Fishing industry in Morro Bay is not operating like before due to soaring fuel prices, depleting fish stocks and strict regulations. It is an era of sustainability and most of the fishermen are struggling to survive. They are operating out of Morro Bay and are bringing in less than one-tenth of the fish they did about a decade and a half ago.
It is said that in 1990 more than 9.6 million pounds of fish were landed. The state Department of Fish and Game informed that in 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, the catch had fallen to just over 868,000 pounds, a plunge of nearly 91 percent. According to the department Morro Bay fishermen caught about $4.8 million worth of fish in 1990. Adjusted to 2006 dollars, that represents about $7.4 million. While in 2006, Morro Bay landed $2.9 million worth of fish — just over 39 percent of the adjusted 1990 amount.
Rod Fujita, a fisheries scientist with the group Environmental Defense, told that California’s fishing industry is faced with a perfect storm of trouble including declining revenues and limited access to fish stocks. State and federal fisheries managers must limit fishing to levels that they believe do not endanger depleted stocks, even if that hurts fishing communities such as Morro Bay. Fujita also said that unfortunately, stock assessments in general are an evolving science, and the Morro Bay area especially is data-poor, so neither party has hard evidence backing them up.
Morro Bay fisherman Ed Ewing said that trawling creates several environmental problems because it can damage the ocean floor and scoop up all types of fish. The Pacific Fisheries Management Council has ruled six groundfish species to be depleted and instituted a series of fishing restrictions and closures to protect them. Last year, the state Department of Fish and Game established a series of marine reserves along the Central Coast in which 44 square miles of the near-shore coastline was either placed off-limits to fishing or severely restricted.
