Coastal Services Center

Protecting seafloor habitat often can result in lost income for some fishermen. Two nonprofit organizations have found a way to protect 3.8 million acres of California ocean bottom while simultaneously helping a troubled fishery.

For the past three years, the Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense worked cooperatively with fishermen and other groups to decide on important Central California marine habitats to close off from trawling and presented those recommendations to the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

In exchange—and upon the council's implementation of the suggested no-trawl zones—the Nature Conservancy agreed to buy fishermen's trawl permits and vessels to help relieve the economic burden, making it the first private organization to buy Pacific fishing permits and boats for conservation purposes.

"The ocean is the brave new world of resource management," says Rod Fujita, an Environmental Defense senior scientist and a partner in the program. "Governance in the ocean is evolving rapidly, so we need new tools like buyouts with quid pro quo attachments that embody a new social contract. In exchange for the privilege of profiting from the public's fish and investments in the fishery, fishermen must share the responsibility for protecting the resources held in trust for all of us."

While this agreement is specific to Central California, many of those interviewed express hopes that this type of cooperative fisheries management could be implemented elsewhere.

"It's got to be driven by environmental groups and the fishing community," notes Steve Copps, senior policy analyst with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Region. "What managers have to do is stay out of the way and let the organic processes unfold."

Troubled Industry

The Pacific groundfish trawling industry has seen hard times. NOAA has declared six species of groundfish depleted, and trawl fishing revenues have fallen from $110 million in 1987 to $35 million in 2003.

Part of the economic decline is because trawl fishing is the "most fuel-intensive way to catch fish," says Christopher Kubiak, a Morro Bay fisherman for over 20 years who sold his permit and vessel to the Nature Conservancy. One of the reasons he sold, he says, is that for the past 10 years, expenses kept going up, but the amount he got for his catch didn't.

Many fishermen blame regulations and fisheries closures for the industry's economic hardships, but Kubiak, whose brother, father, and grandfather also were fishermen, says that wasn't true in his case. "I was actually allowed to catch a lot more fish than I did, but if I caught them I wasn't able to sell them for enough money."

Overcoming Conflict

As part of its Global Marine Initiative and the new California Coastal and Marine Program headed by Chuck Cook, the Nature Conservancy wanted to protect the waters off California's central coast because they include large offshore banks, rocky reefs, kelp beds, coral gardens, and some of North America's largest and deepest underwater canyons—all supporting a diversity of wildlife.

A 2002 National Academy of Sciences report that documented the negative environmental effects of bottom trawling became a "guiding light," says Cook, and he and Fujita took to heart the report's recommendations to protect seafloor communities by not only creating protected areas, but also reducing fishing outside those areas.

They knew, however, that this would be a hard sell for an already troubled fishery.

"There had to be a way to offset the social and economic costs of closing areas and doing marine conservation," Cook says. "We thought, ‘Why don't we try to use private money to help forward the process of reducing pressure from the fishing industry and still allow for fishing opportunities?'"

"We came to the conclusion," Fujita says, "that the solution would involve addressing the underlying economic issues facing fishermen, rather than just continuing to impose more stringent conservation regulations. We're attracted to an approach based on consensus building, good science, and aligning market forces with conservation. We came up with a new way to achieve habitat protection goals that is also compatible with the goals of keeping areas open to fishing, healthy fishing communities, and economic benefits."

Deal Making

Using computer-based models, the Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense scientists mapped out three areas that could protect about two-thirds of the overall biodiversity along the ocean shelf off the coast of Central California.

With the Nature Conservancy's portfolio of sites in hand, Cook and Fujita approached Morro Bay trawl fishermen to work together to develop a plan.

At first, the environmental groups' request to work together was not viewed by many fishermen as a "good thing, but in the end it worked out to be a great thing," says Jeremiah O'Brien, president of the Morro Bay Commercial Fisherman's Organization.

O'Brien notes, "These were two of the larger, more established organizations, and they didn't seem to be anti-fishing. They seemed to want to legitimately work with us."

Finding the Sweet Spot

The fishermen and environmental groups proposed protecting 3,835,000 acres of valuable habitat—about two-thirds of which is in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary—while preserving "sweet spots" of productive fishing grounds that will enable trawlers to continue their livelihoods, Fujita says.

They first brought the plan to central coast harbormasters and the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Center for the Future of the Oceans to address concerns and develop consensus for the plan. The group would come to be the Fishing Heritage Group.

"The consensus plan that emerged was based on good science, good conservation values, and good faith," Fujita says.

To offset economic impacts on the industry and to lessen the fishery impact outside the closed area, the Nature Conservancy committed to purchasing the permits and vessels of those wishing to get out of the business, if the no-trawl zones were approved.

"This was wonderful," O'Brien says. "In the past, they would have come up with a plan, and naturally we would have hated it. So we would have crafted a plan, and they would have hated it. We would have yelled and screamed and thrown rocks, and the council would have designed a compromise between the two.

"In this case," he says, "we sat down at the table and jointly developed this plan and were able to present it to the Pacific Fishery Management Council with a nice ribbon around it. It was a win, win, win, all around the table."

Unanimous Approval

With the fishermen and conservationists in agreement, the plan easily made it through the NOAA and Pacific Fishery Management Council's normally contentious regulatory process.

In June 2005, the fishery council unanimously approved the no-trawl zone map, and the U.S. secretary of commerce signed the map and additional closed areas into regulation in May 2006. The Morro Bay agreement was accepted as part of a coastwide plan to protect nearly 150,000 square miles of essential fish habitat from Mexico to Canada.

"When you put this into the context of the larger coastwide action of implementing this massive network of closed areas," says NOAA Fisheries' Steve Copps, "what's different about this is the expenditure of private money to help offset the consequences of a public action."

Purchase Agreement

So far, the Nature Conservancy has purchased six federal trawling permits and four trawling vessels from commercial fishermen in Morro Bay, says Cook. Negotiations are underway with fishermen on similar deals to protect areas off Monterey Bay and Half Moon Bay to the north.

For now, the Nature Conservancy is holding idle the permits and harvest rights it has acquired. Cook and Fujita have the idea, however, of developing a plan to lease back some permits to central coast fishermen who would use selective fishing gear that would provide a more sustainable way to harvest groundfish.

Fishermen are anxious for the opportunity to market more "ocean-friendly" seafood, but the plan will require the revamping of the current permit structure.

Wait and See Attitude

There is general enthusiasm expressed for the collaborative process and resulting agreement, and most believe the process could work in other places.

"It absolutely would apply to other areas," says Christopher Kubiak. "The first part is that fishermen would just have to think that it's possible."

"We need to wait and see how this works," Cook advises. "This was never designed as a model, replicable project. It was designed around a lot of situational analysis and current events specific to the central coast of California. I don't think we could walk into Oregon or Washington State and find a situation and replicate it. There's a different constituency and political situation."

Fujita believes, "We may be able to replicate some aspects of the project down the line, under certain circumstances. This was about using private money to offset the social and economic cost of habitat protection. Traditionally, we've depended on the government to take that role. I think we'll see the private sector stepping up to make sure it's done, and make sure there's a public trust benefit."

"What we see from the federal perspective," says Copps, "is here's this group spending millions of dollars to purchase permits and build a collaborative team with fishermen. That's very different, and it's got enormous potential to be expandable to other regions. It takes money, it takes a commitment to work at the community level, and it takes a community willing to work like that."

He adds, "Our job as managers is to facilitate creative thinking and help bring it into the federal process."

"This might be a whole entirely new way of doing business," says Jeremiah O'Brien. "It would be good for everyone if it is."

For more information on the Nature Conservancy's Global Marine Initiative, go to www.nature.org/initiatives/marine/. You may contact Chuck Cook at (805) 646-8820, or ccook@tnc.org, or Rod Fujita at (510) 326-6065, or rfujita@environmentaldefense.org. Contact Steve Copps at (206) 526-6187, or Steve.Copps@noaa.gov. Jeremiah O'Brien can be reached at (805) 772-9037. Contact Christopher Kubiak at (805) 441-4838, or ckub@sbcglobal.net.