Fishermen’s Light Show Illuminates Bird Debate

After sunset during fishing season, boats searching for squid prowl the coast, guided by banks of lights that illuminate the sea like a baseball stadium and lure the little luminescent animals to the surface.

The lights are so intense, according to local lore, that you can read a newspaper at midnight five miles away on Anacapa Island.

“It looks like a bunch of little cities on the water, like you’re looking at the lights along Santa Monica Bay, except they are in the ocean,” said squid fisherman Pete Dupuy, who has worked the central coast for 30 years aboard Ventura-based boats.

But squid are not the only creatures at risk. Deaths and nesting failures among endangered pelicans and other rare seabirds have increased at the Channel Islands National Park off Ventura County, and some scientists believe increased squid-fishing activity in the area recently may be partly responsible.

Researchers emphasize that more study is needed. But dozens of boats illuminating the night sky, they say, is an unnatural condition that strips a protective cloak of darkness from some of the West Coast’s most sensitive bird species.

“It’s like being in a lighted stadium. The light boats turn the night into day,” said William Sydeman, director of marine studies at Point Reyes National Seashore and a member of the Squid Research Scientific Committee. “It’s exposing seabirds to increased predation and compounding problems for these very sensitive birds that are already in a vulnerable state.”

Squid boat skippers don’t think they are causing the problem. They suspect the National Park Service, which is studying the possibility of closing waters surrounding the islands to fishing, is using dead birds as an excuse to drive fishing fleets away.

“No matter what goes wrong, they blame it on the fishermen,” Dupuy said. “There are no dead birds in the cities, and they use lots more lights than we do. The park wants us out of there, and they are bound and determined to get us out.”

Since January, 125 dead Xantu’s murrelets have been found dead on Santa Barbara Island, six times more than were found the previous year and nearly double the average annual death rate, according to federal scientists. None of the murrelets successfully reared a chick this year, the first time that has been observed, Sydeman said.

At the same time, more barn owls, a nighttime predator, have been seen at the islands this year. And western gulls, which are rarely active at night, have been seen eating murrelets at dawn, an indication they either caught their prey at night or are scavenging dead ones, said Dan Richards, marine biologist at Channel Islands park.

“It’s alarming. It’s a much higher rate [of mortality] than we’ve seen in the past,” Richards said. “It’s like having a stealth fighter all of a sudden losing its cover. It makes them more susceptible to predatory birds.”

*

Murrelets are small, diving birds that hunt for small shrimp-like creatures called krill at night and spend days on the island. Only 2,000 pairs exist on the West Coast, half of them at Santa Barbara Island. Their numbers have mysteriously declined 40% since 1977, though not all of that loss is due to squid boats, Sydeman said.

At west Anacapa Island, at least half the brown pelican nests were abandoned this year, and chick mortality was also high, despite ocean conditions that favor pelicans, said Frank Gress, marine ecologist at the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology at UC Davis.

“We don’t know that there’s a cause-and-effect relationship, but logic dictates that bright lights and noise all night long at a colony site for several weeks at a time during the breeding season would almost certainly have a negative impact on breeding success,” Gress said.

Commercial and pleasure boats are prohibited within a quarter mile of pelican nesting areas between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, but sometimes squid boats violate the prohibition.

Other bird species that may be affected include double-crested cormorants and ashy storm-petrels. Of the 10,000 pairs of the petrels found worldwide, 40% are found at the Channel Islands, their only habitat on the West Coast, Sydeman said.

Heightening concern over the affects on breeding, this year is the first time the squid fleet has intensely harvested waters around the five-island chain off Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, according to industry and government officials. Squid fishing is common near Monterey, but cooler waters off the Southern California coast earlier this year attracted more squid, which in turn attracted more fishing boats to the islands, Dupuy said.

After an off year in 1998, squid fishing, the bulk of which occurs between October and June, has been productive this year.

While commercial fishers have hunted squid for more than a century off the California coast, a demand for calamari has transformed the market into one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative fishing industries in the state, said Marijah Vojkovich, senior fisheries biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game.

The quarry, a palm-sized squid known as Loligo opalescens popular on menus and for bait aboard sport-fishing boats, is a staple in the ocean food chain. It sustains everything from bottom-dwelling halibut to dolphins.

*

In the past nine years, the number of squid-fishing boats operating in California has nearly tripled--to 218, plus 49 light boats, making it the fastest-growing fishery in the state, Vojkovich said. Light boats lure spawning squid to the surface, where fishing boats called seiners encircle them with nets.

In 1996, fishers hauled in a record 100,000 tons of squid valued at $33 million in California, tops in terms of value for any fishery that year, Vojkovich said. Warm ocean currents caused by El Nino in the winter of 1997-98 devastated the fishery, but it bounced back this year.

There are no restrictions on the lights the boats can use. No environmental impact reports were required to determine how the boats affect marine resources, Vojkovich said.

But state law requires a squid management plan for the coast by 2001. In May, the state Fish and Game Commission required boat operators beginning next year to keep records of the types of lights they use, crew sizes and time spent at sea.

Fish and Game officials say reports of bird deaths are so recent they have not have had time to respond. The findings come from recent surveys at the islands concluded in June and reported to the department July 10.

In the weeks ahead, officials from the department, the fishing industry, Channel Islands National Park, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service will meet to discuss the problem and possible solutions, said Ed Cassano, manager of Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

Among the issues to be discussed are whether to place observers on squid boats to monitor bird behavior, modify the lights to shine into the water and not the sky, better education for fishermen and more enforcement to keep boats out of restricted areas.

Also, some scientists say state squid-fishing regulations need to be reviewed to determine whether they conflict with the federal Endangered Species Act. In the meantime, Cassano said, he plans to ask boat skippers, who are gearing up for this fall’s squid season, to voluntarily keep away from Santa Barbara and Anacapa islands.

Zeke Grader, executive director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns., the biggest coalition of commercial fishers in the state, said even squid fishermen have complained about too many bright lights on the water.

“This is one [fishery] that’s grown in recent years, and it would not surprise me if there weren’t some problems,” Grader said. “We need to be open and not get into denial, like other industries do. If it looks like the lights are a problem, then as an industry we will have to step forward and see what we can do to assure the birds are protected.”