Northern California Abalone Opening a Big
Success
Better-than-average weather conditions during the opening of abalone season allowed divers to cash in on the tasty mollusk. Most divers returned to shore with full limits and reported a large numbers among near-shore rocks. Winter storms have ended and the good weather promises a fine spring diving season.
The January edition of Pacific Fisheries has an article "Ban on Spot Prawn Trawling Scrapped," where a prawn trawler's catch was described. By-catch, undesired animals tossed back into the sea usually dead or dying, consisted of 480 pounds of invertebrates&emdash;starfish, crab, anemones, and urchins&emdash;and 1626 pounds of fish. For 30 hours of towing, the prawn catch was 450 pounds, or 17 percent of the total catch, 83 percent by-catch. This article doesn't address the invertebrates that were crushed under the roller gear or the damage to habitat caused by the 43 boats engaged in this fishery. This is an enormous amount waste even if it is a small fishery.
Halibut Fishing Nets Killing Marine Birds and Mammals
Thousands of sea birds and hundreds of marine mammals are being entangled and killed in fishing nets in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary&emdash;and it's all perfectly legal. The carnage is caused by commercial fishing boats that lay gill nets in the sanctuary to catch halibut. Biologists with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency that manages the sanctuary, estimate that up to 2,500 murres and more than 100 porpoises may be killed by the gill net fleet each year. Sea otters, California sea lions, harbor seals, and elephant seals have also been killed.
