By Sara Hall
Maintaining sustainable fisheries is in the best interest of all stakeholders—including commercial fishermen, environmentalists and fishery managers. But how that’s best done is up for debate.
Over the years, various agencies and organizations have been taking measures to ensure that natural resources aren’t depleted and are maintained at a certain level, with some methods finding more success than others.
On June 3, President Biden’s administration announced its “National Strategy for a Sustainable Ocean Economy,” which focuses on opportunities for direct federal action, guiding U.S. ocean policies to “conserve healthy ecosystems, support resilient communities and advance sustainable economic development.”
“Ocean policies and management should strive to ensure that interconnected natural ecosystems and the resources, benefits and value they provide to humanity are maintained and enhanced over time,” the strategy document states.
An objective of the plan is to advance sustainable seafood production and combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. According to the report, written by the Ocean Policy Committee, the greatest threats to ocean health and a significant cause of overfishing problems are IUU fishing, unsustainable fishing practices and wildlife trafficking.
The strategy outlined several key opportunities for action, including preventing overfishing in federally-managed fisheries, working to reduce bycatch and developing international partnerships to minimize overfishing of stocks that migrate across boundaries and between exclusive economic zones.
A goal previously noted and outlined in the strategy is to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. At the same time, there’s a target to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030, while conserving biodiversity.
However, these goals may undermine some practices currently in place that already benefit long-term sustainability.
Challenges for Fishermen
For fishermen working between Santa Barbara, Ventura and the Channel Islands, the Southern California Bight—a 430-mile stretch of curved coastline that runs along the U.S. and Mexico coast—supports a diverse ecosystem.
“It amplifies our ability to catch fish and manage it sustainably because we’re perched on the edge of a really productive marine environment,” Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara President Chris Voss said.
“The resources in our region are well managed by both state and the federal government,” he said, “and we’ve seen a really aggressive consolidation of the industry over time.”
“In my fishing career, driven by aggressive sustainable fishing management regulations, as well as a lot of area loss due to MPA (Marine Protected Area) implementation and now we’re posed with a lot of new initiatives in the marine environment that are also going to restrict the area that we’ve historically been able to harvest sustainably,” he stated.
Voss emphasized the challenges fishermen face as they continually lose area due to MPAs, regulations for conservation purposes, or areas being dedicated for other uses. Other uses threatening to take up precious fishing space on the water include offshore wind, wave energy, and aquaculture.
There’s a lot going on right now, agreed Assistant Director Ava Schulenberg, of Voss’ group, and this is on top of other hurdles the industry faces.
“It’s like death by 1,000 cuts at this point,” she said.
They obviously have a desire to keep their port community healthy and their neighboring towns supplied with locally caught seafood, Voss added.
“To do that, we must manage our fisheries sustainably and we support the state in those efforts,” he said. “What we’re threatened by, currently, are new initiatives to close additional area or repurpose existing areas for other uses.”
Taking those areas away can upend, depending on the species, regulatory mechanisms that already work in existing, sustainable fisheries, he noted.
Connected Ecosystem
When considering sustainability of fisheries, it helps to think of the big picture, a connected ecosystem, and manage it in a broader, more comprehensive way, Voss suggested.
The fish are and should be the primary concern, he said, as his organization doesn’t want to over-exploit a population and drive it into the ground or damage the population’s ability to rebound. But, beyond that, fisheries need to be managed in a way that includes the understanding that the industry also needs to support an economic model.
“Sustainability requires a mechanism to catch the fish, a biological productivity that can withstand a certain measure of take, and a place to sell the fish and somebody to eat the fish. All of that is essential and without any one piece of that you don’t have a sustainable, economic model or a sustainable fishery,” he said.
It’s not just about biological sustainability, it’s also the economic sustainability of the fishery itself, Voss emphasized. If a currently managed area shrinks dramatically, it puts all of that at risk. It’s a touchy subject, but restricted access can work, he said.
“If you don’t want to overexploit a limited number of fish in the marine environment, you have to restrict the amount of fishermen that take fish out of that or aggressively use seasons and then size limits, but, that said, if you’re still allowing open access, you could crush the economic viability of a fishery by allowing unlimited participants,” Voss explained.
In order to assure the sustainability of both the economic model and the biological abundance, a regulatory framework needs to be implemented that controls certain aspects of how a fishery is managed, one of which is effort—type and amount of gear, how much can be deployed, number of participants, etc.—he explained.
As an example of supported regulatory changes that have ultimately been beneficial for sustainability, Voss pointed to the limited access and trap limit on the lobster fishery. He wrote to the Department of Fish and Wildlife supporting the measures about 30 years ago and it took about two decades after that for them to be implemented, he noted.
“That is a success story for sustainable fisheries management with respect to the lobster fishery,” Voss said. “It did make winners and losers, which restricted access always does, but that happened in the state of California and it has led to a robust and viable and sustainable commercial lobster fishery.”
Voss is also a proponent of inexpensive data streams that can provide valuable information over time, which will advise officials on the status of fish populations and offer guidance in decision-making regarding regulations and policies.
Stock Assessments
NOAA Fisheries describes stock assessments as “the scientific foundation of successful and sustainable fishery harvest management.” They measure the impact of fishing on fish and shellfish stocks, as well as projecting harvest levels that maximize the number of fish that can be caught every year. Officials also prevent overfishing, protect the marine ecosystem and, where necessary, rebuild depleted stocks.
On the West Coast, the Southwest and Northwest fisheries science centers conduct stock assessments of nearly all commercially fished species in the region, said NOAA Fisheries West Coast Regional Office Public Affairs Officer Nick Rahaim.
This research informs management decisions by the Pacific Fishery Management Council to ensure fish are harvested at sustainable rates. NOAA Fisheries is then responsible for implementing council decisions and oversees the management of federal fisheries, he explained.
“At the same time, sustainable fisheries are more than catch rates,” Rahaim said. “Overall ecosystem health is considered by limiting bycatch, protecting habitat and mitigating harmful fisheries interactions with marine mammals, seabirds and sea turtles, among other measures. Specifics are dependent on species, gear-type and geography.”
He pointed to the recovery of the Pacific bluefin tuna as an example of a fisheries management success. In June, NOAA Fisheries reported the largest recorded biomass since stock assessments began. The species exceeded international targets a decade ahead of schedule, officials said.
After the stock hit historic lows in 2016, and following management changes to address overfishing, the recent stock assessment shows that in 2022 the number of spawning bluefin reached 23.2% of the potential unfished spawning stock.
It’s the first time the population has surpassed the associated maximum sustainable yield level for the species. Officials believe it’s an indication of potentially increased harvests in future years as their numbers continue to grow.
“There is a point where you can find a balance between abundant harvest while also allowing the stock to grow in perpetuity, and we’ve now exceeded that point,” said NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region Fishery Policy Analyst Celia Barroso.
Management of this highly migratory species requires international cooperation and coordination with NOAA Fisheries. The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission kicked off the effort to rebuild the stock in 2011 when it agreed to reduce their catch of both juvenile and larger bluefin. More fish were then able to reach maturity and reproduce.
To reduce catch in another management area, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission implemented a number of conservation measures.
Rockfish Revival
But West Coast Fisheries’ “comeback of the century” is that of the rockfish, which re-entered the market in 2019. According to NOAA Fisheries, the rapidly replenished stocks revived opportunities for fishermen and seafood providers.
“From Washington to California, a fishing fleet that sacrificed heavily while groundfish stocks rebuilt are now beginning to harvest the results,” officials noted at the time.
After a rush to grow the West Coast groundfish fishery, they were overfished and endangered by the late 1990s.
Early this year, changes to the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan went into effect and marked a milestone in the ongoing efforts to conserve and sustainably manage West Coast groundfish populations.
The amendment was aimed at providing fishing access to healthy groundfish stocks for non-trawl groundfish fisheries and the directed commercial halibut fishery, while still meeting conservation objectives in the management plan.
“This milestone is a testament to the success of long-term conservation efforts, and reflects a shared commitment to responsibly steward our marine resources,” NOAA Fisheries West Coast Regional Administrator Jen Quan said in a statement. “It marks a significant step toward a sustainable future for West Coast groundfish fisheries and the communities that rely on them.”
After more than two decades of work, the action opened up commercial fishing areas that had been closed since the early 2000s, according to NOAA Fisheries.
“Rockfish young typically have a fairly broad dispersal,” said John Field, a Supervisory Research Fish Biologist at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
“Rockfish that were protected in conservation areas contributed substantially to the increase in recruitment, abundance and productivity outside of those closed areas,” he said. “In addition, a lot of these trends in recruitment are environmentally driven, and shifts in ocean circulation and source waters are thought to be key drivers of recent increased productivity for many rockfish stocks.”
Conservation Challenges
Officials note, however, that there are still conservation challenges and certain areas will remain closed to protect more vulnerable species and critical habitats like rocky reefs, corals and sponges.
Sablefish, a highly mobile and valuable species, requires international multi-agency cooperation. Officials reported earlier this year that understanding the spatial structure of the population is crucial for effective management of a sustainable fishery.
Scientists in Alaska, British Columbia and the U.S. West Coast have collaborated to develop a management strategy evaluation for northeast Pacific sablefish, officials announced June 6. Working off 60 years of fishery survey data, the team utilized modeling simulations to project possible harvest outcomes of seven different spatial management strategies through 2040.
Sablefish commercial fisheries are currently managed separately in the three regions, each of which uses a different framework for assessment and management. However, a recent discovery determined that the species traverse about 2,000 miles from Southern California to southeast Alaska within a single genetic population.
Stock assessments found similar trends in each region’s sablefish population, including a large-scale decline from 2010 to 2018, followed by an increase in production in recent years. Researchers and fishermen in each region noted that the decline seemed to be matched in magnitude and timing across the entire northeast Pacific, according to study lead Maia Kapur of the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center.
“We undertook this research to answer the question: Could spatial management approaches improve sustainability of transboundary northeast Pacific sablefish?” Kapur said.
The study found that the objectives of fishermen and other stakeholders—including maintaining minimum catch level, maximizing long-term profitability and minimizing the risk of the stock being overfished—could be satisfied with spatial models of intermediate structural complexity. This would also limit negative outcomes for the sablefish fishery.
The evaluation included models similar to the current management approach.
“The good news is, we found no serious red flags under the current management paradigm. Even if we continue under a ‘business as usual’ scenario, we did not see more than a 10% risk of the population falling below target biomass levels in any region,” Kapur remarked.
Although the strategy was not preferred by any of the three regions, the study also found that a plan in which all sablefish were treated as separate, unconnected stocks did not result in catastrophic outcomes in any performance metric.
Projects utilizing the tools and incorporating the results are underway.
NOAA Fisheries also announced in October 2023 that Snohomish coho salmon are the 50th fish stock rebuilt under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
In 2018, the species was declared overfished and has now been restored to a sustainable level due to responsible fishery management and habitat restoration, officials noted. Under a plan for reviving Snohomish coho salmon, catch limits were adjusted based on how many fish were expected to return each year, with settings lowered if the numbers were expected to be down.
Rebuilding plans designed to grow the stock back to a sustainable size are required under the Magnuson-Stevens Act for overfished populations.
“Rebuilding measures usually include reducing catch levels or closing off areas to fishing, sometimes for several years. These measures require sacrifices from fishermen,” NOAA Fisheries explained. “While the majority of stocks are rebuilt in 10 years or less, some stocks take longer to rebuild.”
Sara Hall has 15 years of experience at several regional and national magazines, online news outlets, and daily and weekly newspapers, where coverage has included reporting on local harbor activities, marine-based news, and regional and state coastal agencies. Her work has included photography, writing, design and layout.