boats specifically for gill netting.

“I put $60,000 into that boat, and this would basically make it useless,” Hubble said. “I couldn’t use it, and no one would want to buy it. It would be a total loss.”

Although gill netting will be permitted outside the three-mile limit, most of the boats are too small to safely operate that far from shore during harsh weather.

Gill netters will find it difficult to switch to another type of gear because the state has imposed limits on the number of fishermen entering other fisheries, West said.

“I’ll tell you what these guys are going to do next year,” West said. “They’re going to go broke.”

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Sponsors of the proposition argued during the 1990 campaign that benefits of the ban far outweighed the harm that would come to the state’s gill-net fishermen. The proposition’s author, Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress), said during the campaign that gill netting is the equivalent of strip mining and clear cutting.

Gill nets, she said, “are referred to as ‘walls of death’ because they entangle and painfully kill thousands of mammals such as whales, dolphins, sea otters and sea lions. More than 100 species of sea life are affected.”

Neither Allen nor local marine biologists could be reached to discuss the effects of the proposition.

To help the fishermen recover from the loss of their industry, Allen created a fund that would pay gill netters to switch to “less destructive gear.”

To date, only eight of the 136 fishermen who applied for compensation have collected money from the fund, and netters argue that many who deserve money will never receive it.

That has occurred, West said, because the proposition was worded so that compensation would be based on the average annual income gill netters earned for the years 1983 through 1987.

“The way that part of the proposition was written was ridiculous,” West said. “Nobody is going to come out of this with what they are supposed to be getting.”

West said that when the state Department of Fish and Game calculates claims, it takes the value of the catch for the years 1983 through 1987 and divides the amount by five.

“The problem is that there are a number of the fishermen who didn’t work all five of those years. So if someone started gill netting in 1985, their catch over three years is still divided by five. If they started fishing in 1988, they don’t get a dime.”

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West estimated that 30 to 40 of the 200 gill netters across the state would receive no compensation, despite promises in the proposition.

Tom Barnes, the Department of Fish and Game officer responsible for doling out compensation, said he had no choice in how the money was rationed.

“We’re going by the letter of the law,” Barnes said.

Even those who have received money through the fund, which was established by adding a $3.15 stamp required on sport-fishing licenses, say the amounts they have received have been inadequate.

According to Barnes, the average given out has been $18,000.

While fishermen’s earnings vary widely, West said the average yearly income for a gill netter is from $80,000 to $100,000.

Compensation is so low, West said, because the Department of Fish and Game only compensates gill netters for fish they can prove were caught in the three-mile zone.

“Fishermen didn’t know they had to mark all the depths and distances just so,” West said. “All of a sudden, their income is boiling down to how well they kept track of this stuff.”

Hubble said the fishermen are just one link in a chain of people who will lose business.

The gill netters, who fish mainly for halibut, angel shark and other bottom fish, sell primarily to local markets.

Supporters of the proposition argued at the time that the loss of the gill netters’ catch was not substantial. They said it made up less than 2% of the fish sold in California.

But each catch, Hubble said, goes through a seafood distributor and several truckers and markets before it lands on someone’s dinner table.

“There are probably 10 different people who handle my fish once it leaves my boat,” Hubble said. “All of them are going to be hurt by this.”

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Meanwhile, consumers will be buying the same types of fish from different sources, said Steve Rebuck, vice president of the American Seafood Harvesters Assn.

“People are just going to have to pay more to get the same fish from other countries,” Rebuck said. “It really doesn’t make much sense.”

At least for now, Hubble refuses to concede defeat. Last week he even ordered new filament for his gill nets.

“I just can’t see how I can quit after doing this my whole life,” Hubble said. “If that injunction fails, it will be like a disaster hit. Like a hurricane or an earthquake. I’ll be destroyed.”