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Document: Crescent City draft groundfish letter

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Crescent City councilors will decide if they should add their voices to others urging the Pacific Fisheries Management Council to allow the nearshore groundfish season to go forward in 2024.

Councilors will weigh in on a letter to the PFMC on Monday that questions the data scientists used to determine that quillback rockfish needed protection. The letter also argues that preventing the 2024 season to go forward would create a ripple effect that would decimate hotel tax and sales tax revenues.

The Council’s proposed letter also states that forcing anglers to go beyond the 50-fathom, or 300-foot, boundary is dangerous.

“Most of our sport fishermen have smaller boats that are not designed to handle the conditions this far offshore,” the city’s letter states. “Thus, fishing past the 50-fathom boundary is not a realistic or safe alternative for local sport fishermen.”

The Crescent City Council’s special meeting comes about three days before the deadline people have to submit statements for the PFMC’s briefing book for its November meeting in Garden Grove.

“This year was a partial closure. It was a surprise. It took everyone off guard, especially given some of the regulations and, from what I’m hearing, how they came about some of their data,” Crescent City Manager Eric Wier told the Council at its regular meeting earlier this week. “I think that needs to be looked at and that’s where the county has weighed in — on the data they collected through trawlers versus a hook and line survey to actually target where these fish live.”

At its September meeting in Spokane, the PFMC let a California Department of Fish and Wildlife decision to close the nearshore groundfish season to protect the quillback rockfish from being overfished stand. The department’s closure of the nearshore groundfish fishery statewide took effect Sept. 16.

At that meeting in Spokane, several PFMC members questioned data provided to the Council and the CDFW from the Northwest Science Center, pointing out a discrepancy in the data modeling versus what near-shore fishermen are experiencing.

Marc Gorelnik, an at-large PFMC member from California, questioned the Northwest Science Center’s findings that 28.6 percent of quillback rockfish stock were removed in one year when just 4.5 percent of copper rockfish, which coexists with the quillback, were taken.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that we can possibly remove that much quillback,” Gorelnik told his colleagues on the PFMC in September.

The Crescent City Council’s decision to hold a special meeting to weigh in on the future of the groundfish season came after Steve Huber, Crescent City Fishing Charters owner, said there was no way for him to recover the amount of money he lost when the 2023 season closed.

Huber will represent a group of local fishermen at the PFMC’s meeting in Garden Grove next month. He said he’s “asking for everyone to get together.”

“Crescent City is a huge destination spot. People just don’t realize that,” Huber said. “I take a lot of tours out and most of these people have never seen the ocean before. They’ve never seen a redwood tree. When these people don’t have the ability because they make their reservations a year in advance, now they’re going to hear fishing’s closed, where are we going to go? Somewhere else.”

Huber said he and his fellow fishermen are also calling for hook and line surveys to more accurately determined if quillback rockfish are being overfished.

The Crescent City Council’s special meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Monday at the Wastewater Treatment Facility, 210 Battery Street. Links to the meeting’s livestream and agenda packets are found here.

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