After big Market Squid catch last two years, to decline (WSB too?)

http://www.mercurynews.com/san-mateo-county-times/ci_22111419/squid-fishermen-wrap-up-another-banner-year

After a couple of big years of WSB fishing, can we expect a downturn along with the squid catch due to warming waters?

Yeah let's hope that is not the case. Wsb has become one if my staple diets in the winter I would be lost without it.

Much of the catch is exported to China.

In 2005 the state established a catch-limit system under which the season is shut down once 118,000 tons of market squid are caught. The catch has exceeded that amount in recent years,
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   Looks like they have WAY over exceeded that amount.     This is our F&G  allowing a "  take all you can export" rule once again.   We did this in Monterey to the Sardine populations.    In Alaska with the King Crab  over harvesting a species...most of it for export. 
      It's not "Sustainable Fishing" practices.          Get ready to add a 10 dollar report card fee for WSB...

What exactly is unsustainable? they're not taking all they can if they have quotas and last year they only went over by 3 tons, 6k pounds isn't so bad considering the total catch is about 260 million lbs.  not sure if this years data is available yet.  I don't think exporting to china is that bad either.  I'm not wanting for squid, it's still reasonably cheap and it's foreign money coming into our economy. Plus they're u.s jobs. 

Speaking of WSB, I did a real quick project to see how much WSB has been harvested from Monterey Bay over the last decade and here's the breakdown below.
All info from http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/fishing.asp (the part that says Commercial Landings). The Monterey Bay region includes Monterey, Moss, and Santa Cruz/Cap.

2011: 109,629 lbs!
2010: 76,455 lbs
2009: 15,043 lbs
2008: 2,388 lbs
2007: 2,889 lbs
2006: 2,292 lbs
2005: 71 lbs
2004: 180 lbs
2003: 7,685 lbs
2002: 23,333 lbs
2001: 54,692 lbs
2000: 24,475 lbs


Also, I'm not sure if anybody knew but the WSB record was broken recently (well, kinda recent...it was in Oct 2011). New record is 79lbs even. Caught from "Pajaro River Mouth" LOL! http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/anglingrecords.asp

   Reads,,    "  five Southern Cal Seafood vessels that needed to unload about 320  tons of squid."

     Declining bait stock =  declining fisheries.       Notice the 2005  take of WSB was nearly nil...  the same year Squid populations were at low with harvest levels set at  118,000 tons   

     Not like all the boats are US registered vessels either.   The US doesn't restrict foreign fishing vessels in our waters.

 

Your interpretation seems a bit off there bro.  The epic Seabass seasons up here are an anomaly and not the norm. 

The article quoted noted that Northern California experienced a couple solid years of cold water and upwelling which boosted the biomass of squid. The abundance of squid is what drew in the bass.  When the bass were here they were congregating around the squid and easy to locate.  This increased harvest.  Vice versa, in years where there wasn't big concentrations of squid because the ocean conditions weren't favorable, the bass had no reason to travel north and those that did were to scattered to effectively target. Which is why the commercial take was low.


Fwiw, SoCal has been seeing a noticeably improved bass population since they started the hatchery program and stopped nearshore gillnetting.  The increased numbers may keep driving fish north even though the squid is on a downward cycle. 

And any boat that participates in the squid fishery needs a commercial permit to do so.  Boats aren't coming from china to seine are squid under the radar.