In 1996, Paul Turnbull of the Abalone and Marine Resources Council, with Steve Benavides of the Catalina Conservancy Divers, petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission requesting an emergency closure of California's commercial abalone fishery. That petition was publically considered in December 1996 at a hearing of the Commission held in Eureka. CDFG bureacrats and commercial fishing interests responded by pointing out that the Commission's authority would force a closure of the recreational fishery in any areas where the Commission closed commercial take. The threat of closing the recreational fishery had historically been enough to cause recreational interests to back down.
The response by the few members of the recreational community at the Eureka hearing was to endorse closure of recreational take if that's what was required to close commercial take. Faced with a stakeholder group effectively petitioning for closure of their own fishery, the Commission's response was to recognize that the issue was bigger than a dispute between competing user groups. Though no action was taken at the November hearing, a storm began to build.
Late the next month, the Sacramento Bee ran its Pacific Blues series by 2 time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Tom Knudson. This series was a powerful indictment of California's marine resource management policies and it resulted in a sudden shift in focus by state politicians and resource bureaucrats. The state of California's valuable abalone resource featured prominently in the Pacific Blues series. Momentum built.
Commercial interests were shocked by the turn of events and turned out with their families at the March '97 (Monterey) Commission hearing and with their lawyers at the May '97 Sacramento hearing. The commercial harvesters variously maintained that nothing was amiss with the abalone fishery, that the problems with the fishery are due to too many recreational divers or pollution or sea otters, and that closure of the fishery would unduly punish commercial harvesters.
The recreational dive community also showed up in numbers at these hearings carrying a different message: "close the fishery and give it time to recover before it's too late." Representatives and members of CenCal GLADC, AMRC, and SCAN attended Commission hearings and meetings of CDFG committees to press this message home. Unaffiliated individuals from the recreational community as well as a few ex-commercial abalone divers added their weight to the same message.
Faced with reports from CDFG marine biologists of the dismal state of southern California's abalone resource, the Commission ordered an emergency 4 month closure of the fishery in May 1997.
Meanwhile, in the California Legislature, Senator Thompson (D-St. Helena) sponsored a rewrite of his SB463 Abalone Bill. Originally launched with "placeholder" language written by commercial abalone divers, the rewritten version of SB463 called for an indefinite moratorium on abalone harvesting south of San Francisco.
Commercial interests responded to SB463 by endorsing the Commission regulatory process, launching personal attacks on Senator Thompson and the CDFG scientists, and attacking the science itself. Though attempts were made (announced, in fact) that they'd enrolled support from well-known and respected marine scientists, only one associate professor of theoretical statistics testified before legislative committees in an attempt to discredit the conclusions of CDFG biologists. That hired gun lasted less than 15 minutes before being verbally shredded by Senator Tom Hayden in his role as chair of the Senate's Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee. Senator Hayden was particularly agitated when the commercial's hired gun acknowledged that he'd spent less than a day studying the issue yet was willing to question the motives and conclusions of scientists who'd spent a career working on the same issue.
With SB463 gained momentum within the legislature. By September 1997, when the Fish and Game Commission's emergency closure was due to expire, it was clear SB463 would make it to the governor's desk. This made the Commission's September extension of the regulatory closure through the remainder of 1997. With Governor Wilson's signature on SB463 in October putting it into effect in January 1998, closure of southern California's abalone fishery is now in effect indefinitely.
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SB463 - The Abalone Bill (Senator Thompson D-St. Helena) | |
| As Signed by Governor Wilson | ||
| SB463 Lifecycle | ||
| What SB463 Means |
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Important Facts About California's Abalone Resource |
Last Modified: January 10, 2006
