Lobster FMP meeting Oxnard 4-18

[Saba Slayer]

The DFG had their first Lobster FMP meeting last night in Oxnard. It went smoothly.
Christine Barsky (Head DFG invertabrea biologist) and Kai Lampson made their presentations and introduced the program to about 45 attendees.
It's a long process (almost 3 years)...the final draft will be presented to the DFG Commission in 2015. There were a lot of commercial guys there as well as some recreational hoopers and divers, and a few tree huggers ("steal the bay" and such) and some DFG science types.
The Advisory Committee will be made up of 12 members to reflect the diversity of interests.
2 marine science members and 1 alternate.
3 recreational divers and hoopers and 1 alt
3 commercial harvesters and buyers and 1 alt
2 non-consumptive recreational (cultural and wildlife) and 1 alt
1 environmental organization rep and 1 alt
1 federal agency member
ALL MEETINGS OF THE LOBSTER ADVISORY COMMITTEE WILL BE OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC FOR OBSERVATION AND PUBLIC COMMENT.

After the opening presentations the meeting was opened up to public comments and questions...most folks were fairly brief in their comments but a few guys had a lot to say. One commercial guy spent quite a bit of time talking about the transferable permits and possibly making a change in the numbers to eventually lower the number of permitted commercial lobster trappers. A limit on the number of traps per commercial trapper was mentioned. As of this time the commercial trappers can use as many traps as they can handle.
One of the recreational guys spent a good amount of time quoting from the recent lobster stock assessment about the lack of good numbers from our POOR report card returns. There were a few ideas tossed around on how to increase the returns...a penalty, fine, or no report card the next year, seemed to be the most common topic since the new license system makes it really easy to identify the non returns.
The lack of returns is a big issue and one that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. This FMP is all about science and numbers. IMHO, an immediate fix is in order to get the percentage of report cards up so that we have some good solid info (not guesses on 86% of our catch) to go along with the complete info and records the DFG has on the commercial guys.
A slot limit was mentioned many times and will be looked at. A mention of limiting the number of recreational hoopers and divers was brought up by a commercial guy...(not my favorite idea!).
I was asked by DFG to bring a couple of hoop nets and man a table to represent the recreational lobsterers. There were some interesting topics and questions asked...but the most disturbing was from the Heal the Bay girls...she wanted to talk about a study that was done in Spain on MPAs and lobsters in the closed areas and how well they are doing. We started to get into a heated discussion about closures vs. management when another Steal the Bay person came over and pulled the sweet young girl away before I could jump down her throat.
Joe Exline (Big Joe) and myself are applying for positions on the Advisory Committee so if you can't make a meeting or you have some creative input please get in touch with us and share your thoughts.
Jim / Saba Slayer