Two Most Important Southern California Recreational Fisheries Have Collapsed

The real link is http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=1199

I have no idea why anyone uses tree hugger as a link - their credibility is not much.

Glad I did my fishing back in the area in the late 60's - beat the rush.

There are different contributors to each blog we post from. Some are better than others, but that doesn't mean the site is rubbish. Always look for the source at the end of each article. The tree hugger story posted here used Yale Environment 360. Here is the link: http://e360.yale.edu/digest/catch_rates_masked_collapse_of_two_critical_us_fisheries_study_says/3140/

Oh! Yale Environment 360 uses Tree Hugger? What a class!

The original link from Scripps means more - unless one knows the professor at Yale that reference means zero.

I didn't say Yale used Tree Hugger, I said Tree Hugger used Yale as a source. Oh, and yales source is here: http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/f2011-090 . It's easy to badmouth different blogs online and sometimes they deserve it. But its difficult to write 8-20 stories a day without some garbage fluttering through.

No doubt!

There seems to be a group of people here that enjoys ripping apart every thread/blog that comes up.

I happily pay for my fishing license every year. The money is used for everything "fish". It includes monitoring fisheries, stocking programs, etc., and is kept separate from the grubby hands of general government. As long as I know where the money is going, I would happily pay more.

If my job was to write 8-20 stories a day, it would all be garbage. Keep up the good work, and don't take the negative comments personally.

Hint: Ever notice that the garbage tends to generate the most hits and comments?

I care about fish populations and over fishing. I do have a problem with this article.

Quote from the Scripps study:

The authors acknowledge that both bass species began declining in the early 1980s, a drop other studies have directly linked with a climatic shift in regional water temperatures. But they say fishing impacts exacerbated the declines.

Which is it? I'm no oceanographer, but as an angler, I know that fish are very sensitive to water temperature. If they don't like it where they are, they will move.

I also know that variations in water temperature do happen, it's not necessarily do to global warming or climate change, which is what they are alluding to. The green crowd also hates fishing, hunting, etc., hence the attack on recreational anglers.

No where is it mentioned, that the fish may be simply migrating to areas that are more comfortable, where there's more food, etc.

Many people would take this article at face value. My suggestion would be to google "fish migrations". They tend to be very mobile.

Now if they know for a fact that the fish haven't migrated to another area, that would be different. I think if they knew that though, they would have mentioned it.

"... they will move". Possibly, it depends if there's somewhere to go.

Fish (and all other plants and animals) occupy a niche in the environment, if their numbers change something else moves in or evolves to fit.

This has been seen in fisheries around the world, the population drops (for whatever reason) the fishermen wait for the numbers to rebound and something else (often inedible) booms instead.

As for it being caused by "climate change", small differences in yearly average temperature can have long term effects that include how much oxygen comes in from other areas, how the currents flow, what fish food grows and what other competitors are advantaged. These effects may be greatly different from short term temperature variations.

Since the sun will eventually burn out anyway, aren't we all doomed?

Please put survival in context.

Have a heart, kramarat - fisheries science is not that easy Population estimates can only be made by taking a 'sample' - they have no way of counting or knowing where fish are with 100% certainty. If the fish are gone, they have to consider all possibilities, and they can't reach definite conclusions unless they have ruled out all those possibilities.

Bass are migratory fish (I just read that) so I assume the migratory patterns for that fish stock have been studied enough to be certain that the population really declined and did not just move elsewhere. For one thing, fishing effort is so busy everywhere, if this bass population had just moved, somebody would have found them by now!

There may be reluctance to acknowledge that overfishing is the main cause of decline in fish populations worldwide - why, well because that would mean that the people entrusted with fisheries management blew it.

But it's also true that changes in water temperature can have impacts much greater than just causing fish to go elsewhere. Warmer waters could bring in predators that feed on their eggs or small fry. Or predispose the young to some epidemic of disease. It's so complicated, it would be difficult to predict, and even harder to evaluate the contribution of the multitude of causes of decline associated with a simple change in temp!

Those issues are real, doesn't matter what reason for the temperature change.

I guess you're right. I catch and release 95% of the time.

The thing that gets me, is that they claim that people are still catching lots of fish, and fish populations are down due to climate change and human recreational fishing. I wish they would go into more detail on how they established this supposed fact.

Typically the people that do the actual fishery work do an excellent job. I used to catch a lot of pacific salmon in northern CA, (which didn't get released). Every year they will adjust the season based on estimated fish counts. I don't have a problem with that. They can do the same in southern CA with the bass if necessary.

I think the fishery people are doing their best, and they tend to be a decent lot afaik.

The scandal up here, that the cod fishery our economy depended on was completely ruined by mismanagement, still burns more than 25 years since the moratorium on commercial fishing. The overfishing and bottom trawling simply crushed this great renewable resource, and we are still waiting for the 'rebound' - I don't expect to see again.

The bottom trawling needs to be outlawed everywhere. Isn't that when they have the nets weighted with chains and drag the bottom destroying and killing everything in their path?

There I go sounding like a tree hugger. There needs to be a balance. Fishermen should be able to make a decent living without wiping out everything. If it was up to me they'd all be using lines with multiple hooks..........no nets......at least no dragging the bottom.

I'm not a "greenie", but there's plenty of destructive and polluting practices that pi$$ me off. I don't like the trotlines they use down here for catfishing either. People will set them out and forget about them, leading to dead, rotten catfish hanging. It should be a jailable offense.

The draggers are a technology that destroys the breeding habitat and the resources in that habitat for any young fish that still manage to be born. Then they wonder why the stocks collapse.

Fish management has always had that weird thing about it, they don't follow the same common sense rules that are in place for animals, like not hunting during breeding season... duh! How hard is it to figure that out. The big draggers could get the most by trawling the spawning grounds in the spawning season. End of story, end of fish.

Then the fanatics start screaming about the seal hunt, and shut down the fur market, causing the seal population to boom. Seals like the guts - they take a big bite out of the stomach of a salmon or cod or sea trout and leave the rest, go get another one. Great! Talk about your ironies, that people supposedly for the 'environment' are still campaigning to 'save' a big sea rat that is in no danger of extinction that's for sure, at the expense of these damaged fish populations.

Balance, I'm with you.

What the fanatics don't realize, is that a certain degree of killing off is often necessary to protect certain species.

The deer population down here has exploded, resulting in lots of crashes with cars, also not enough food for all of them resulting in disease and a generally unhealthy population in many places. Like you said, it's complicated. There's a lot more to it than just saving Bambi.

The doom and gloom scenario on the bass won't happen. CA fish and game will go down there and make adjustments to the fishing season allowing the population to rebound and allow fishing to still take place. They're pretty good at it out there................tough on enforcement too. You don't want to get caught with a fish or animal that's not in season.

"But it's also true that changes in water temperature can have impacts much greater than just causing fish to go elsewhere. Warmer waters could bring in predators that feed on their eggs or small fry. Or predispose the young to some epidemic of disease. It's so complicated,"

No, it's not complicated:

We have a number of climatic cycles (some short - a few years and others long - 99 years) which affect the currents and sea temperatures in the oceans. Now temperature (changes) acts as a trigger to fish. So, if the temperature goes up by a degree or so, Papa Fish might say to Momma Fish: "I feel so good - lets party!!! However, if this temperature trigger came at the wrong time and the fish are in the wrong place and/or the currents are wrong, then the fertilized fish eggs might not develop properly or get swept away. If the temperature trigger comes later, when all other conditions are right for success, Pappa Fish and Momma Fish might just be too partied out to have another go at spawning. On the other hand, if things stay cold and no temperature trigger occurs, Momma Fish's headache isn't going to go away... and there ain't going to be a party. This leads to year-to-year fluctuations in available fish biomass (Fishing Sexology 101)

The other very important thing to remember is that any grown fish swimming in the sea is the exception NOT the rule - of the billions and billions of fish eggs released into the sea only a very small percentage actually make it into fish...... In fact, it is said that the average life of a fish is less than a week. So, the fish that we are talking about (i.e. the ones available to be be caught) are really super-survivors.

"There may be reluctance to acknowledge that overfishing is the main cause of decline in fish populations worldwide - why, well because that would mean that the people entrusted with fisheries management blew it."

Overfishing ....there are many other reasons why stocks may appear to be low; man-made pollution (plastics, chemicals, fertilizers, raw sewage and air-borne baddies like mercury), the mass movement of people to the coasts, destroying of coastal and seabed habitat, natural seasonal variations, other predators (seals and whales eat about 6 times more fish than what us humans catch), economic and market factors.

I'm aware that water temperature is an important trigger for some pelagic species to spawn - caplin in our ecosystem is a well known example, which will not spawn on the beaches if the water is too warm or too cold. Groundfish like cod on the Grand Banks actually spawn in February - the coldest time of year.

The yearly fluctuations in temperature conditions are certainly not an adequate explanation of the decline in population of either caplin or cod, nor would it account for any fish population decline that continues over decades and decimates the stocks. Both cod and caplin stocks were relatively stable over hundreds of years, to the annual variation in climate and timing of warm or cold water temperatures in the season. Sure there were good years and bad years. We're not noted for climate consistency here - it has always varied a lot, including the time period when the stocks remained very healthy. The introduction of draggers marked the decline of the cod stocks and their eventual commercial extinction, first from Funk Island Banks in the 70's, and then from the Grand Banks. This is the biggest part of the "predator imbalance" IMHO. After the fishing moratorium, seal hunt protestors made sure that another imbalance took its place, and kept the stocks from recovering.

As for the longer cycle of climate, or climate change involving a steady increase in temperatures, I don't personally believe that fish are incapable of adapting to such incremental changes in temperature alone. The fact that temperature affects ecosystem dynamics, including the influx of predators and/or invasive species from other habitats, and prevalence or success of disease organisms, is undeniable. Add pollution and habitat alteration or destruction, for stocks which have been decimated by over-predation, this is obviously a complex, multi-causal situation which makes it difficult to assess which factor plays the greater part in hindering the recovery of a fish population.

I agree. I also agree with Maurice to a point.

Figuring out how fish behave under a given set of circumstances shouldn't be complicated. If humans weren't here, I'm sure that the entire planetary ecosystem would be in balance............including fish.

As usual, once humans become part of the mix, everything becomes complicated.

The story of your cod fishing is just a shame.

It is an extremely complex scenario and we really know so little about our oceans and marine systems.

The techniques used to manage marine resources based on the "best available science" often leave much to be desired. Take, for instance, the minimum size rule. The apparent logic behind this is ensure that juveniles are allowed to grow into mature adults and thus perpetuate the species. However the "keepers" are the fish that are have the best chance to survive and spawn. What would happen to the human race if everyone over, say 20 years old (most reproductive years) was allowed to be caught and everyone under that age let go?? This management leads to other problems i.e. high level of (dead) discards and possible genetic changes to the fish stock.

Re the longer period climate cycles, papers by the likes of Klyashtorin and Lyubushin make for interesting discussion.

We're of the same mind about that minimum size rule!

In the case of groundfish like flounders, which live to be up to 30 years old, the number of eggs produced by the female was found to increase exponentially with the size/age of the fish. The practice of harvesting all fish over a certain size and leaving only younger and small fish has a huge negative impact on reproductive capacity because of this. We'd have been better off with a maximum size rule.

But I think we differ with respect to dragging or bottom trawling! Some fishing grounds are trawled day after day, year after year and continue to produce sustained yields. The trawl may even enhance the bottom productivity of soft grounds by stirring up the anoxic sediment and oxygenizing the top mud layer.

When it comes to trawling on corals and other eco-sensitive bottoms, trawls can certainly do damage, but so can the sharp bits and jagged rocks damage and destroy the trawl. The problem occurs when the captain, weighing up the risks, decides the potential value of the catch is greater than the cost of repair.

The trend these days is to "float" the trawl doors off the sea bottom and have the net maintain only light contact with the bottom - something I have been advocating for years. However, with current trawl control technology it is not that easy to achieve.

You say " Some fishing grounds are trawled day after day, year after year and continue to produce sustained yields..."

This is news to me, as I know of no similar case. Obviously you're in South Africa, so the climate is as different as can be. No seasons there. What is the fish stock and the fishing grounds that responds so well to trawling?

Up here the trawls get broken up too, dragging for the last fish, and indeed, they've sometimes been snipped right off as well, by the fisheries patrol.

It may not get quite as cold as in your part of the world but, trust me - we have seasons here

I don't have the exact figures to hand but, if memory serves me correctly, at least half the world's catch is caught in less than 10% of the world's oceans. Most of this 10% is continental shelf. Some countries have narrow continental shelves and in many cases most of the shelf is not suitable for bottom trawling. This results is localised areas that are heavily fished. This happens all over the world, not just here.

The continental shelves and banks are critical habitat for all kinds of groundfish, and it's easy to understand, there's a big difference between those banks and the ocean deeps.

You can feel the difference even from your ship, when you sail off the end of the Grand Banks and are over the cold deep ocean. The continental shelf is the same, sheltered from the deep currents, close enough to capture some warmth from the sun and nutrients from the land, making it rich and ideal for the fishes.

I've heard it said that the last glacier 10,000 years ago, scraped off all the topsoil from Newfoundland and dumped it on the grand banks! Maybe a myth, but it had to go somewhere I reckon..