Making sustainable fishing


  • Photographer
    Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Company/Studios
    jpvimages
Story

Over the last decades, the Californian fishing industry maintained a continuous change that has been significant for local independent fishermen, commonly known as the ’’ Artisanal trawl boat ’’. As the main and absolute priority of the fishing industry has always been and will always remain sustainability, the Southern Californian Trawlers’ association, led by its president Captain Mike McCorkle, and the Californian Ocean Protection council are putting considerable efforts in finding common grounds in order to provide Californian with local wild caught fishes.

McCorkle has been a commercial fisherman on the Southern California coast for over 45 years. He has provided people with many all kinds of sea food s and products such as Halibuts, swordfishes, lobsters and sea cucumbers, just to name a few. In addition to his advocacy of sustainable fishing, he provides on a continuous basis research centres with various sea life samples.

Recently, the secretary for natural resources at the Californian Ocean Protection Council, John Laird, gave the Trawlers’ association the chance to comment on the strategic action plan that will take place for five years, from 2012 to 2017. In the analysis of the plan, both the Californian Ocean Protection Council and the Southern California Trawlers Association are agreeing to make the access to local seafood for Californian a priority. As this is a clear fact, the issue concerning the access to traditional fishing grounds for Californian trawlers surfaces.

Over the last years, the Southern Californian Trawlers’ association have worked with the Californian fish and game commission in order to bring scientific evidence to endorse artisanal trawling as a component part of sustainable fishing. At the end of 2011, in his official letter back to Laird to comment the five years plan, McCorkle writes:’’The (scientific) panel found, in the words of one commissioner, that our halibut trawl fishery had been held to the most stringent criteria ever applied to a fishery in California. After years of direct testimony and commission-requested collaborative studies (including subsea video of our nets and doors in action) by the Department, Sea Grant and our fishermen, the Commission found, that our fishery 1) minimizes bycatch, 2) is not harming the seafloor, 3) is not adversely affecting ecosystem health and 4) is not adversely affecting restoration efforts for kelp, coral and other biogenic habitat.’’

Over the last 15 to 20 years, regulations have been downsizing the accessible areas for southern Californian trawlers by thousands of square miles. This has led the current Californian sea food market to be dominated at 80-90% by imported fish from China, Korea, Indonesia, Mexico, Chile, Norway and Canada. More considerably, this practically absolute part of the market is dominated by low cost farmed raised and unsustainably fished products with environmental consequences that have already been accounted for in Californian local fisheries.

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