Our federal fisheries managers have declared cowcod stocks to be rebuilt, after careful analysis of new and more accurate fish stock assessment data. This is awesome news and I want every red-blooded rockcod angler out there to reach over your shoulder and pat yourself on the back.
It was our own collective conservation efforts and our own fishing license moneys that went into rebuilding the stocks of this giant king of all rockfish.
Rockfish are a tasty lot and the Santa Barbara Channel has very healthy populations of these dinner fish which include well-known menu items like red snapper.
Most rockfish are nice medium-size fish, ranging from small to about 9 or 10 pounds. A 10-pound red snapper or copper rockfish are big and impressive members of their subspecies.
Now imagine a rockfish of 25 or 30 or even 40 pounds. These denizens of the deep are huge rockfish. Actually, they are the giants of the rockfish family and they happen to be delicious. Now that the stocks are recovered and healthy, the federal scientists are saying, “go fish.”
The California state fisheries managers are now looking at changing the regulations. The goal is healthy fish stocks and angler access to them, so management for sustainability is the golden rule of fisheries management. This means huge and positive potential changes in ocean fishing regulations.
We have had vast areas of the ocean closed to fishing, for decades, while we waited for the stocks to rebuild. One example is the massive Cowcod Conservation Area, which is something like 4,400 square miles of the SoCal Bight. We weren’t allowed to fish the deeper zones of this area.
There are also the depth restriction regulations, which are currently set to 75 fathoms (450 feet) in our area.
These regulatory restrictions were in place because we wanted to rebuild the populations of cowcod. Now that we have accomplished that task, these restrictions should, I believe, be eliminated so we can fish the deeper waters again.
I feel that good options would be to create a one-cowcod-per-day recreational fishing sublimit with a season that matches the other rockfish species.
Furthermore, I think every recreational or commercial fishing boat should be required to have onboard and use a “deep release device,” which allows us to solve the barotrauma issue by lowering a rockfish down to a level where it will recompress and swim away healthy.
— Capt. David Bacon operates WaveWalker Charters and is president of SOFTIN Inc., a nonprofit organization providing seafaring opportunities for those in need. Visit softininc.blogspot.com to learn more about the organization and how you can help. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.