State Funding Urgently Needed to Support Pop-Up Testing in California

IMPORTANT UPDATE: FEBRUARY 28, 2024

The California Ocean Protection Council (OPC) has revised its Staff Recommendation to provide an additional $250,000 to the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation to purchase Sub Sea Sonics and Guardian Ropeless pop-up fishing gear for the Foundation’s gear library. The recommended funding - now totaling up to $450,000 - for an expanded gear library will greatly improve access to pop-up gear by fishermen and enable the Sub Sea Sonics expanded Experimental Fishing Permit (EFP) to move forward this spring.

The work of OPC staff, to more than double the original funding recommendation for the gear library in order to boost access to pop-up gear, will reduce the financial risk for fishers participating in state-authorized testing efforts. 

The expanded testing efforts that will be supported by these additional recommended funds will generate a robust data set for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to inform their potential authorization of pop-up gear for commercial use in the California Dungeness crab fishery in 2025. Importantly, OPC staff have retained their original recommendation that up to another $1.4 million be directed to the development of a virtual gear marking system to support enforcement of pop-up gear, line marking of fishing gear so that gear entangling animals can be traced back to the fishery of origin, and continued support for whale entanglement response. Taken together, these activities will help expand California’s science-based fisheries management toolbox and also indicates a deep commitment by the state to both protect its treasured marine life and support its fisheries.

We respectfully recommend that the OPC formerly approves the revised Staff Recommendation during the OPC meeting taking place on Thursday, 29^th February. 

ORIGINAL BLOG: POSTED FEBRUARY 24, 2024.

Something momentous is happening in California. Interest from fishers in testing pop-up fishing gear to reduce the risk of whale and sea turtle entanglements is now outweighing the resources available to provide them with access to the technology. 

Twenty Dungeness crab fishers have signed up to test a type of pop-up gear (also known as “on-demand” or “ropeless” gear) developed by Sub Sea Sonics and Guardian Ropeless—a technology the fishers have chosen due to its cost effectiveness and previous successful testing efforts in 2023 that demonstrated crab could be fished with a 98% reliability rate and virtually no gear loss. In fact, more than 40 applicants vied for the 20 spots available on the expanded Experimental Fishing Permit (EFP) required to test the gear. 

These larger-scale testing efforts will provide the opportunity for many new fishers to gain first-hand experience with the gear while also providing data to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife that is vital to their potentially authorizing pop-up gear for commercial use in the California Dungeness crab fishery in 2025. More broadly, the completion of this project would provide essential scientific data to make more effective resource management decisions that will result in productive fisheries and protected whales and sea turtles.

But there is a serious problem: The Sub Sea Sonics pop-up testing project is currently unfunded. 

On February 29^th, the California Ocean Protection Council (OPC) will meet and decide how to spend the almost $1.6 million dollars remaining in its General Fund, originally appropriated to address whale and sea turtle entanglements in California fishing gear. OPC staff have made several recommendations to the Council members as to how the funding could be spent.

NRDC is highly supportive of several of these items: Funds to develop a virtual gear marking system to support enforcement of pop-up gear will remove a significant barrier to its commercial use; line marking of fishing gear so that gear entangling animals can be traced back to the fishery of origin will be of great benefit to management (as recently demonstrated for North Atlantic right whales on the U.S. East Coast); and continued support for large whale entanglement response is also critical until a more enduring solution to entanglements is found.

We are concerned, however, that the immediate funding need of the 20 fishers who have signed up to participate in the Sub Sea Sonics expanded EFP has not been met by the Staff Recommendation. Rather, only $200,000 is recommended to be directed to the entirely separate National Marine Sanctuary Foundation EFP, which will involve necessarily smaller-scale outreach, demonstrations, and training/testing. No rationale is provided to explain why the recommendation was made to support the Foundation’s EFP over other EFPs that are currently active and also in need of funding. While we support the recommendation to fund the Foundation’s EFP, more resources are urgently needed, particularly to support the implementation of the Sub Sea Sonics expanded EFP.

Unfortunately, pop-up gear isn’t popular among some members of the fishery and fishers who volunteer to test it put themselves at personal and professional risk of retaliation. Limiting access of pop-up gear seriously risks attrition of fishers from the project, undoing years of progress. Any form of delay would slow the commercial authorization process, extending the economic uncertainty for the industry resulting from annual fishery closures, and leaving endangered whales and sea turtles at continued risk of torturous and unlawful entanglements.

As a solution, we are asking the OPC to authorize up to $520,000 in additional funds to support the implementation of the Sub Sea Sonics expanded EFP. Support should be provided via a funding mechanism that allows fishers to move forward with testing pop-up gear in a way that minimizes their financial risk. Irrespective of the funding mechanism pursued, the state should prioritize providing access to a sufficient quantity of the types of pop-up technologies that fishers have shown most interest in (e.g., Sub Sea Sonics and Guardian Ropeless), and provide access to those technologies quickly enough to support testing this spring.

We believe OPC has sufficient resources to fund this additional modest investment request, which is consistent with the California Strategic Plan to Protect California’s Coast and Ocean 2020-2025. Target 3.3.5 of the Strategic Plan states, “Develop a statewide whale and sea turtle protection plan by 2022 with a target of zero mortality (Vision Zero). As a component of this overall plan, develop and initiate a funding strategy to reduce the risk of entanglement in California fishing gear by 2020.” One of the actions under Target 3.3.5 is “Support the testing of fishing gear innovations such as “pop-up” fishing technologies, in 2021.”

Near-term funding of the Sub Sea Sonics pop-up testing project is one of our best available opportunities for realizing the coexistence of California’s treasured marine life and vibrant fisheries.