NEW LIMITS ROCKFISH CATCH ANGER SPORT-FISHERMEN.

Byline: Bill Becher Special to the Daily News

Southern California's recreational sport-fishing fleet, already under fire from proposed no-fishing marine reserves, took another hit with the closure of California's recreational fishery for shelf rockfish, such as bocaccio and lingcod, in ocean waters 20 fathoms (120 feet) and deeper.

The California Department of Fish and Game, responding to federal action by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, made the changes effective July 1 until the end of the season. According to federal assessments, bocaccio have declined to about 5 percent of their original numbers.

Biologists said the emergency closure is needed because the annual harvest limits for bocaccio have been met and the fish, also called salmon grouper, are in trouble.

Southern California sport-fishing captains said the biologists should go fishing. They said if the scientists did, they'd find that bocaccio are plentiful in the Southern California bight.

``Fishing is phenomenal. I've never seen it better,'' said Tim Overstreet, captain of the Coral Sea berthed at Cisco's Sportfishing at the Channel Islands Harbor. ``You can't get away from bocaccio - everywhere you stop, you catch bocaccio.''

The sport-fishing fleet spends a lot of its time trying to avoid areas with bocaccio because of the two-fish limit, according to Overstreet.

``Its basically garbage-in, garbage-out data,'' said Frank Ursetti, owner of the Coral Sea and a board member of the Sportfishing Association of California.

``There hasn't been a comprehensive assessment of rockfish stock in the Southern California bight since 1976. So how on earth do the DFG and the PFMC and their scientists even attempt to manage a resource they don't have any current data on?''

But the disconnect between what the sport-fishing fleet is seeing in Southern California and the biologists' advice is rooted in the nature of bocaccio reproduction, said Milton Love, associate research biologist at the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara.

``Most of the bocaccio they are seeing are about 3 years old and were born in 1999,'' said Love. ``That's about all the bocaccio there are, that one-year class. You can't sustain a fishery if you've only got one-year class.''

Love used a hunting analogy to explain what he's seeing.

``Let's say you were a deer hunter and all through California all the deer you find are a year-and-a-half old,'' Love said. ``There are no adults and no fawns. Hunters might say maybe we shouldn't hunt for few years until there are some more deer. In a way, that's what's going on in the ocean.''

A combination of over-fishing by commercial and recreational anglers and about 20 years of poor ocean conditions for bocaccio reproduction are the problem, Love said. Then in 1999, cold water came at just the right time. That led to ``pretty good'' numbers of bocaccio according to Love, but he is quick to point out that ``pretty good'' is not ``good.''

``Nobody remembers what a good year class was because the last time there was a really good year class was about 1976,'' he said.

``When sport-fishing skippers go out and catch a lot of bocaccio, they say, 'What's the problem? Happy days are here again,' '' Love said. ``If this were to happen year after year and you let the fish grow up and become adults, I would agree. But that hasn't happened yet. Happy days are not here. Vaguely optimistic days are here but only vaguely.

``I really sympathize with the sport guys and the commercial people because they think biologists are insane,'' Love said. ``But I go down in a submarine and I count the fish. They don't. ... I've looked at major reefs throughout most of Southern California from depths of 100 to 1,200 feet. I've gone as much as 120 miles off the coast and it's more or less the same story. Places that people have been fishing for a long time are just hammered.''

Love responded to criticism by sport anglers of stock-assessment data by pointing out that a variety of methods are used to assess fish stocks, including annual larvae counts. Bocaccio give live birth - their young are called larvae. Counting their numbers correlates to the number of adult fish.

``I would agree that stock assessment is not the most precise science, but it's getting a lot better. It's clear for bocaccio their numbers have gone down radically since the '60s.''

Love faulted sport and commercial anglers for not taking responsibility for their own actions. ``It's like the fish they caught don't count,'' Love said. ``I helped partially wipe out bocaccio in Santa Monica Bay when I was a kid. I don't see why other people can't just say, 'I have a responsibility.' ''

The sport fishers don't blame the commercial anglers, saying they caught what they were allowed to catch. They suggest overly optimistic catch limits in the past are partly to blame.

``The reality is certain rockfish species have been hideously over-fished,'' Love said. ``And it hardly matters who did it. The only way to bring them back is catch very few of them.''

The good news for sport fishers is that the PFMC rejected a proposal to halt fishing at the 10-fathom depth, which would have closed an even greater area.

``If they move us inside 10 fathoms it will devastate this whole industry,'' said Ursetti, owner of the Coral Sea.

Robert Fletcher, president of the Sportfishing Association of California and a former member of the PFMC, said boats that target game fish such as barracuda, white sea bass, tuna and albacore will have less difficulty with the new regulations than the three-quarter-day boats that rely a lot on the rockfish.

``If the rockfishing opportunity is taken away, there are some boats that will struggle to survive,'' Fletcher said. ``Especially if in the next couple of years it gets worse than what they've implemented now.''

For the 2003 season, the PFMC groundfish management team is recommending no more than six metric tons of bocaccio be removed by all recreational or commercial fishing.

NEW REGULATIONS

The new regulations adopted by the California Department of Fish and Game effective July 1, 2002 mean no fishing for rockfish, lingcod or ocean white fish in waters deeper than 20 fathoms (120 feet).

This does not affect fishing for other species, such as white seabass, yellowtail, halibut, barracuda or sand or calico bass. It does mean that you will not be able to possess any rockfish, lingcod or whitefish if fishing in waters deeper than 20 fathoms.

Inside 20 fathoms, anglers will be allowed 10 rockfish as part of the total daily bag limit of 20 fish. Included in the 10 rockfish limit, you will be able to have two shelf species such as reds and chili's if they were caught within 20 fathoms but none of ``over-fished'' species such as bocaccio, yelloweye, canary or cowcod.

Fishing for scorpionfish, whitefish and lingcod in waters deeper than 20 fathoms also is prohibited under the new regulations.

If you fish in waters less than 20 fathoms first and catch rockfish, you will not be able to fish in waters deeper than 20 fathoms with those rockfish on board.

The closure area applies to waters south of Cape Mendocino. The regulations apply based on depth of water, not distance from land, out to 200 miles.

The DFG says this closure does not affect fishing for sand bass, kelp bass, cabezon and many other species.

Other fisheries unaffected by the closure include salmon, striped bass, halibut, albacore, barracuda, white seabass and yellowtail among others. Many of these deeper-waters species can be taken in waters greater than 20 fathoms.

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NEW REGULATIONS (see text)