Field Notes

Landing a Connection

California's Marine Sanctuaries Incorporate Local Knowledge into Fisheries Data

By Ben Donaldson

Jeremy Dierks is a young, yet seasoned halibut, crab, and tuna fisherman from Bolinas, California. Occasionally he hunts salmon, when fellow fishermen pass word of fishing that is too good to miss. After Dierks hauls his catch back to port, a processor, or fish buyer, records his results on a landing receipt that assigns his catch to "market categories" and "fishing blocks."

Market categories are based on the common names for fish sold at fish markets in California and in many cases include multiple species. The fishing blocks are a gridwork developed by the California Department of Fish and Game to locate fishing effort in coastal waters.

The landing receipts then travel to the Los Alamitos Fish and Game office, where the data is entered into a central database. The information obtained from fish buyers is then made available to Connie Ryan, a Fish and Game research manager and marine biologist stationed in the Belmont office, who coordinates the management and regulation of commercial and recreational fisheries. Ryan has worked with these datasets for 13 years, and her analysis of them contributes to the management decisions that are made for California's nearshore and several other state-managed fisheries.

For years Dierks has been recording his landings and Ryan has been analyzing landings datasets, but until recently the two had never had a chance to discuss the data that connect them. On a rainy December morning in 2004, they — along with 30 other commercial and recreational fishermen, federal and state employees, and non-profit representatives — finally met to do just that.

The gathering was part of a project conducted by Ecotrust, a non-profit organization based in Portland, Oregon. Ecotrust is working with the Cordell Bank and Gulf of Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries to standardize, assess, and spatially analyze fisheries data for the sanctuaries, located along the mid-California coast.

Astrid Scholz, project leader and ecological economist for Ecotrust, is upbeat about the process. "These fishermen and agency folks are engaging in a new conversation. Basically, they are jointly creating a consensus map of information that can inform management decisions."

The project got rolling in late 2003 when Ecotrust received landings data from Fish and Game that was then ground-truthed and supplemented by fieldwork. Last summer, Ecotrust employees traveled from port to port, conducting interviews with fishermen. First they asked each fisherman to draw outlines representing his or her preferred fishing areas on a map. Then they asked each individual to rate the relative economic importance of the outlined areas by apportioning 100 imaginary pennies amongst them. These fishermen's representations of catch geographies allowed Scholz and Ecotrust GIS Analyst Charles Steinback to revisit the Fish and Game datasets with corroborative information in hand.

"If we can use the fishermen's local knowledge to improve the spatial accuracy of Fish and Game data," explains Scholz, "management decisions can be based on information that both the agency and the fishermen understand and appreciate."

The results are a series of maps, arranged by species, that illustrate the value that both fishermen and Fish and Game datasets assign to each area of coastal waters. At the meeting, a pair of crab maps caught the attention of the participants right away. While popular interpretation of Fish and Game datasets pointed to crab catch 90 miles offshore — where 2,000-fathom water is inhospitable to crabs and inaccessible to local fishing vessels — the Ecotrust interview process placed the range of crab fishing intensity much closer to land.

It turns out that the discrepancy is an artifact of the reporting process. Because spatial analysis of the datasets had never been a priority, reporting has been inconsistent over the years. Processors often neglected to assign crab catch to a specific block, instead using a particular deep-water block as a convenient catch-all for reporting crab landings. It is a habit that, in the spatial analysis, led to its designation as the most important crab area in all of California. These days though, with the prospect of nearshore waters being closed to protect declining fish stocks, the locations of economically productive waters becomes crucial information.

Now that the interviews have been used to improve Fish and Game data, Scholz and Steinback will be working to document the value of sanctuary waters compared to other areas of the ocean and to illustrate the effect of sanctuary productivity on local economies by tracing the data back to specific ports. Both analyses will help the National Marine Sanctuaries as they address upcoming management decisions for these waters.

As Dierks, Ryan, and the rest of the attendees filed out of the conference room, all agreed that the analysis of Ecotrust's Scholz and Steinback was a huge step in the right direction. Dan Howard, manager of the Cordell Banks National Marine Sanctuaries affirmed, "I think people were totally comfortable with using the personal interview information to constrain the landings data and get a much more realistic picture of where the fishing effort is occurring."

For Scholz and Steinback, facilitating important conversations about the future of the sanctuaries is rewarding work.

"The amazing thing about today," said a satisfied Steinback, "was that we had representatives from two different non-profits, from both the state and federal governments, and from the commercial fishing industry all together in one room with a common goal in mind — the health of the sanctuaries."

Field Notes

Landing a Connection

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