Fishing industry expands in Monterey Bay
Petrale sole, rock cod and much more. If those are some of your favorite choices on a dinner menu, we have good news. A lot will now be locally caught. It’s all thanks to a population rebound after strict fishing regulations in the Monterey Bay.
Monterey Fish Company said its happy city council members accepted a $225,000 grant money that will allow local fisherman to catch ground fish, like red rock cod.
“Anything great that will make us work more, and catch more, more of an income coming in is good for us and the community,” fisherman Gaspar Catanzaro said.
Since the city’s decision, Monterey Fish said sales have already been up 5 percent just this week. Fisherman and local restaurants said shoppers and diners are clamoring for the prime consumer fish, things like butter fish and certain kinds of snapper
Monterey’s Harbormaster said the city took action to make sure that it would own some of the fishing rights so that fisheries would remain here in the Monterey Bay.
“It will equate into approximately 450 thousand to 500 thousand pounds of fish broken out into different species, like petrale sole and black cod,” Harbormaster Steve Scheiblauer said.
But with it come new rules, fisherman only had to report 20 percent of what they caught. Now they must report 100 percent of the days catch to better track the population.
“As a fisherman sometimes that’s a little bit of a pain you know, but the fisherman will work with it,” Catanzaro said.
After years of strict regulations to protect the endangered fish, 21 species moved from the avoid list to sustainable status just last year.
“You want to see it keep going it’s a beautiful thing to come into the bay and see all the fishing boats and at night when they’re fishing, I would like to see it keep going,” Catanzaro said.
Because of that rebound, fisherman said they are pretty amazed at the size of some of their catches. Fisherman are happy they are allowed to catch more of these types of fish. But they also must pay more, $500 every time an observer is needed to count the fish hauled in.
