High-tech boat launched into turbulent waters of fishery management

By: DENIS DEVINE - Staff writer | Saturday, March 5, 2005 10:46 PM PST ∞

The Oscar Dyson slipped out of San Diego Harbor on Tuesday with little fanfare and less sound, but it was weighted down with expectations and high-tech gadgetry. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hopes its first new ship in 25 years will help reel in an answer to a key question in its efforts to manage the oceans: How many fish are in the sea?

It's a simple question with no simple answers and billions of dollars in the balance.

NOAA Fisheries is the Commerce Department agency charged with "the stewardship of living marine resources through science-based conservation and management, and the promotion of healthy ecosystems." But the devil's in the details, specifically, the science upon which that conservation and management are based. Every attempt by NOAA scientists and regulators to set limits on fishing hinges on a scientific estimate of fish populations that regularly enrages the fishing industry and environmentalists alike.

Conservation efforts on land snag on the same hook. Population estimates ---- and the algebraic formulas and computer models by which they are derived ---- are routinely dissected by detractors. The difference is, on land, whether you're talking about bald eagles or fairy shrimp, biologists can occasionally physically count the animals endangered by various threats. Counting the denizens of the depths is never that easy.

"It's almost like Rachel Carson (the scientist who wrote 'Silent Spring') talking about songbirds being poisoned," said Paul Dayton, a professor of marine ecology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. "There were birds dropping out of the sky. At that time, people got concerned and did something about it. But in this case, in the oceans, they're out of sight."

Equally difficult to see is a solution that will bring together the people who catch fish and the people trying to keep fish out of the extinction bucket. This may be one gap all the technology in the world can't bridge.

Fishing industry feels the pain

San Diego County's once-thriving recreational fishing industry knows the importance of getting it right when counting fish. At Helgren's Sportfishing in Oceanside, Joey Helgren said a state clampdown on catching sculpin, a kind of rockfish, forced him to fire 20 people.

"From (age) 12 to 20, I did really good in this business, but I've watched it all go downhill," Helgren said. "Less and less people fish with us because there are more and more regulations."

In 2002, the Pacific Fishery Management Council closed the rockfish fishery in midseason when surveys showed one species, bocaccio, dipping to dangerously low levels. Thousands of fishermen were put out of work, and a $50 million-per-year industry was all but wiped out.

A December 2002 article in The Reel News, a fishing journal, titled "Bottom Fishing Is an Endangered Sport" captured the sentiment: "The data used to justify the closure: the exact same data from 1999 that they said showed a surplus! ... They just reinterpreted the same old bad data. These guys are supposed to be using the 'best science available' and that is what they claim to be doing, but they are not using science at all. A witch doctor with a modicum of common sense would make more sense than what these ... biologists are doing!"

Roger Hewitt, the top NOAA official at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, sighed when asked about the strife over "sound science" that so often stymies cooperative management of fisheries.

"That's an old, old problem," he said. "I don't know how you're ever going to get around that. Fishermen aren't stupid, either; they can appreciate the value of having a scientifically defensible random survey. But I understand, people get frustrated if the fishery hasn't been managed properly. Everybody gets hurt when you scale back the fishing effort."

"It always come down to arguing over the science, and it will till the day we die!" said Dana Point's Don Hansen, the chairman of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, an agency that manages the West Coast fishing industry.

Hopes high for new boat

Into these roiling waters steams the Oscar Dyson, a $45 million, 206-foot fish-counting ship hauling a high-tech tacklebox of advanced instruments. Essentially, this first of four new NOAA boats is a stern trawler designed to scoop up fish in a huge net it can drop and drag behind. The Oscar Dyson also comes equipped with networked instruments that can count fish without catching or killing them, including a scientific sonar system that detects schools and individual fish beneath the hull.

But the boat's main innovation is its low "acoustic signature." The surprising soundlessness of this "stealth ship" means that it can sneak up on fish without scaring them away, the first U.S. fisheries research vessel to meet this tough international standard. Cmdr. Frank Wood, the NOAA Corps officer who shepherded the ship from design to operation, said divers inspecting the ship's hull were spooked by a ship they saw before they heard.

"We're investing in our oceans," said Wood, a Santa Ana native whose parents live in Carlsbad. "The government is committing to NOAA's stewardship of the environment even more because they're bringing better tools into play."

Its San Diego stopover was just to refuel; the Oscar Dyson is destined for Kodiak, Alaska, where its primary duty will be to monitor the populations of Alaskan pollock, the biggest fishery in the United States, and other fisheries in the nation's most valuable and volatile fishing grounds. But a fourth boat, due in several years, will be assigned to a port along the lower 48's West Coast, probably in Newport, Ore., but some locals are already lobbying for a San Diego berth.

Fishermen expect a fight

"I would love to be able to see a vessel like that down in the West Coast," said Bob Fletcher, the president of the San Diego-based Sportfishing Association of California. "We really need something. There hasn't been a complete rockfish survey on the California coast since 1977, and the boat owners are saying there's a lot of fish out there."

Fishermen and women, whose livelihoods depend on the continued presence and perception of abundant fish, often say that. Sometimes, they're right. Fletcher hailed the results of a major new fish survey announced in late February that indicated recreational fishermen are making a much smaller dent in fish populations off California than previously believed. Sport fishermen are gearing up for another fight.

"The scientists will say, 'We're still concerned about the adequacy of these numbers, we should hold off on changing the regulations,' " Fletcher said. "We're going to have to fight the scientists to get anything changed in the regulations. I know for a fact that environmentalists are already expressing skepticism. But these numbers, having validated what we've been saying all along, will (unleash) a lot of pent-up passion to ease the restrictions."

Scientists seek independent data

Scientists pin the discrepancy on a simple difference between how fishermen and scientists observe their quarry. While fishermen drop anchor where the fish gather and extrapolate to the rest of the ocean, he said, scientists sample from both bustling and barren fishing grounds to estimate fish populations in existing, potential and past habitat.

"You might be fooling yourself if you limit yourself to just the preferred habitat," said NOAA's Hewitt, who toured the new ship with Fletcher on Tuesday. "As a population declines and is under stress, it retreats to those refuges of its habitat where things are really, really good."

One important tool on board the Oscar Dyson was created by Scripps oceanography professor Dave Checkley Jr. His "egg-sucker" device monitors the concentration and condition of fish eggs in the water through which the ship is speeding. Checkley said the ship's biggest contribution will be in enhancing the government's ability to get its own data about fish, decreasing reliance on what commercial and recreational fishermen catch and report.

"We're well-equipped to provide fishery-independent data now," said Checkley. "This is one more tool in our war chest. Any progress in our ability to better estimate the size of fish stocks will ultimately lead to better management. I think that, in my mind, knowledge is power in this regard. The more we know, the better we're able to make wise decisions, and fisheries management is all about making wise decisions."

Diplomatically, he added, "That wisdom doesn't rest solely with scientists, but also with fishermen and others."

He said, she said

Hewitt likened political attacks on the scientific estimates of fish populations to the dynamic that led the Bush administration to pull the United States out of the Kyoto treaty to restrict greenhouse gases believed to contribute to global warming.

"If you can introduce any kind of uncertainty, you can argue that and halt everything because you don't have definitive data," said Hewitt, who once skippered another NOAA research vessel. "It's the same thing with greenhouse emissions. We're hesitant to do anything on that because we don't feel the case is unequivocal. The same psychology applies to just about any regulatory issue."

Hewitt held out hope that the Oscar Dyson's advanced technology will go some way toward "reducing these he said, she said things."

But of course, Oceanside's Joey Helgren wasn't impressed.

"Their boat being real quiet, that doesn't make any difference," said the fishing boat owner. "We fire our engines up sometimes and the fish bite harder. Sometimes the noise helps you."

Contact staff writer Denis Devine at (760) 740-5415 or ddevine@nctimes.com.

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