California’s Sardine Fishery Closed For Fifth Year In A Row

As ocean plankton pastures collapse Sardines on North America’s West Coast are verging upon extinction

The official solution, stop fishing the last of the sardines

Better idea, restore their ocean pastures to historic health and abundance.

West coast regulators have voted unanimously to ban commercial sardine fishing for the fifth straight year after a recent evaluation of the northern Pacific stock revealed a steep decline. This ban on commercial sardine catch is not just for California but extends the entire length of the U.S. West Coast. The 2019 season would have opened July 1.

The new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) assessment of Northern Pacific sardine stocks estimates populations of the small silvery fish, foundation of the entire marine fish food chain, have declined by more than 98 percent since 2006.

‘When sardines collapse, the collapse just pulls the rug out from the entire ecosystem.’ Geoff Shester, Oceana

The latest inventory of northern Pacific sardines shows only 28,000 metric tons. This is a cataclysmically low number far below the 150,000 metric ton threshold required before commercial fishermen have been allowed to engage in fishing. In 2006, there were nearly 1.8 million metric tons of sardine alive and well off the Pacific U.S. Decades ago the number was as much as ten times that 2006 number.

Sea lion deaths in California are an annual horror story. Click to read more

Geoff Shester, a marine biologist with the environmental group Oceana, said sardines play a major role in the ocean off California because so much marine life — Brown Pelicans, cormorants, dolphins, sea lions, salmon, cod, rockfish, and shark — all these and more rely on sardines as a major part of their diet. To read some depressing news on the great dying in our ocean follow this link to 5 Year Ocean Death Toll.

“These are the engines, or the heartbeat of the ocean, that is really supplying our entire ecosystem with the fuel it needs to be productive,” Shester said. “So when sardines collapse, the collapse just pulls the rug out from the entire ecosystem.”

Many believe, simplistically, that over-fishing is the key threat to the fragile states of Pacific sardines and that keeping the fishery closed might give this vital fish a chance to recover. But this year the sardines are worse off than ever, even after decades of drastically reduced catch limits and five years of a total ban on fishing for them.

They should have recovered by now if only ‘over-fishing’ were the cause of their disappearance. In spite of the evidence that the sardines are being starved into extinction the mercenary arguments over the cash value of fishing persists.

“Sardines have traditionally been one of California’s most important and valuable fisheries,” Shester said. “So this is millions and millions of dollars of lost income.”

Many fishermen want to keep fishing regardless

Not all fishermen agree with the decision to keep the sardine fishery shuttered. With the Sardines in such short supply, the price they command on the market is at the highest ever. Some fishermen want to be allowed to catch the last of them, which given the high price the last of the sardines commands, might mean at least one last rich payday before they go extinct.

Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, bemoans NOAA’s sardine survey as under-counting the fish. She claims that the fishermen she hears from are reporting a comeback.

“They are so frustrated because they drive by school after school after school and they can’t fish,” Pleschner-Steele said. “This is their livelihood and they have families and they are losing their jobs.”

A limited sardine catch for use as live bait will be allowed in Southern California to service the region’s rich sport fishing industry. Commercial fishermen will also be allowed to keep a small amount of sardines that come aboard as a result of so-called ‘incidental catch’ — below 20 percent of their catch— when fishing for other types of fish.

While the ban on Sardine fishing reduces the pressure on the few remaining fish, it more akin to an end of life hospice care as opposed to thoughtful management. Fishing bans offer nothing in terms of effective treatment of the underlying disease of ocean pasture collapse.

Here’s the story on how the ocean pastures are dying by human hands and how we can restore them.

The Pacific Sardines are simply starving into extinction on ocean plankton pastures that have become clear blue deserts. This is due to our high and rising CO2 that first and foremost stimulates plant growth on land.  On this blue planet, the land is covered mostly with grass, not trees. All over the world, there has been a dramatic global greening! That extra green is in the form of more, bushier, and longer living grass, Californian’s know grass – it’s that plant life that is green in the wet season and brown in dry dusty season.

More grass growing means less dust blowing!

Rain and Dust in the wind are the Yin and Yang for pastures on land and at sea.

In the same way that pastures on land, growing in dirt, depend on vital water that comes to them in the form of rain blown on the wind, ocean pastures are home to ocean plant-life, the phytoplankton, that grows in water and survives and thrives only when it receives vital mineral dust that blows to them on the wind. It is the most important Yin and Yang relationship in all of nature on this Blue Planet!

California’s ocean pastures, it sardine, salmon, whale, and sea lion pastures, depend on the dust that blows from China and Mongolia for their survival. Prevailing winds almost always blow from West to East bring the dust. Rivers and streams send meager amounts of minerals into the Pacific ocean and none of those riverine minerals make it even 100 miles offshore! Staggering changes to the grassland ecosystems of western China and Mongolia are turning those once super dusty regions of the planet into rich grain-producing regions and green oases. That’s where ‘more grass growing, means less dust blowing’ to nurture and sustain the North Pacific ocean pastures.

A remarkable man, a California ocean scientist that NASA honors with a special web page titled “On The Shoulders Of Giants” – John Martin who ran the Moss Landing Marine Research Station unraveled the Gordian Knot that is ocean pasture dust ecology back in the 1980’s.

Below is the political cartoon his earth-shattering scientific announcement sparked. John Martin received a higher calling as he succumbed to sudden cancer just weeks before the first of many open sea tests of his idea was performed. My work following in his charted course was a demonstration in 2012 in the world’s largest ocean ‘John Martin’ experiment. It proved without a shadow of a doubt that John’s math was spot on, just a half a shipload of iron ore rock dust is more than sufficient to bring all of the world’s ocean pastures back to health and abundance. The bit about creating an ice age was hyperbole. Restored ocean pastures can manage the lions share of mankind’s CO2, but not all.

Unraveling the Gordian Knot of Ocean Pasture Dust Ecology. It seems the elder President Bush approved.

We can do it, if we do it in time

To replenish and restore vast ocean pastures is a simple task, it doesn’t require large numbers of people, mere tens of people, not tens of thousands. It doesn’t take much time to carry out the work of being ocean stewards months every year, think of it like the care of any pasture. It won’t cost a fortune. Nothing like the trillions of dollars approved at the recent Paris Climate Change meeting and being promoted by billionaires and movie stars. Mere millions spent to restore and care for California’s ocean pastures will immediately bring those ‘sardine’ pastures back to a condition of health and abundance they and we once enjoyed. We don’t need a single penny of your tax dollars!

Click to read more

The proof of our success will be immediately revealed to us as billions of additional sardine swim in our restored California ocean pastures into our nets and onto our plates with far more remaining to feed all the sea lions, seals, sea birds, and all of ocean life.