The Asian preference for live fish has sparked the explosive growth of California's newest and fastest-growing commercial fishery. In 1989 there were only 76 participants; today over 1,000 are licensed. Going out in small boats, they are catching a wide variety of fish for live delivery to Asian restaurants and markets.

The live-fish fishery is one major reason, though by no means the only reason, why marine life has thinned out in California’s nearshore ecosystem. The sport-fishing fleet and, to a lesser degree, the regular commercial fleet compete for many of the same fish stocks. The cumulative impact of such fishing pressure can disrupt the biological links that sustain this remarkable ecosystem.

Live fish can fetch triple the price paid for fresh-caught dead fish, and a small aluminum skiff and a rod and reel will put you in business. Some intrepid souls go forth in kayaks and even on surfboards. Surfboards and other small vessels allow fishermen to exploit shallow reefs beyond the safe reach of larger vessels, but could capsize in heavy surf. Some live-fish fishermen have drowned off the rugged central coast. Onshore, you only need an aerated aquatic tank to keep the fish alive. Dealers move up and down the coast in vans to rendezvous with fishermen and transport the catch to the big markets in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. Over 50 near-shore fish species, including California halibut, cabezon, leopard shark, and several rockfish species, are being caught to meet market demands. In 1998 this booming fishery landed a record 670 tons.

Before the live-fish fishery came onto the scene, sport and commercial fishermen, joined by divers with spearguns, were already testing the limits of the productive nearshore ecosystem. Fishing pressures on one prominent resident, the large black sea bass, escalated to 250,000 tons a year and then tailed off. By 1980, its populations had been depleted so severely that California banned further takes. The ban remains in effect, since rebuilding stocks of slow-maturing resident fish like black sea bass or rockfish can take 30 years or more. The advent of the live-fish fishery has accelerated such drastic declines. In the early 1980s sport fishermen reported landing 1,800 sheephead a year in a kelp bed near San Diego. By 1994, with the live-fish fishery also present, they reported only 145. Now there is great concern about rockfish, the major catch of the sport-fishing fleet in northern and central California, and the major winter catch in southern California. Between 1997 and 1998, the sport catch of rockfish in southern California dropped by 10 percent, that of cabezon by 50 percent. A 1998 report to the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation (CalCOFI) noted: “In much of the southern California Bight, inshore rockfishes are no longer present, or their numbers are sharply reduced.”

The regular commercial fishery mainly targets rockfish stocks in offshore waters, using trawl nets. There is still some overlap between the different fisheries, and the result can be more overfishing. For instance, the nearshore fishery catches one popular rockfish species, the bocaccio, in its younger stage, while trawlers catch older adults that migrate to deeper waters. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the bocaccio is now considered overfished and subject to a rebuilding plan that may take 50 years.

As fish stocks diminish, fishermen are expending more effort to catch smaller and smaller rockfish in the Monterey Bay area and southern California, according to studies by scientists with NMFS and the University of California at Santa Barbara. In the process, the very structure of the reef community is being undermined. In a 1998 report for CalCOFI, Milton Love and his colleagues at the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission reported: “From our submersible surveys, we have noted that heavily fished reefs often have large numbers of small fishes, particularly squarespot and pygmy rockfish. It is possible that removing most of the large, predatory rockfishes has increased the survival of these dwarf species.”

The cumulative impact of these multiple fisheries undermines the very nature of the nearshore marine ecosystem, California's premier life-giving marine environment. The submarine forests and rock reefs along our coastline may not be as glamorous as coral reefs in tropical waters, but they are just as productive. Some 800 species of marine animals and 130 species of marine plants flourish in the nearshore zone, the watery realm that extends a mile out from shore and includes a mile around offshore rocks and islands. The remarkable diversity of this zone is sustained by seasonal upwelling, which recharges surface waters with nutrients. It is supported by the kelp, which rises from its rocky holdfasts as high as 80 feet to and along the surface, growing at a rate of up to two feet a day, and providing food and shelter for myriad life forms, from bottom-dwelling sea urchins to seabirds that dive below the kelp canopy to snare small rockfish and other forage items.

Critical links bind this diverse community together. The sheephead, with its canine-like teeth, crushes and grinds up the bottom-dwelling sea urchin, which feeds on kelp. By controlling the sea urchin population, the sheephead benefits the kelp. Rockfish are important to the survival of seabirds. In their early life stage rockfish feed on plankton near the surface and become a major forage source for seabird breeding colonies on the Channel and Farallon Islands. The long-term stability of the near-shore ecosystem depends on such critical relationships.

“The changes to sheephead populations suggest that outbreaks of destructive [kelp forest] grazing by the minimally exploited purple sea urchin will become more frequent,” warn marine ecologists Mia Tegner and Paul Dayton of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the May 1997 issue of Reef Information Bulletin.

Seabirds are also affected. In the early 1990s there were some 2,000 nesting tufted puffins on the Farallon Islands. Today the population numbers between 80 and 120 birds. Depletion of rockfish and other forage fish is considered a major factor in the decline of the puffin population.

Mounting concern over the condition of our nearshore habitat led the California legislature to enact the Marine Life Management Act in 1998. In 1999, Governor Gray Davis signed legislation that provides $5.2 million from the general fund to implement the Act. The new law requires the Fish and Game Commission to adopt a comprehensive fishery management plan by January 1, 2002, to ensure that nearshore stocks are fished at a sustainable level. In determining these levels, the ecosystem role of target species is taken into account—the first time this is part of the formula. Enough sheephead would have to be left in the kelp forests to control grazing urchins, and enough forage fish to sustain seabirds and other natural predators. To reduce the take of immature fish that fetch a premium price, the Act imposes a minimum size limit on sheephead, cabezon, and six nearshore rockfish species. To help improve catch accounting, the Act requires nearshore commercial fishermen to buy special permits. The funds collected are to be used for more monitoring and enforcement.

To make sure there will still be enough fish around to plan for, the Act empowers the Commission to adopt interim nearshore regulations. The Commission is considering a ban on issuance of new permits and limiting participants to those who held permits at the end of 1999 (some 1067).

The Commission has reserved the right to consider further reductions. The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, a commercial fishing organization, supports this “limited entry” program.

The Commission is also considering 16 interim management alternatives that range from a statewide ban on sale of live finfish to better catch accounting measures. One alternative would further limit the use of commercial fishing gear. Currently, a commercial fisherman can deploy up to 150 hooks and 50 traps. A recreational fisherman is limited to one line and three hooks. Also being considered is the establishment of a system of nearshore no-take reserves. (See Coast & Ocean, Winter 1999–2000.) The Commission plans to create a nearshore advisory committee with sport, commercial, and environmental representatives to help review these alternatives.

In conjunction with the federal Pacific Fishery Management Council, the Commission has adopted a seasonal closure on fishing of rockfish, both near-shore and beyond. The closure was in effect January and February in waters south of Point Lopez in Monterey County to the Mexican border, and went into effect in March and April north to Cape Mendocino. Such closures give stressed rockfish stocks a breather during winter spawning periods. However, they can also intensify fishing pressures on other stocks. Nearshore, sport and commercial fishermen shift their attention to California halibut, sheephead, leopard shark, sculpin, cabezon, and other fish not covered by the closure or by federal quotas on rockfish species.

The live-fish fishery presents a special management problem because it is so mobile. Commercial fishermen must document the number and type of fish they catch. Catch receipts enable the Department of Fish and Game to monitor trends in the relative abundance of fish species. Fishery managers also periodically sample the catch to ensure compliance with regulations, such as minimum size. All this is difficult with live-fishery fishermen. “The swiftness of landing transactions, mobility of receivers, and concern of fish damage due to sampling efforts make information gathering and enforcement capabilities extremely challenging,” reports Kimberley McKee-Lewis of California Fish and Game. Using mobile phones, some fishermen will shift locations to avoid samplers. In the San Francisco Bay Area, live finfish are offloaded at over 80 locations. Without adequate catch accounting, the full impact of the booming live-fish fishery cannot be effectively assessed, much less controlled.

Further complicating attempts to manage fishing in California's nearshore ocean is the cyclical temperature variation of the water. Each cycle can persist for two decades or more. During warm cycles, upwelling is less vigorous, kelp forests recede, and replenishment of fish stocks declines. We have been in a warm cycle since the early 1970s. With global warming, it could extend indefinitely. The increase of fishing pressures during this less productive cycle may accelerate stock declines.

As regulations on wild fish become stricter, Asian markets have found a way to adjust. They buy more live catfish, tilapia, and carp raised in aquaculture ponds in the Imperial and Coachella Valleys. (Unlike farmed salmon and shrimp, these species do not subsist on fishmeal derived from marine forage stocks such as sardines and anchovies.) The response to tighter regulations of some live-fish fishers is to fish off southern Oregon. In a different tack, United Anglers of Southern California, a sport-fishing organization, has supported the creation of a marine hatchery in Carlsbad that raises California halibut and white seabass for release into coastal waters. How much this hatchery will replenish wild stocks remains to be seen.

Other human impacts on the nearshore ecosystem are only beginning to be addressed. These include harmful runoff with heavy silt loads and the entrainment of nearshore fish in powerplant intakes. To mitigate entrainment losses and damage to a nearby kelp bed, the Commission has required the San Onofre nuclear plant to build an artificial reef and to contribute funds to the marine hatchery at Carlsbad. (Also see Coast & Ocean, Winter 1999–2000, p. 11.) The Coastal Commission and the Regional Water Quality Control Boards now require new developments to control harmful runoff more efficiently. In January, the Commission held up approval of a large coastal development proposed by the Irvine Company in Orange County pending further review of runoff control plans.

In northern San Diego County, lobstermen and NMFS have expressed concern that sand replenishment projects to restore beaches can degrade shallow-water reefs and surfgrass areas. This issue has come to the fore in a draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) prepared by the San Diego Association of Area Governments (SANDAG) for a major replenishment project released in March. This draft EIR claims such impacts can be avoided by placing sand on beaches that do not adjoin reef areas.

For too long, California's nearshore ecosystem has been at the mercy of competing resource users. Today new management initiatives promise to give this critically important ecosystem a new lease on life. The day may come when the sheephead will once more become a common sight in its natural home.

Wesley Marx is author of The Frail Ocean. The fourth edition was published in 1999 by Hartley & Marks Publishers. He can be contacted by e-mail at wmarx@primenet.com.