MLPAI Closures Target Shelter Cove Area

MLPAI Closures Target Shelter Cove Hook-and-Line Fishery

by John Lewallen

February 1, 2011

Contact: Susan Sack or Don Sack, home (707)986-1639

"Shelter Cove is a sacrifice zone in the so-called Unified Array of new Marine Protected Areas proposed for California’s North Coast by the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative process. Shelter Cove area closures threaten to kill the sustainable hook-and-line recreation and commercial fishery here, for no good reason. The near shore ecosystem on the North Coast is healthy and does not need protecting. That’s why the Shelter Cove community is united for Option Zero: no new Marine Protected Areas for California’s North Coast. Once these areas are established they can be enlarged or moved even over local objections."

Susan Sack, Administrative Secretary of the Shelter Cove Resort Improvement District and wife of third-generation commercial hook-and-line fisherman Don Sack, is frustrated and angry. In a January 24 letter to Senator Noreen Evans, she wrote:

"Fishing regulations around Shelter Cove are already the most restrictive on the Pacific Coast, in fact the planet. With the creation of new Marine Protected Areas within state waters many popular fishing areas are being closed off to fishing. My husband is already being forced to fish areas farther and farther from home with the existing regulations and small open areas are seeing a more concentrated fishing effort and they are not adequate to keep our sustainable hook-and-line fishery healthy. Our family’s fishing business is facing bankruptcy and we are facing a future with no other job opportunities in our small coastal community or the surrounding area."

The remote Humboldt County community of Shelter Cove is home port to a fleet of about fifteen full and part-time commercial hook-and-line fishers, operating from small boats in state waters. "Shelter Cove’s small independent hook-and-line fishers are a disadvantaged group with few resources, living from paycheck to paycheck, so dedicating time away from putting food on the table to attend countless meetings with unsympathetic MLPAI staff is not an option," Sack explained to Senator Evans.

Susan Sack delivered a petition signed by one thousand Shelter Cove residents, visitors and other local directly affected stakeholders to Assemblyman Wes Chesbro on January 21, calling for no expansion of the existing MPAs on the North Coast and proposing the State protect California’s existing MPAs from mineral extraction, aquaculture, pollution, energy farms and other damaging manmade effects. "All the board members of our local government, the Shelter Cove Resort Improvement District signed my petition, rejecting the Unified Array, and supporting Option Zero," she said.

Sack noted that federal NOAA regulations already favor factory trawlers who operate in federal waters outside the three-mile nearshore zone governed by the State of California. "Most of our traditional fishing grounds have already been taken away and these were outside of three miles. These are now in the 'Rockfish Conservation Area' which only allows midwater trawlers to fish.

"NOAA has implemented an Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) for bottom fish that only allows trawlers to qualify," she wrote. "This will not only guarantee discard forever (trawlers waste about half of their catch) but will take away many well-paying sustainable quality jobs from small disadvantaged ports such as Shelter Cove and give them to corporate processors who pay employees poorly, sometimes just room and board on ship, and force them to live on board for long periods of time....The federal government favors the trawling industry because they catch all of their quotas in spite of bad weather and guarantee the maximum fishing assessment payment. The fact that they discard more of the biomass than they keep is not even a concern. Our small (mosquito) fleet lands their fresh catch daily. IFQ permit holders were recently given a large increase to their quotas of groundfish (from 83% to 90% of all groundfish) at the expense of recreational, subsistence and small hook and liners."

Sack wrote that her husband Don, who fishes from a seventeen-foot boat and has forty-five years experience catching bottom fish, does not qualify for a federal quota and cannot pass his Nearshore Permit on to his son. "More jobs would be created if traditional sustainable fishing families could be included in the IFQ program and be able to pass on their permits to their children. It would be a very efficient way to catch target fish with no discard. It should be about employing as many people in the least destructive and sustainable way."

Susan Sack's letter to Senator Evans concludes, "Please stop this corporate takeover of resources, suspend the MLPAI implementation and work to promote our caring local sustainable fishing communities instead of global consortiums who will put money before the health of our oceans or the Californian people."