300 pounds of discards snared near 3 county piers
By Michael Gardner, signonsandiego.com 26 Aug 08;
SACRAMENTO – The state is preparing to launch a fishing expedition, but it's not angling for tuna, squid or flounder.
In this case, the catch is tons of fishing equipment lost or discarded in the ocean every season, posing serious danger to marine life.
“I know what we have out there. I cannot dive without seeing abandoned gear. It's everywhere,” said Richard Rogers, president of the California Fish and Game Commission.
The fishing lines, hooks, nets, crab pots and lobster traps are blamed for killing or maiming whales, dolphins, otters, pelicans and other wildlife.
Limited pilot programs in the last few years netted 11 tons of fishing equipment from around the Channel Islands and a combined 300 pounds off the Oceanside, Ocean Beach and Imperial Beach piers.
Those numbers convinced the state that more aggressive action is needed, starting with a $400,000 collection program off the coast from Point Conception near Santa Barbara to Pigeon Point south of Half Moon Bay.
State officials hope to broaden the recovery program to take in the entire coast, target more piers and move inland to retrieve equipment from recreational fishing lakes.
In a demonstration of the danger posed by the gear, officials this month were forced to temporarily ban fishing from piers in the Capitola area when 90 endangered brown pelicans suffered injuries after becoming entangled in fishing lines while feasting on anchovies.
The Wildlife Conservation Board, a project-financing arm of the state Department of Fish and Game, is set to award funding for the fishing gear retrieval program today. If approved as expected, it will mark the first time in at least a half-century that the board has extended its reach into ocean waters, said Dave Means, assistant executive director of the board.
“We're just dipping our toes in,” Means said.
The SeaDoc Society, which is affiliated with the University of California Davis, will take the lead as part of its program to protect marine life in the Pacific Northwest.
The SeaDoc Society conducted a smaller project off the Channel Islands in 2006 and 2007, using volunteer divers to retrieve 552 pieces of gear, including 248 commercial lobster traps and three purse seine nets – large walls of netting that encircle schools of fish.
Commercial gear is not the only threat. Over those two years, SeaDoc divers salvaged 1,400 pounds of recreational fishing equipment, including more than 1 million feet of line off 15 public piers statewide. At San Diego County piers, the catch of discarded equipment yielded 131 pounds at Oceanside, 112 pounds at Imperial Beach and 60 pounds at Ocean Beach.
“It's like a jungle of fishing line around those piers,” Means said.
To encourage proper disposal, the SeaDoc Society is planning to install recycling bins on selected wharves so anglers have a convenient place to discard tangled line.
The dangers posed by lost or dumped equipment are well-documented, according to Kirsten Gilardi, executive director of the SeaDoc Society and a UC Davis veterinarian.
On average, she said, one in 10 of the pelicans and shorebirds brought into wildlife rehabilitation centers are treated after becoming entangled in lines, swallowing hooks or otherwise being injured by fishing gear. Last year, there were several confirmed cases of humpback and gray whales tangled in lines or nets.
From 2001 to 2006, more than 250 endangered brown pelicans were admitted to San Diego-area rehabilitation centers with fishing gear-related injuries, Gilardi said.
In her annual report and in an interview, Gilardi detailed the threats.
“Abandoned nets drown marine mammals. Hundreds of coastal birds suffer injury when they become entangled in fishing line or when they ingest hooks,” she said in the report. “Marine mammals, including the federally threatened southern sea otter, (are injured or killed) with wounds from entanglement, or with obstructed or perforated intestines from swallowed hooks and line.”
Additionally, many abandoned lobster traps contain bait, luring animals to their deaths, she said.
Wildlife species are not the only victims; boaters, surfers and anglers are also at risk, Gilardi said.
“Boaters catch ropes attached to lost traps and pots or discarded monofilament line around their propellers; surfers are injured running into lost gear underwater that 'reefs' up in breaking waves. As well, lost gear clutters legal fishing grounds, affecting fishermen's ability to safely and efficiently deploy their own gear, and in some cases damaging their nets,” she said.
After using divers at depths to 105 feet, SeaDoc is looking to deploy remote-operated vehicles in deep waters, Gilardi said. The specially designed craft would be outfitted with cutting instruments to remove lines and nets from the seabed.
Rogers, the fish and game commissioner, said abandoned traps, lines and hooks in ocean waters or on the seabed remain a long-term threat until they become encrusted.
“Until then,” he said, “the gear will continue fishing and the fish will continue to die needlessly.”
