Angling to Keep Share of Squid Market

SAN DIEGO — Quick, name the California seafood that hauls in the biggest bucks.

The magnificent California king salmon? That perennial winner (and sushi delicacy) the sea urchin? The big white albacore?

Pikers all.

Try the squid, that slippery, bug-eyed mollusk with the cylindrical body, eight arms, two long tentacles and powerful suction cups.

The exploding market for calamari among Pacific Rim nations, most notably China, has turned squid into California’s number one oceangoing cash crop: 175 million pounds were caught last year worth $33.5 million to fishermen, with an even bigger haul expected this year.

And along with the big boost in tonnage and payments to fishers has come a big interstate controversy--which last week sparked an emotional, big-stakes battle of competing legislation in Sacramento.

*

At the nub of the controversy is the fact that fishers from Oregon, Washington and Alaska, eager to cash in on the calamari craze, have begun bringing their commercial boats to the coastal areas off Monterey, Santa Barbara and Ventura where squid are historically the thickest, and even as far south as Orange County.

The out-of-state boats, which tend to be bigger and better-equipped than California boats, now catch an estimated 30% of the squid, a figure that is expected to rise.

California commercial fishers are crying foul and saying that the rush of outsiders will deplete the squid population, in a repeat of the overfishing that nearly wiped out the abalone and sardines.

As incongruous as it may seem, California fishermen, a notoriously independent, get-government-off-our-boats kind of group, are angling for legislation to regulate squid fishing, which they call the state’s last unregulated fishery.

As it stands now, anybody who buys a fishing permit can take all the squid he or she can net. No limits, no seasons, no restrictions (except for no fishing on Saturday and Sunday).

The unlimited-entry rule for squid fishing is an anomaly in the West Coast commercial fishing trade. For most kinds of fish, state governments limit the number of fishing permits or the amount of catch

“What we have now is the Wild, Wild West in terms of squid fishing,” said Ann Nottoff of the National Resources Defense Council. “We have more and more boats chasing squid and the result could be disastrous.”

Nottoff’s group has joined the San Francisco-based Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns. in seeking limits on the number of squid boats.

“We’ve seen what has happened to other fisheries and if we don’t get some controls in fast we could also lose the squid fishery,” said Mike McHenry, a squid fisherman from Half Moon Bay in Northern California. “Greed from outsiders should not be allowed to kill the California squid fishery.”

Out-of-state squid fishermen say such talk is bilge, that what the California anglers really want is to restrict competition for this newly lucrative fishery.

“I don’t think the ruining-the-resource argument is legitimate,” said Rob Zuanich, executive director of the Seattle-based Purse Seiner Vessel Owners Assn. (A purse seiner is a boat that drops its nets, then pulls back in with a string, like shutting a purse.) “But it’s what gets people’s attention. It’s a great vehicle to get what they really want: to limit competition.”

Normally in such a dispute, there would be a call for marine scientists to settle the issue. Is the squid population facing depletion if the calamari market continues to boom or is that a phony issue, what would be called a red herring in other contexts?

The problem is that the last study done by the state Department of Fish and Game is more than two decades old. That study, completed in 1974, called squid one of the largest untapped resources off the California coast, but a lot of water has washed past the state since then.

*

The prediction last week by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that another El Nino is heading toward California makes the squid situation even more problematic. El Nino’s warm waters are anathema to squid and could force them away from the shallow, sandy coast.

Devoid of good numbers and buffeted by competing claims, the state Legislature is considering two bills, one favored by California fishers, one by the outsiders.

The Californians prefer a bill that limits the number of boats and gives preference to those that began fishing before the recent boom. The outsiders, many with boats capable of catching and storing more fish per sortie, prefer a limit on tonnage, not the number of boats.

“The whole thing stinks,” said Tim Sullivan, a Half Moon Bay squid fisherman who was in Channel Island Harbor last week for repairs on his boat. “You send people to Sacramento to represent you, not to represent out-of-state interests.”

What has Sullivan, and other squid fishers upset, is a bill by Assemblyman Lou Papan (D-Millbrae) that would, among other things, set an annual quota on the amount of squid that could be caught by the entire industry--much like the limits on the newlyrevived sardine fishery.

California fishers, particularly those with moderate-size boats, say a quota would work in favor of the larger boats from out of state that have greater refrigeration and greater range.

They fear that a quota could tempt some boat owners to push beyond the limits of safety rather than lose time by going into port to unload their catch before returning to fish.

“I don’t want to see myself or anybody lose a vessel or lives over a quota when there are other ways of closure to allow fish to reproduce,” said Joe Alfieri, captain of the Nicola J out of San Diego.

Many of the non-California boats are built to fish salmon off Alaska. With the salmon market depressed because of a glut, the boats are being sent to California.

“There is a real concern that our guys are going to be pushed off the water because they can’t compete with these newer boats,” said Diane Pleschner, manager of the Santa Barbara-based California Seafood Council.

Said state Sen. Dede Alpert (D-San Diego): “These outside boats are enormous, they’re modern and they have a lot more ability to take fish than the older boats that are common among California fishermen.”

What the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assn. would like is a cap on the number of boats allowed to fish squid, with rules that favor longtime squid fishermen-- read Californians--over new arrivals.

That philosophy was contained in a federation-backed bill by state Sen. Byron Sher (D-Redwood City), whose dogged approach to the issue has earned him the informal name of Senator Squid.

The Assembly Appropriations Committee last week endorsed the bill, but only after the provision about limiting the number of boats was dropped. Sher’s bill (SB364) would have Fish and Game conduct a three-year study of squid, with an eye toward developing a management plan. The study would be financed by fees on squid boats.

“It’s an important first step,” Nottoff said of the committee endorsement of the amended Sher bill. “You have to remember that California has had a dismal record of protecting fisheries.”

Until the limited-entry provision was dropped, Sher’s bill was opposed by the Seattle-based association and by the California squid processors based in the San Pedro-Wilmington area, Port Hueneme in Ventura County and Monterey.

California fish processors, flush with business to meet the growing Pacific Rim demand, are reluctant to support anything that could decrease the squid catch.

“Before we do anything to affect people’s livelihoods, we think we ought to know the status of the allowable catch,” said Rob Ross, executive director of the California Fisheries and Seafood Institute, a trade association of fish processors. “It might be 10 times what we’ve been taking or it might be half of what we’re taking.”

The Papan bill (AB1204) was amended to drop the quota provision before being endorsed last week by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Like the Sher bill, what remains is largely a call for a Fishand Game study of the squid population.

It is now up to the full Legislature to decide between the two bills or reject both.