Newport Beach comes to dory’s defense
June Casagrande
As the fate of the city’s dory fishermen continues to teeter on
the fine print of fishing regulations, city leaders are taking up the
battle on the dory fleet’s behalf.
Led by Mayor Tod Ridgeway, the city is sending letters to two
federal agencies imploring them to change the rules just enough to
save the six families who subsist on catching and selling small hauls
of fish in local waters.
“The dory fleet is just too important to the history and the
tourism economy and to locals,” Ridgeway said. “It would be terrible
to lose that.”
After a quick scramble up a steep learning curve on fisheries
management, city leasers have requested that an emergency ban on
catching rockfish be modified to exclude enough of the types of fish
to allow the dory fleets to survive.
On July 1, an emergency ban on catching species categorized as
rockfish in waters 120 feet or deeper along the Pacific Coast went
into effect in response to dramatically depleted stocks of the
rockfish boccacio. On paper, the rule rendered dead the city’s
historic dory fleet, those fishermen whose history dates back to the
late 1800s and who depend on rockfish species such as thorny heads
for their survival.
In response to a sudden outcry from and on behalf of the dory
fleet, federal regulators of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council
and the National Marine Fisheries Service decided to reconsider a
portion of the ban. Thornyheads and sable fish less than 22 inches
should be exempt from the ban, recommended L.B. Boydstun, a member of
the Pacific Fisheries Management Council. While federal regulators
are expected to agree that thornyheads should be exempt, sablefish
could be the sticking point.
“There’s some resistance on the issue of the sablefish,” Boydstun
said. “It’s possible that that one won’t be reversed.”
The city and the dory fleet are hoping that won’t be the case.
“I respectfully request the council’s reconsideration of the
recently-adopted limit on the catch of sablefish which are less than
22’’ in length and caught south of 36nternational N Latitude,” Ridgeway implores
in the letter dated Wednesday to be sent to Donald McIsaac, executive
director of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, and William
Robinson of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The city believes that fish stocks in Southern California, where
warm waters mean smaller sablefish, don’t warrant the same harsh
restrictions. City officials are also questioning whether the
emergency ban was legal under fisheries management guidelines.
“If a scientific assessment has not been done of the sablefish
population south of 36nternational N Latitude, we believe that the council’s own
regulations and prudent practice direct such an assessment to be done
prior to the imposition of the 22’’ size limit,” Ridgeway’s letter
noted.
“That may be something that the legal people have to examine,”
Boydstun said.
* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport.
She may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at
june.casagrande@latimes.com.
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