Give Fish a Chance

Today’s meeting of the California Fish and Game Commission could lead to a modest plan to help reverse decades of decline in the state’s fisheries. The alternative is another useless shouting match between conservationists and anglers and more decline.

Before the panel is a recommendation to put a small part of the waters surrounding the Channel Islands off-limits to fishing. This is a last-ditch effort to protect rapidly dwindling populations of rockfish, goby and other sport and commercial fish around portions of Anacapa, San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz islands. The plan is producing howls from commercial fishermen who believe their livelihood is at stake, as well as from sport anglers.

What’s happened to fish populations around the Channel Islands, offshore from Santa Barbara, has happened up and down California’s 1,100-mile coastline. Abalone once so abundant it was standard restaurant fare has nearly vanished from local waters; law now prohibits taking the scarce creatures from waters between San Francisco and the Mexican border. Some species of rockfish are so rare they are being considered for federal endangered species protection. Commercial fish hauls have plummeted from about 1.2 billion pounds in the 1970s to about 400 million pounds last year. The decline has created a vicious cycle--as fishermen take smaller and younger fish, the remaining stock has more difficulty reproducing, intensifying the economic pressure on the fishing industry.

The necklace of protected areas that now lies along the California coastline is intended to prevent species from being completely fished out. Studies of reserves around the world, such as at Point Lobos near Monterey, have found they contain a far richer diversity of fish, larger fish and more abundant plant life than nearby fished areas.

Less than 0.2% of California’s ocean waters are off-limits to fishing. Extending the ban to slivers around the Channel Islands would at least begin reversing the devastation that overfishing there has wrought.