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©2007 Cascadia Times

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Experts urge Pacific council to take a more holistic approach

The catchphrase for President Clinton's 1992 campaign framed the main issue and probably helped win the election: “It's the economy, stupid.”

Today, in the California Current, it's all about the ecosystem, or more accurately, it's all about the neglect of the ecosystem. Species in the California Current and the food webs that connect them have become increasingly vulnerable to fishing and climate change. However, decision makers don't know much about what's going on, and they've done precious little to find out.

“A great many fish populations and the human communities that depend upon them are in a state of crisis as a result of a combination of factors,” according to biologists Robert Francis and John Field, in a 2006 paper on.
Fishing has depleted many long-lived and slow growing groundfish stocks, and obligatory rebuilding plans suggest that some could take decades to centuries to recover to target levels, they say.

Francis and Field urged the Pacific Fishery Management Council to consider the ecosystem's needs far more than it does.

Warning signs, indeed, are everywhere. Seabirds, a major indicator of marine ecosystem health, have declined, including species migrate from afar or breed locally. The Point Reyes Bird Observatory's 2005 report, California Current Marine Bird Conservation Plan, says that of 41 bird species that breed in the California Current, 34 have drawn varying levels concern from government agencies from Mexico to Canada.

Of 53 bird species that commonly migrate to the California Current from all over the Pacific Rim, seven are on the World Conservation Union's Red List of Threatened Species.

The list of troubled seabird species includes the endangered brown pelican and the sooty shearwater, a migrant from New Zealand that is down 75 percent over recent decades.

Many of the California Current's main cash fisheries — whiting, salmon, tunas and rockfish — are also in trouble. The whiting fishery has depleted all but 25.1 percent of the stock, pushing it dangerously close to the 25 percent “overfished” line. The whiting were overfished earlier this decade, but recovered slightly. Further declines now appear likely, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Seven rockfish species are also depleted, and almost every major salmon run is on the U.S. endangered species list.

Where fisheries are depleted, seabirds can suffer. In the California Current, some 22 fisheries directly target the same species that seabirds consume. In some ecosystems, seabirds consume as much as 30 percent of the young fish. Fisheries compete with seabirds by reducing the amount of food available for them to eat.

Under global warming scenarios, scientists believe a sea level rise can drown nests or breeding habitat on islands and rookeries. Warming ocean temperatures can reduce the amount of food in the water and force fish to live elsewhere if they can. Scientists say fishery managers in the California Current have failed to understand these changes, given their lack of data, much less respond to them.

When it makes decisions on catch limits, Pacific council admits that it does not consider the food needs of seabirds or marine mammals like whales or sea lions. The potential impacts of climate change have made no impact on council decisions. The council says it intends to do become a champion of ecosystem-based management, once funds become available, but as for the near future, will continue to manage each commercially valuable species one by one, almost as if they are alone in the sea.

In the early part of this decade, the Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S. Commission on Oceans both recommended that the eight regional fishery management councils manage ecosystems, rather than single species. Last year, when Congress reauthorized the nation's major ocean fisheries law, it insisted on an ecosystem-based approach.

The Pacific council says it will develop ecosystem management plans, but says it has no funds to pay for it. But, as we will see, recent developments suggest the council's commitment to an ecosystem-based management may not be entirely sincere.

Next: An idea “as old as the hills"

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