The State of the Seafood : A look at the recent history of the state’s top species, as well as several other popular California seafoods.

Mackerel

The Pacific Jack Mackerel became a target 50 years ago when sardines disappeared.

The catch reached a peak in 1989 with 129 million pounds, but has plummeted to 29.6 million, a 77% drop. El Nin~o is cited as a factor.

Rockfish

About 50 species of rockfish, also known as rock cod and Pacific red snapper, are found off California. For decades, it has been one of the most popular local fish and is widely used in the restaurant trade.

Since 1979, the catch of Bocaccio rockfish has declined from 9 million pounds a year to 2.5 million in 1993, a 72% drop. Yet fishery experts are reluctant to acknowledge that the reduced harvest is significant.

“The stock was naturally declining from fishing down and from the fish [population] aging. There was a concern for a while that we might be overfishing, but that concern is pretty well passed,” said Jim Glock of the Pacific Fishery Management Council. “There are still restricted catch limits. We are taking a conservative approach rather than leaving it wide open.”

“Rockfish are a highly sought-after species,” said J. David Ptak of Chesapeake Fish Co. in San Diego. “We are still trying to learn how to better manage that fish.... Yes, there are fewer fish there and the catch is now restricted by necessary quotas.”

Sea Urchin

The sea urchin boom, sparked by demand from Japan, began in the mid-1970s, hit a peak in 1988 and has plummeted since. California reported record landings of 52 million pounds in 1988. In 1993, the last year for which figures are available, the catch had fallen to 26.8 million pounds, a decline of 48% in only five years.

The California sea urchin crash was mirrored in Oregon and Washington. Divers are now focusing on British Columbia, Southeast Alaska and New England.

“The industry realized that harvesting sea urchin at 50 million pounds per year was not sustainable,” said Diane Pleschner, manager of the California Seafood Council. “We have worked to increase regulations and decrease the fishing effort. Now divers operate with seasonal closures and size limits.”

Northern Anchovy

Fish and Game’s senior marine biologist Don Schultze says the decline in anchovy landings is caused by a lack of demand. For years anchovies weren’t used for food, but as a protein in manufacturing things like animal feed and fertilizer. “When soybean protein was commercialized it affected the market for [high-protein] anchovy,” Schultze said. “Market conditions prevail.”

If so, the market is brutal. More than 25 million pounds of anchovy were landed in California in 1978, but only 4.3 million in 1993, an 83% drop.

Others attribute the anchovy decline to the current tempering of warmer ocean temperatures. Anchovies run opposite to sardines.

However, industry representatives have met with the Pacific Fishery Management Council to express concerns about the decline in the anchovy stock, which they believe is attributable, Glock said, to over harvesting in Mexico.

Sablefish or Black Cod

“The sablefish are down in recent years because we can’t compete with the Seattle-based fleet with [its] larger and more efficient gear and boats,” said Dave Thomas, associate marine biologist for the state’s Fish and Game Department in Menlo Park. “California fishermen are just not competitive in this area.”

The fleets of Washington and Alaska are considerably newer than California’s, which has not only aged--and dwindled--but also not received the private- or public-sector financial investment necessary for technological improvements.

According to the University of California’s Sea Grant Extension Program, sablefish quotas were not put in place until 1982, when the fishery was already, as a program report put it, “over-exploited.” Intense Japanese demand for sablefish led to a record catch of 28.5 million pounds in 1979, but the next year there was a collapse in the fishery and the catch dropped 64% to 10.2 million pounds.

Quotas have reduced the catch to 5.6 million in 1993, an 80% decline since its 1979 heyday.

Sole

“The Dover sole population has declined pretty dramatically,” Glock said. “We should manage that stock more conservatively.”

In fact, a Pacific Fishery Management Council newsletter conceded that Dover sole appears to be “less abundant than previously believed.” As a result, the council has reduced the allowable catch each of the past three years and had to twice reduce the allowable level for 1995 in response to the downward trends.

California’s catch of Dover sole peaked in 1985 at 26.5 million pounds; 1993 landings were 14.4 million pounds, down 46%.

A more dramatic decline has occurred with the lucrative Petrale sole. Petrale landings peaked in 1979 at 3 million pounds. California’s catch is now 1 million pounds, or 67% off of the earlier mark.

“The main reason for the decline in Petrale sole catch is the lack of fishing effort,” said Ptak of Chesapeake Fish. “Guys are just quitting the business; they don’t want to do it. The resource is not what it was 40 years ago, but that’s true whether you are talking about trees or coal or copper. And it is increasingly difficult to compete with the fleets from Oregon and Washington.”

The attrition is as much from exhaustion and frustration as decreasing sole populations.

Squid

When sardines disappeared, the Monterey-based fleet turned, in part, to squid, which were mostly exported then as today. But eventually the Monterey Bay squid population diminished too. The fishery moved to San Pedro, where it is concentrated today.

Squid is one of the genuine success stories of recent California seafood history. A difficult-to-market name has led to a restaurant-driven reincarnation as calamari. Today the demand is strong, and supplies are steady. Squid are simply resilient, reproduce rapidly and, for now, seem inexhaustible.

In 1978, California squid landings totaled 38 million pounds. Squid runs strong in alternate years, but the past several have been the best. In 1993, the catch was a record 94 million pounds, or an increase of 147% from 15 years earlier.

Tuna

Canned tuna was developed in California in 1907, ironically, as a substitute for the depleted sardine catch.

“The tuna industry just moved out of California,” said Schultze of Fish and Game. “There has been a tremendous decline of cannery capability. At one time there were 10 to 15 canneries; now there is one. We don’t even have the cannery capacity to handle what we did as recently as the 1980s.... It is all a matter of cannery capability, not the presence or absence of fish.”

The tuna processors were a significant loss. Americans eat about 15 pounds of seafood per capita, and half of that total is canned tuna.

The albacore tuna catch fell 83% to 4 million in 1993, from 21.5 million pounds in 1978. During the same period, the skipjack tuna catch declined 93% and yellow fin tuna landings dropped 96%.

California Halibut

This fish, though much smaller than the giant Pacific halibut caught off Alaska, has always been popular.

Landings reached a peak in 1981 at 1.1 million pounds but fell 32% to 747,000 in 1993.

“There is no other reason for the decline in California halibut than the implementation of Proposition 132,” Ptak said. “There is an absence of effort; fewer fishermen are fishing for it. Fish and Game has never said that this species was threatened.”

Sardines

The sardine catch in California is most famous for its colossal failure, which began in the 1940s. Fifty years and two generations later, sardines may be coming back.

Although not even a shadow of its former self, the fishery is showing signs of life. The state has raised the commercial quota for sardines to about 100 million pounds for this year. The level is four times more than the previous season and comes after an extensive government survey of the eastern Pacific Ocean, involving California and Mexico, found the sardine population to be its healthiest in decades.

Abalone

No California fishery has been hit harder than abalone. Divers have cleaned the coast nearly free of this prized shellfish. Central California stocks have also been hit hard by a resurgent sea otter population. Now, abalone is also suffering from disease.

“Abalone has a problem right now,” said Mariga Vojkovich, senior biologist with California’s Fish and Game Department in Long Beach.

The state’s catch of black abalone crashed from a high of 612,000 pounds in 1982 to a mere 2,000 pounds in 1993. Pleschner of the California Seafood Council says black abalone has been decimated by an unknown virus; the fishery is now closed. The red, green and pink abalone fisheries remain open.