Protecting diversity and restoring socioeconomic goals to the MLPA process
by Chris Miller
In a recent stroke of the editing pen, the social and economic guidelines were removed from the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Master Plan. This followed the removal of the goal for sustainable fisheries that took place sometime in the South Central Coast process. Unless these elements of the Master Plan are restored, we will need to deal with a Master Plan process that has become politicized, rather than following our existing plan of playing a stewardship role using established biological concepts.
Fortunately for us, the language of the MLPA bill that became law recognizes that socioeconomic and sustainable fishery considerations should be taken into account. What needs to be done is the Master Plan need to be made consistent with this legislation so that players in the process can’t avoid taking into account the impacts reserves have on fisheries. As fishermen we need to consider what type of administrative remedy will be the most effective in dealing with this. I suggest we start out by educating other fishermen about the issue in terms of common sense. Now is the time to speak up about this as a problem that should be defined in terms of the best science, social justice and administrative integrity.
It will be good to put the elected officials on notice that we have identified stewardship of our marine resources as a primary reason to consider the welfare of the fishing community. This should be done so that any elected official can understand that implementation of MLPA should include a viable approach to community planning for marine zoning.
It is hard to be calm when confronted with the propaganda of over fishing. We need to slowly start introducing information that shows that over fishing has occurred with a few species in California waters, and management tactics have been put in place to eliminate over fishing or rebuild stocks.
Study the accompanying graphs on the number of commercial fishing permits and commercial fishing vessels in the state over time. It shows a very distinct decline in commercial fishing in California over the last thirty years while the state’s population climbed steadily over that same period. MAKE SURE YOU CAN EXPLAIN THAT THE DECLINE IS NOT DUE TO THE COLLAPSE OF STOCKS. Think about the other fishermen in your port and what their production is. Think about your port as a constellation of fishing enterprise that maintains diversity of fresh seafood access to the coastal community. Think about it as a traditional way of life that is part of the maritime heritage of your town.
Based on volunteering to work with scientists in their surveys, I think we should develop a program to show how our fishing is sustainable through a long-term ecological research project. It might be that our survival into another generation of fishermen may be based in our ability to adapt our cultural value system to results gained through participation in research. The best science is really an organization for documenting and synthesizing information. The use of science in management is based on asking the right questions and research based on defining the objectives.
So rather than try and advance the questions that we cannot answer and have to punt to policy and politics; lets ask questions that help us keep our fishing communities going. Like how many fishing ports do we plan to have in the future and the level of fishing activities required to maintain the economic viability of these ports.
I don’t believe you can look at this graph and support selecting the information to support reserve design that also deliberately exclude information on the social and economic dimensions of California’s commercial fisheries. It does not make sense that we should risk losing any fishing port that is still a working harbor.
If you look at the science that is published on Marine Reserves, you would find a much more holistic approach to ecosystem based management. The MLPA Master Plan itself utilizes the National Research Council’s (NRC) digest of marine reserve scientific work titled “Marine Protected Areas Tool for Ecosystem Based Management”. The recent American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has published a consensus statement on ecosystem based management recommending that along with marine zoning, ecosystem management also relies on community based management systems and adaptive management.
The American Fisheries Society (AFS) has a published paper that describes what the best available science is. A significant part of that is planning based on asking questions you can test. How are fishermen distributed in the habitat now, and connected to markets that provide access to fresh seafood for Californians?
I would like to propose that fishermen develop a concept for environmental justice in the processes, and work on strategies that put our fishing enterprise in a positive light. The questions I think we need to ask are centered on how we would define the technical procedure that will insure inter-generational equity for the fishing community.
This is really about how you reform assessment for fishery management objectives in the long haul of a new era of marine zoning. Whether we are effective in developing a more human approach in the MLPA Master Plan is only the beginning of our job as fishermen who wish to advance our self-determination. I suggest that we focus on defining what co-management means as a process that has definable milestones for fishery objectives. We need to organize for fishery solidarity in defining an assessment process that will verify our fishery’s sustainability.
As a representative of the California Lobster and Trap Fishermen’s Association (CLTFA) in the newly formed Marine Resource Committee of the Fish and Game Commission, I asked Commissioners Mike Sutton and Richard Rodgers for feedback on the idea of CLTFA using an internationally established sustainability rating procedure. I was specific in the process being a confidential preliminary sustainability assessment that is contracted by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).
This is a process that has been utilized by the Mexican spiny lobster fishery in Baja California. The primary benefit of this MSC sustainability certification process is its widespread acceptance in the broader international community of conservation interests. This has led to substantial social progress in applying the precautionary approach to protecting fishing communities and traditional fishing culture.
My opinion is that while we use this graph to highlight the problem of failing to consider our welfare in design, we should also allocate to the solution with matching effort. I am now advocating that the primary goal for the fishing community is marine resource stewardship. We should organize port stewardship programs to develop sustainability assessment as an integrated approach to MLPA design.
Let’s make sure we recognize our responsibility to educate others about our choices.
CALobster - Collaborative research for working harbors in Southern California
by Carla Guenther, PhD Candidate
Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management
University of California, Santa Barbara
Chris Miller and the Santa Barbara-Ventura area fleet have fostered a collaborative research partnership with Bren School - UC Santa Barbara and the California Dept. of Fish and Game (DFG) biologists. Designed five years ago as a forum for better relations between the lobster fishery and local scientists, the program has grown to include many aspects of collaborative data collection and analysis for community-based management. The idea for the partnership is largely credited to Mr. John Richards, Marine Advisor Emeritus with the California Sea Grant Extension Program.
Now referred to as CALobster, the program has grown to include monitoring of the Channel Islands Reserves, mainly to determine their effects on lobster populations and the economic performance of the fishery. We are also developing ways to use reserves as strategic tools to enhance lobster (and recently rockfish) catch. In addition, technology is being developed for Barefoot Ecology, a fishery-controlled monitoring and modeling program to track lobster populations and fishing effort over space and time.
Much of the work is conducted by UCSB students, who collaborate closely with fishermen and the DFG. To date, support for CALobster has been provided by fishermen, through their time and expertise, the California Coastal Environmental Quality Initiative (UC Office of the President), the California Ocean Protection Council, and the Sustainable Fisheries Group (Chuck Cook).
A major objective of CALobster is to educate a generation of young scientists who will work within management agencies, environmental groups, and universities for the benefit of fishing communities and the coastal ecosystem upon which they depend. We look forward to the completion of three doctoral dissertations and two Master’s Group Projects at the Bren School in the next few years.
Three Bren Master’s Group projects completed with CALobster can be found on our website (www.calobster.org). Please visit this site to learn more about your collaborative data collection, analysis, and education program.
Lobster fisherman at Santa Barbara Harbor - January 30, 1966
At the Crossroads of Marine Zoning
by Chris Miller
At our December 14, 2008 CLTFA general meeting we charted the course for a pro-active strategy to deal with the upcoming Marine Protected Area design process. For us to be effective in negotiations in MLPA, we are developing CLTFA as an organization that transitions into marine zoning by organizing our ability to look at our own geographic information about how we harvest.
This is based on organizing the fishing communities by the ports, and mapping our harvest with GPS based maps of the reefs and number of traps. At our meeting, Dr. Craig Barilotti presented our representatives with copies of our trapping ground survey, and we voted in an agreement for how this confidential information can be shared.
This is a major piece of work by Dr. Barilotti who deserves a big round of applause for his tenacity in following through on this project and delivering a product we can use to design reserves. Now comes the tough part of organizing to really use this information in port stewardship committees to evaluate reserve designs.
The strategy is to integrate fishery management with the reserve design over the long haul. We are developing our program now to look at the bigger picture of design, and the long-term plan starts with community development to make the transition into marine zoning.
The major areas we are now working on are developing the tactics for us maintaining our pro-active strategy in management:
Marine Stewardship Council preliminary sustainability assessment.
Developing the design of a lobster stamp program to allow us to dedicate funding to help make management better.
Organizing our port committees for representation of all the habitats we fish.
With this framework established and our port representatives now engaged, it is time for me to relinquish my post of Vice President and take up the newly created position of Community Port Organizer. I have to confess my initial reasons for doing this were not as noble as wanting to insure new blood came up through the ranks to invigorate the fishery leadership. It was sort of a snap decision that I am now adapting to make it totally constructive.
Management has changed fast and quick. In the process, a lot of complex politics have made our old system of being organized obsolete. I think the key to our survival will be in our developing our own organization into marine stewardship committees to design the community network that supports the MSC certification process as being integrated with our Fishery Management Plan process.
Rather than proceeding to charge up San Juan Hill alone with an agenda, I think I would like to support the democracy of our organization by having some small meetings at the ports to develop the three main tactics we are using from an organizing perspective.
I got a little bit obsessed with this political stuff. It has worn me down some and I am just not quite as diplomatic as I should be as a result. We have some major opportunities right now that I have helped put in place. But they require really disciplined fishery solidarity and very focused deliberate negotiations by a team of leaders.
I want to make sure all the port leaders understand the arena and what our choices are.
Based on my long-term involvement in the reserve process pilot at my fishing grounds, I have been involved in a program that integrated essential fishery information for our Fishery Management Plan into the reserve monitoring.
From a conservation standpoint, integrated management is a key theme in developing a management economy. In plain terms, we will have to look at the number of permits and traps by region, and figure out how to adapt after the reserves go in.
If we create the plan by organizing now, we can take the lead in the management agenda. How we do that will require we start by initiating our own reform. Based on what I have seen over the years, I would say we are the most qualified people to design how our fishery should look in the future.
