Navigating the Quillback Rockfish Closure Complications
By Mark Anderson, March 5, 2024
Describing the complexity of challenges facing local small boat fishermen can be a challenge in itself.
Local fishermen confront steep costs for permits, spiking diesel fuel and various offloading fees, while navigating Monterey Bay ports that are short on infrastructure like storage, ice machines and processing facilities.
Then there are competitive disadvantages against big boat conglomerates, cheaper imports and aquaculture; threats from offshore wind development; sale prices artificially depressed by big corporate buyers; a target audience often unaware of (or unwilling) to try alternatives to salmon, shrimp and tuna; and the ongoing and intensifying shifts from warming oceans causing shifts in distribution and abundance of key species.
On top of that, crab season, another key support, was delayed and delayed, before fortunately and finally opening, albeit after the holiday market.
Now, a ruling designed to protect one rockfish out of 80+ species in the groundfish management complex, quillback rockfish, is preventing small boat fishermen from harvesting other rockfish, lingcod, and even black cod, which was keeping them afloat amid the other closures.
Perhaps one way to simplify the complexity of challenges is this: Local small boat fishermen are being sent into a fight for their livelihoods with one hand tied behind their backs.
A Moss Landing fisherman laughs dryly at the analogy.
“Ha!” he says. “And you’re blindfolded and kicked… and then sent into the ring.”
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The quillback rockfish, a deeper close-to-shore species, presents a fierce rack of spines that inspire the name. Found mostly in waters deeper than 100 feet, and mostly in northern California up through Alaska, the quillback is not a prized fish but usually caught accidentally with more desired rockfish species.
A 2021 stock assessment found that the population along Golden State shores had fallen to 14 percent of its historic biomass. The current rule of law, the Magnuson Stevens Act, says that if a stock’s biomass falls below 25%, it is overfished. This puts managers on notice that they have two years to figure out a rebuilding plan for that species.
With that information, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council and its advisory bodies worked to set annual catch limits (ACLs), overfishing limits (OFLs) and trip limits on quillback for recreational and commercial fishers with a lot fewer fish to go around.
In 2023, in-season assessments of recreational and commercial landings revealed those ACLs were going to be exceeded, and the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) enacted rules to prohibit the take of any quillback in recreational or commercial fisheries in state waters on Aug. 7.
Dotted line indicates the 3 mile state waters line. The red line indicates the 20 fathom line. Blue and red shapes denote State Marine Reserves.
The problem there: Quillback were still being caught while fishermen pursued other species like lingcod or other rockfish, at a rate that exceeded catch targets. So CDFW closed state waters—measured as three nautical miles from shore—to any fishing of groundfish, period, first north of San Francisco, then around Monterey Bay.
Because Monterey Bay’s shore is measured from the outer lip of the bay and not its inner curve, that means small boats have to chug much further out to sea—which requires more time, fuel and bigger windows of good weather—to hope to catch something resembling a profit.
Moss Landing fisher Walter Deyerle wishes out loud that management agencies had been more proactive.
“When they raised the near shore limit, I was against it,” he says. “They have this data. Every day they get information with what we’re catching. They shouldn’t get caught with their pants down. It’s like either 100 miles per hour or zero. It makes it hard to build a business and plan anything.”
Phil Anderson, longtime Pacific Fisheries Management Council Member, adds additional context to the policy changes—and a call for help.
“Given the extreme economic impacts that the fishery is facing…combined with the fact that this is the first time a data-moderate assessment has been used to declare a stock overfished, the Council needs solid ground to stand on before approving regulations that we know will have devastating results to the fishing community,” he said at the November 2023 PFMC meeting. “I submit that at this point we need the [the council’s] Science and Statistical Committee’s help and expertise, maybe now more than ever.”
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Every fisherman the Trust talked to while researching this report expressed support—if not outright enthusiasm—for smart fishery management.
As Bodega Bay fisher and fisheries management advisor Dick Ogg likes to say, “We’re being looked at as people trying to destroy the ocean when we’re the conservationists…that’s our living. Why would we damage it? We’re very conscious of what we’re doing. We’re trying to make things better.”
The operative word is smart. The moment Deyerle saw the new closures covered all state waters he called up his contact at CDFW. His point was simple: Quillback don’t live at the depths that black cod (aka sablefish) do. In all his years fishing Monterey Bay for black cod, he’s never encountered a quillback.
In other words, why go from 100 mph to 0 when slowing down to 50 could help.
With area fishermen traditionally propped by a three-legged crab-salmon-groundfish stool (see our Director’s Corner on this), the closure hurts that much more.
Those impacted include Monterey-based Skylar Campbell.
“They’re actively managing us out of business,” he says. “We’re getting choked to death.”
Then he pauses, and adds that he understands why many don’t find fishermen to be sympathetic figures.
“Fishermen who harvest are seen as an entity outside of the environment—unnecessary and detrimental,” he says. “In reality we …provide the amount of data that they’re able to use to make their assessments.
“And we’re endangered.”
A key note there: Logical minds might understandably think, hey, preventing local fishing helps the environment, full stop.
The missing piece there: By removing the sources of local, sustainably caught and highly regulated seafood, it throws open the doors for more imported, less regulated seafood to fill the void.
On economic, personal, and ecological fronts, the situation resembles a lose lose lose.
Even in the face of complex challenges, there is cause for optimism around the corner.
This March 5-11 the Pacific Fishery Management Council meets in Fresno. One of the agenda items will be considering the final in-season adjustments for the year.
Dan Platt, who fishes out of Fort Bragg and sits on the Groundfish Advisory Panel for the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, is hopeful.
“Monterey might be the easiest fix,” he says. “Hopefully they have been working on it.”
•••
The question seems simple enough: What's the best way to describe what and where it is OK for commercial fishermen in the Monterey Bay Area to fish right now, after the closures to protect quillback rockfish?
Nevertheless, several experts struggled to answer it.
A few of the responses: “It’s nuanced.” “It’s complicated.” “Sorry to keep going backwards, but…”
California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s Andrew Klein offers a breakdown that 1) is as succinct as any out there; and 2) illustrates the ongoing complexity of savvy fishery management.
North of 36° N latitude (near Point Lopez) which includes Monterey Bay, commercial fishers who hold a state issued nearshore fishery permit and/or a deeper nearshore fishery nearshore permit may fish up to the trip limits established by this recent emergency action for those species authorized under each permit.
Take of these species is only authorized between the shore and the new 20-fathom boundary line.
Groundfish species that are not authorized for take under the nearshore fishery or deeper nearshore fishery permit (e.g., lingcod) may no longer be taken and possessed in state waters north of 36° N latitude.
Fishers can continue operating in Federal waters (between 3 to 200 miles from shore) as authorized by recent federal inseason regulations for groundfish species.
Recent emergency action taken by the State only affects commercial groundfish fishing north of 36° N latitude (near Point Lopez) in state waters (0 to 3 miles) and this action does not make any changes to other commercial fisheries for species that are not groundfish.
Groundfish species are legally defined in state regulations and includes rockfish, some flatfishes (which does not include California halibut), lingcod, sablefish and others.
So yes, fishery management is no simple or exact science. But there are resources out there for interested parties to learn more, including these:
The Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP)
West Coast Fishery Observer Bycatch and Mortality Reports
California Department of Fish & Wildlife Groundfish Overview Page: