Longtime commercial fisherman Peter Halmay believes his way of life is hanging in the balance.
NELVIN C. CEPEDA / Union-Tribune
Commercial fisherman Peter Halmay (right, in wheelhouse) and Kenny Jeavons arrived back in San Diego Bay after a day of harvesting sea urchins. Halmay will be at tomorrow's state-run meeting on marine protected areas.
|
The San Diego-based sea urchin diver is one of a few hundred small-craft fishermen who pursue their catch close to the county's shoreline.
They could lose access to their favorite fishing grounds as part of an effort to redraw California's mishmash of marine protected areas, which ban or restrict seafood harvesting to maintain biodiversity.
“Small-scale fisheries are the most vulnerable to being hurt by a misplaced marine reserve,” Halmay said.
He plans to attend a state panel's meeting tomorrow in San Diego to discuss the 43 marine protected areas off Southern California, including 10 along San Diego County.
The massive remapping project is generating rancor among commercial and sportfishing groups, while marine scientists and conservationists are pushing for expansion of the current patchwork of sites.
|
Public meeting
When: 9:30 a.m. tomorrow
Where: Four Points by Sheraton hotel, 8110 Aero Drive, San Diego
What: Hearing hosted by the Marine Life Protection Act Blue Ribbon Task Force to discuss marine protected areas, where fishing and other seafood harvesting are banned or limited.
|
|
California started creating marine protected areas in 1950. The Marine Life Protection Act of 1999 authorized the state Fish and Game Commission to reorganize those territories with more consistent standards. The agency would use the latest findings in marine science and consider how the fishing industry would be affected.
Fish and Game officials are working with the Marine Life Protection Act Blue Ribbon Task Force, the advisory group that will host tomorrow's meeting.
The officials have worked on marine protected areas in two regions of the state – the South Central Coast and the North Central Coast – and generally expanded them. Those regions encompass more than 450 miles of coastline between Pigeon Point near Half Moon Bay and Point Conception in Santa Barbara County.
Establishing new reserves in Southern California, which stretches from Point Conception to the U.S.-Mexico border, will be a formidable task because local fishing groups wield a lot of political power, said Russell Moll, director of the California Sea Grant program at the University of California San Diego.
So far, the remapping effort appears balanced, Moll said, driven by “50 percent science, 50 percent politics.”
In the next year, the blue ribbon task force will review reports about marine habitats and fishing sites, and negotiate with interest groups. It will forward its recommendations to the state Fish and Game Commission, which has the final say on the reserves' boundaries.
“What's unique about this is that it's a statewide network, and it's being done along a highly populated coastline,” said Santa Cruz resident Kaitilin Gaffney, who works for the Ocean Conservancy.
The Marine Life Protection Act “is not a fisheries management piece of legislation,” Gaffney said. “It's an ecosystem protection law.”
The overall objective is to preserve distinctive and highly productive segments of undersea habitat, such as the rocky reefs and kelp beds off Point Loma and La Jolla. Many of the same areas are treasured by sport anglers and commercial fishermen.
“Every mile of coastline in Southern California is somebody's favorite fishing ground,” said Bob Fletcher of San Diego, president of the Sportfishing Association of California. He represents 135 commercial boat operators who take people on sportfishing trips.
“The key area for us to worry about are the near-shore areas used by half-day and one-day (charter) boats, which can go only 10 to 15 miles from their ports,” Fletcher said.
“We need to position the marine protected areas so they won't devastate sport-boat operations up and down the coast.”
The region being studied for potential reserves off Southern California encompasses 2,354 square miles of water bordering 557 miles of undulating coastline.
Within this territory, commercial fishermen have harvested an annual average of 253 million pounds of seafood between 1998 and last year. That yearly catch is valued at $67.6 million, Fish and Game officials said.
Input from two “stakeholder” committees consisting of sport anglers, commercial fishermen, scuba divers and conservationists will be crucial to the blue ribbon task force's review process, said Melissa Miller-Henson, manager of the project.
In addition, a team of scientists will offer guidance to the panel.
Recently published studies of “no take” marine reserves created in 2003 off the Channel Islands show that those sites have yielded greater numbers of fish, lobster and other marine life.
“We are finding more fish and they tend to be bigger inside the reserves than outside the reserves,” said Jenn Caselle, a research professor at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Terry Rodgers: (619) 542-4566; terry.rodgers@uniontrib.com
