Current Management of Fishery-Dependent Sampling of the U.S. Pacific Sardine Fishery. Document 1

摘要

The Pacific Sardine (Sardinops sagax caerulea) fishery was the largest in North America in the 1930s and 1940s with peak landings of over 700,000 metric tons in 1936. The fishery developed in response to the demand for food during World War I and extended from southern California to British Columbia. Sardine were used for either reduction to fishmeal and oil or canned for human consumption with a small portion taken for live bait. Then in 1967, after approximately fifty years of fishing, a moratorium on fishing was imposed by the California Legislature. But, by the time the moratorium was imposed, most of the fisheries along the West Coast had collapsed, even in southern California. The recession of landings started from the north and moved southward, with sardine last landed in Canadian waters in the 1947-1948 season, in Oregon and Washington in the 1948-1949 season, and in San Francisco Bay in the 1951-1952 season. Landings persisted in Monterey and San Pedro until the early 1960s. During this time, management of the sardine resource was regulated by: 1) limits on the amount of sardines used for reduction, 2) case packing requirements (i.e., the number of cases of canned fish per ton of whole fish, and 3) restriction of the fishing season; however, total catch was not limited.