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Fish Talk / Re: Bad news for near-shore fishing at Albion & to Central Coast on Sept 1
« on: August 24, 2023, 08:48:33 PM »I finally connected with James Phillips, who made the decision to close the nearshore fishery. Interesting conversation. He was very open and forthright about the rationale and the way in which CDFW manages these fisheries. I encourage everyone who has a serious interest in learning about the way this all works to contact him.
He sent me a link to one of the documents that bears on this matter: https://www.pcouncil.org/documents/2022/11/h-4-a-supplemental-gmt-report-3.pdf/
It's only decipherable to those with some scientific background. Fortunately that includes me.
Unfortunately my initial read-through suggests there is some very bad science going into these decisions. In this specific case, as I suspected, there appears to be little or no actual data specific to Quillbacks on post-release mortality, especially if using a descender. So the numbers used in their modeling are based on grouping all the demersal (bottom-dwelling) rockfish together - meaning the same numbers are applied to Quillbacks and Gophers. As I am sure most of you will agree, these two species are vastly different; Gophers almost never swim back down on their own, Quillbacks almost always do. So I fear there is bad science here that is leading to poor decisions.
There's more and it will take me some time to really dig into it. One other disturbing fact he related is that the entire Quillback population from Cape Mendocino to Pigeon Point is treated as one number. So regardless of what happened here in Mendocino, if the numbers from San Francisco look bad, we lose.
? ass/u/me... poor research methodology and/or inconclusive, nevertheless, poor decisions are made anyway or in an irrational manner for us fishers. This situation is not fun, but actually rather sad. And yes, I also have a degree in natural resources management... and $7.00 still get me a great beer at Wolf House Brewing Co like everyone else.
"I think I just want to go home now" - Forrest Gump....replaced with the words of Dr.Dave...I just want to go fishing now