DFW WSB FMP meeting 4/13

[Saba Slayer]

I attended a WSB Fishery Management Plan meeting on Friday the 13th with Chuck Valle, Kathy Johnson, and Kim Walker from the DFW and on the other side of the table were three commercial trawler/gill net fishermen, and Steve Crooke, Wayne Kotow and myself. It was a very small group considering the contentious meeting Bill, John and I had sat in on Tuesday at the OREHP WSB meeting.
After the meeting I just had to make this comment to the Department and the commercial guys…”This was the best, most informative, and collaborative meeting I have ever been to with the DFW….Thanks.”…and…They all agreed…!
Chuck and Kim worked with us on every issue. When the catch numbers looked down on the graph, we discussed the many factors involved…when I brought up the water temp and forage being factors in the warm water years…chuck produced a graph for each (squid and water temps) that corresponded perfectly with the drop in catch numbers. Wayne discussed the fact the there was no effort to hunt the WSB when all that Yellowtail and Tuna was around the last few years and the Department noted the fact and was cognizant of this. Because of the warm water El Nino conditions and the potential that the biomass of WSB moved north based on the sizable catches of WSB in Northern California, the commercial guys were very helpful at explaining the movements of the fish, as relates to water temp and forage based on their years of experience on the water. This brought up the lack of data from the Mexican WSB catches and what a big hole that is in our research. Kim will be more intent on trying to get that data from customs or the health authorities with some of the ideas that we tossed around at the table. It was brought up that perhaps Ken Frankie at SAC could help. Steve Crooke an ex-employee of the department offered to help track this info down and work with SAC to get the data.
The bottom line is that the Department will be making notations explaining that the drops in catch could be attributed to these factors when they present their report to the DFG Commission.
After the meeting it was great to hear the commercial guys and the Department thank CCA CAL for our continued efforts to work at finding ways to communicate and find solutions.
Wayne and I even spent some time after the meeting discussing with commercial fisherman Mike McCorkle about a possible collaborative effort on Halibut tagging.

All in all, it was the best experience I’ve ever had at the DFW office.

If there are any of you that are really interested I have plenty of graphs and numbers if you'd like a look at them...But I won't be posting them up here.
Just PM me if you need some data...