SACRAMENTO, California (19 Mar 2003) -- The collapse of the West Coast's groundfish industry brings with it a chance to create a network of marine reserves that could ultimately benefit both fishermen and fish, say some of the nation's top marine scientists. They want the council that governs federal waters off the West Coast to follow the lead of California, which is creating a 175-square-mile network of marine reserves -- one of the nation's largest -- in state waters around the Channel Islands off Ventura County. Now is the time, they said, because the most sweeping fishing restrictions in the Pacific Coast's history already have shut down groundfish trawling from Canada to Mexico to protect nine bottom-dwelling species that have been declared overfished. From that crisis can come resurrection, said Oregon State University fisheries expert Mark Hixon, a member of a new federal advisory panel on marine protected areas. "The disaster's already taken place," he said, so reserves can be set up now without further disrupting the already devastated fisheries. Had such reserves been in place, there might have been no need for such draconian restrictions, said Jane Lubchenco, an OSU marine ecologist and member of National Academy of Sciences. | | Among their benefits, marine reserves provide "insurance" in the event of overfishing as was the case along the West Coast. Just as important, reserves let at least some fish live to a ripe old age, which is where the benefit to fishermen begins, she and Hixon said. Old, big fish produce the most young over the longest period of time each season, young that will migrate outside the reserve network and into areas where they can be fished. That's particularly important for rockfish that can live to 90 years and produce young only sporadically. Young produced by older fish even grow faster and are more likely to survive starvation. Yet those fish are the very ones most valuable to fishermen and so are most likely to be removed from the breeding population. Hixon studied research on 13 of the 19 small reserves already scattered along the West Coast and found fish within the protected areas were 13 percent to 25 percent larger and produced three to 25 times as many eggs. A January report by the Pew Oceans Commission said reserves encompassing entire ecosystems are needed to help the ocean recover from overfishing, pollution, erosion, coastal development and offshore oil drilling and mining. SOURCE - Bellingham Herald |
