Caught Between a Rockfish and a Hard Place

Sharon Moores was asked this week to describe the mood along the Central California coast, particularly that of the people who work at one of its oldest sportfishing operations, Virg’s Landing in Morro Bay.

Her answer was predictable and compelling.

“I’d say the mood is mostly one of fear and apprehension,” she said. “People are wondering what they can do, where they can go. Some of them can run oil boats--most of them love the ocean and that’s why they do this, so they’ll make the change. And some are too old to make a change. I really don’t know what we can do at this point.”

Moores, president of Virg’s Landing and daughter of Virg Moores, who founded the Morro Bay facility in 1954, was referring to the uncertainty many landing operators, captains and crew members face in light of rockfish closures announced last week by federal and state agencies.

The emergency closures, which go into effect Monday, affect commercial and recreational fishermen and are designed largely to protect bocaccio, a particularly embattled species of shelf rockfish, according to scientists.

The new restrictions ban fishing for any species of rockfish (commonly lumped together and called rock cod) in waters 120 feet and deeper. They will remain in effect throughout the year, when new regulations will go into effect.

The new federal regulations, which will be adopted by the Pacific Fishery Management Council in September (after which the California Fish and Game Commission will follow suit), could be even more restrictive.

Among many options being considered:

* No fishing for rockfish deeper than 60 feet, with a five-fish bag limit for nearshore rockfish (reduced from 10). Also, there would be a complete closure in all waters in March and April.

* No fishing for rockfish beyond 120 feet and a seven-fish bag limit of nearshore rockfish. Under this option, there will be a total closure in March, April, November and December.

* No fishing for rockfish beyond 120 feet and with a 10-fish bag limit of nearshore rockfish, but a six-month total closure from November through April.

Under all options, the take of bocaccio, cow cod, canary and yellow-eye rockfish would be prohibited.

It should be pointed out that under the closures that go into effect Monday, fishing for other species beyond 120 feet is still allowed. But anyone found to be in possession of rockfish or lingcod (the ban also includes sculpin and ocean whitefish) in those waters, even if they were caught inside of 120 feet, will be in violation.

This means that skippers no longer will have the option of fishing inside for nearshore rockfish, then moving into deeper water and targeting halibut, bass, barracuda, bonito or yellowtail.

Inside of 120 feet, fishermen can catch and keep a total of 10 nearshore species of rockfish (with the exception of bocaccio, cow cod, canary rockfish and yellow-eye rockfish). They also can keep two lingcod.

The emergency closures, while many knew they were coming in some form or another, could have been worse. The PFMC’s science panel had recommended closing waters beyond 60 feet.

But nobody’s celebrating.

At Virg’s Landing, for example, deep-water rockfish is their bread and butter. As for alternatives, they’re still targeting salmon, with some success, and hoping for the weather to calm down so they can start sending boats out for albacore. But albacore seasons sometimes fail to materialize.

“And the problem with alternatives like that is that it’s nothing you can depend on year-round,” said John Rowley, 58, a captain who has been at the landing since 1970. “The bigger problem is, young people don’t want to go into this business anymore because they see the handwriting on the wall.”

Rowley’s mother, Rita Gartrell, used to run boats out of the landing and his wife, Sharon Rowley, still does.

“Me and my wife both say that we’re sure glad that we’re at the age that we can almost be done with this,” Rowley said. “We’re going to stick it out as long as we can because our kids are raised and we don’t have many bills anymore. It’s just me and my wife now, but we wouldn’t be able to do this if we were just starting out.”

Rowley, like most captains, is particularly frustrated by the recent turn of events because he does not agree with the scientists who have painted--using mostly the results of studies conducted north of Point Conception--such a broad picture of gloom as to the state of the rockfish fishery.

“The problem is that if they look where there isn’t any fish they’re not going to find any,” Rowley said. “If they ask me to take them where the [bocaccio] are, I’ll take them right to them. I can catch them easier and faster now than in the past.”

Asked if the landing will survive, Moores said she believes so. Aside from fishing trips, the landing--which has six sportfishing vessels and a bait boat--conducts whale-watching excursions to coincide with the annual gray whale migration, from December through May.

It also is involved with a new program called Sea Life Studies, which takes school-age children on natural history and estuary tours.

“That’s one direction we can go, but it’s going to take time to develop,” Moores said. “We all say the landing will survive because it has survived for so long, while others up here haven’t. We’ll just see.”

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Asked how the closures are being viewed in Northern California, Capt. Roger Thomas of the Salty Lady out of Sausalito said he’d first rather talk about something positive, such as a salmon bite he called “nothing short of unbelievable.”

But with customers aboard the Salty Lady busy reeling in 20- to 40-pound salmon during a season that closes Nov. 10, Thomas, who is also president of the Golden Gate Fishermen’s Assn., said the closures are the main subject on the waterfront.

The fleets within the bay should fair reasonably well, Thomas said, with other species such as halibut, striped bass and sturgeon to keep them busy.

But the smaller fleets from Monterey to Fort Bragg, he added, “are in deep trouble.”

Most of those fleets rely heavily on deep-water rockfish and make regular runs to places like Cordell Bank, a sprawling offshore seamount that now will be off limits.

One such landing is Bodega Bay Sportfishing, which already has formulated alternative trips, one of them being a combination shallow-water salmon-rockfish-lingcod trip.

“We’re not going out of business, not for a couple of more weeks, anyway,” manager Sophia Powers joked. “Seriously, we’re just going to continue to do the best we can.”

*

In Southern California, the pinch will be particularly painful in the Oxnard-Santa Barbara areas, but landing operators all the way to San Diego will feel it.

“Hell, for seven months out of the year that’s all we target,” said Don Ashley, owner of Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach. “Our crews are already cutting their throats because they don’t know what else to do. It’s ugly and that’s the bottom line.”

Rick Oefinger, owner of Marina del Rey Sportfishing, said the closure will affect only one of his vessels, the Betty O, the fleet’s matriarch, which has been targeting deep-water rockfish almost exclusively since 1968.

“That has been his run, and now it’s dead,” Oefinger said of the boat’s owner, Mike Reinsch. Oefinger added that the rest of his fleet does not need any more competition for shallow-water species, and that he and Reinsch were hopeful of putting the boat to good use, perhaps by getting it more involved with youth fishing programs.

“The worst part is that Mike is seeing just piles of rockfish out there, more than at any time in the past 15-18 years,” Oefinger said. “I’m all for restrictive measures when they’re needed, but to impose a zero-take on us like this ... is unwarranted and damaging.”