Fisheries managers have voted to implement a quota system on important bottom-dwelling species to save depleted stocks. After years of lax rules and wasteful practices that led to an economic disaster, fishery managers have decided to adopt a new approach to some of the West Coast’s largest fisheries: give fishermen exclusive rights to a portion of the overall catch.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council agreed unanimously to make a historic shift in strategy that encourages cooperation, rather than competition, among fishermen who drag nets to catch cod, whiting, rockfish, flounder and sole. Johanna Thomas, Pacific Ocean policy director of the Environmental Defense Fund, said that this new approach will help eliminating the rules that forced fishermen to shovel tons of dead fish overboard because they didn’t have permits to sell particular species inadvertently caught in their nets. It is cleared that the quota system will not be implemented until 2011 and must first be approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service, the government agency that regulates fisheries.
Individual fish quotas will encourage fishermen to be better stewards of the resources. Experts believe that the new management plan also will allow the Nature Conservancy, which has bought a number of these fishing permits in Morro Bay and Half Moon Bay, to switch to a different type of fishing gear that is less destructive than dragging nets across the rocky seafloor.
It also adopts a different approach to cut down on the wasteful problem of “bycatch,” the accidental netting of species that are so overfished they are off limits to commercial fishermen. Jim Seger, an economist with the Pacific fishery council, said that at present fishermen are forced to discard the overfished species. Accoridng to him under the new program, federal observers would tally all fish and count the overfished species against quotas and limits.
