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©2007 Cascadia Times

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A turf battle with the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary

While the council says it can't afford to develop ecosystem-based plans, it has found the time and money to create new, experimental and potentially damaging fisheries, as seen in the controversial longlining proposals in sea turtle conservation areas (see page 10). Then there's the council's longstanding turf battle with National Marine Sanctuaries that want to create marine reserves.

The five National Marine Sanctuaries in the region over the last several years have been working on plans to create no-fishing marine reserves in their waters. The idea that another government agency would regulate fishing within the Pacific council's turf has drawn the council's attention at least since 2001.

In August 2007, the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, near Santa Barbara, created nine new marine protection zones in federal waters are the islands, including eight that allow no fishing and another that allows only limited harvest of fish.

The decision expanded a network of marine reserves created by the state in 2002. The total network size will be 240.4 square nautical miles that encompasses 22 percent of the sanctuary waters through 11 marine reserves and 2 marine conservation areas. Fishing in accordance with normal state and federal fishing regulations will be allowed in the remaining 78 percent of the sanctuary.

The Channel Islands network of reserves is now the largest in the United States outside of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where the Papaha-naumokua-kea Marine National Monument is the largest marine conservation area in the world, encompassing 137,797 square miles in the Pacific.

The Pacific council argued that it alone, and not the sanctuary, has the authority to regulate fishing. The council's proposed rules, issued in December 2005, banned only bottom trawling in the reserves, but did not prohibit fishing that targeting species found in midwater areas.

Marine resources around the Channel Islands, such as kelp forest ecosystems, have declined under pressure from a variety of factors, including commercial and recreational fishing, changes in oceanographic conditions and increased levels of pollution.

The sanctuary hopes that marine reserves can help to rebuild depleted fish populations, reduce bycatch and discards, and reduce known and as-yet unknown ecosystem effects of fishing.

In a council report issued last December, the council stated that the Channel Island controversy has spurred the council to escalate its efforts to control fishing regulations in sanctuaries. “Because of this controversy, the PFMC has begun dialog for the planning and future implementation of ecosystem-based fishery management plans in order to prevail in its fishery management authority within the NMS system on the West Coast.”

In addition, the Pacific council has lobbied Congress in recent years to strip National Marine Sanctuaries from their authority to ban fishing in their waters.

Meanwhile, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is planning to create its own network of marine reserves. The Pacific council recently approved a sea turtle-killing longline fishery for areas inside and outside the Monterey Bay sanctuary. NMFS, however, overruled any longline fishery in sanctuary waters.

Next: Western governors sign historic “ocean health” agreement

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