CFSB Board Meeting Minutes - May 9, 2022
Attendees: Jason Woods, Andy Rasmussen, Gary Burke, Adrian Stimson, Paul Teall, Chris Voss, Nick Tharp, Jeff Maassen, Michael Nelson, Michael Harrington, Thomas Dabney, John Colgate, Bob Kryzcko, Bernard Friedman, Eliza Harrison, Chris Goldblatt, Harry Liquornik, Garrett Rose, Nathan Rosser, Victoria Voss
Notes: Ava Schulenberg
Agenda:
Fishermen’s Market insurance
Update on Fisherman for Ukraine event - please help ticket sales
Guest Speaker Chris Goldblatt from Fish Reef Project
Groundfish Update - Nick Tharp
MREP report back - Chris Voss, Gary Burke
Update on USDA project/Harbor Commission process
Participatory mapping of fishing grounds on the Central Coast - Chris and Ava
Possible mapping of grounds in Channel project idea - Kim
Lobster Trap Cleanup on May 21st with SB Channelkeeper
Offshore Wind Update - Chris Voss
Stearns Wharf event??
Other news and issues
Chris Voss opened the meeting on May 9, 2022 at 4:04pm. Meeting was held in person in the harbor classroom and via Zoom.
Agenda:
Saturday Fishermen’s Market insurance
The Fishermen’s Market requires event insurance. Liquornik and Harrington have been pursuing quotes for it as part of renewing CFSB’s annual insurance package, which also includes General Liability coverage and Directors & Officers Liability. The insurance broker is Andreini & Company. The insurance company is Scottsdale Co. The quote is:
The boat yard component is $575.00
The Directors & Officers Liability is $1,015.00
The Saturday Market component is $5,688.00
Having insurance coverage for the Saturday Market is a requirement of the City, and does not eliminate the need for individual vendors to carry their own insurance related to their retail business.
It is unlikely that the Sat market event insurance would cover us for the Fishermen for Ukraine event. Kim suggests it would be cleaner if we get additional insurance for the Fisherman for Ukraine event in the form of a one day policy that covers any incidents of the day with $2 million coverage. It’s just a couple hundred dollars and is required by the Maritime Museum.
Ava will inquire with the vendors to see how they want to cover the $5688 - Using the William Corbett funds or splitting it up amongst the vendors.
Chris makes a motion to approve payment for CFSB’s insurance bill. Bernard seconds the motion, unanimous approval, 4-0-0 vote stands. Harrington points out that we can always cancel and get a prorated refund at any time.
Update on Fisherman for Ukraine event - Please help ticket sales
Sponsorship from CFSB/the Saturday Market should be made more clear
Chris suggested the board purchase a “table” of tickets for fishermen attendees - This would be $1500 (10 tickets). It would be great to have some of the 10 fishermen who attend dispersed throughout the event, mingling amongst other tables.
We need more auction items, if anyone knows people that can offer a service or product to donate, please connect them with Ava.
Nick asks if they can donate fish, Paul says he donated a dinner for 6 crab meal once for an event, Nick says he will coordinate with Ava to donate his product
Guest Speaker Chris Goldblatt from Fish Reef Project
Chris started the open access black cod fishery 30 years ago and has a long background in fishing. He started a non-profit to build artificial reefs/sea caves (made of high PSI marine concrete) to encourage biodiversity to flourish and as a result, support the longevity of fisheries
The sea caves are basically a turtle shape, scour proof
Chris is from Paradise Cove Malibu where they lost 100% of their fishing grounds, he was very vocal during the MPA process, and has concerns about the 30x30 initiative because even if it’s just 30% that’s taken, that could be 60% of where you fish, so we need to make up for all this loss that fishermen are experiencing
One of their goals is to emulate what other countries do with give back methods i.e. in Japan for every abalone you take, you have to put 3 back, etc.
With these artificial reefs/caves along the coast, not only is it great for fish populations but it’s great to have fishermen be able to fish successfully along the coast vs. having to burn a lot of fuel getting to the islands
The sea caves will also be highly beneficial in particular to the lobster fishery
Gary asks how far out these will be, Chris says about 1000 ft. offshore, inside the dragging limit, but far enough offshore where they won’t move even in a 25 ft swell
Paul asks if it will ever be restricted to fishing, Chris says when you put a sea cave down it’s open state water so it technically is governed by the State Lands Commission, so for them to close a reef that people are invested in as a place to fish, it becomes difficult to close
Andy asks if sea otters are factored in, Chris says it won’t be a magnet more than any other reef in CA, but putting it next to Isla Vista is good because otters don’t like to come through the oil sheen through Coal Oil Point
Adrian asks if there was any conflict in San Onofre with lobster fishermen when they put in artificial reefs there, Chris says no and that they actually were the biggest beneficiaries
Ava will coordinate with Chris to write an official letter of support
Groundfish Update - Nick Tharp
Nick reports on Copper Rockfish management plan update - It looks like quota could be reduced for bogus reasons - NOAA’s fishery dependent data is really spotty because of COVID, and the fishery independent data were not collected at the right depth zone. So they have the mistaken impression that Copper stocks are really low. We have a chance to contribute data so they can make a more informed decision that hopefully won't be so punitive to fishermen.
By their numbers, we’re currently at 18% of whatever the historical biomass is, whereas other rockfishes are at 30-40% or more.
When they did the fishery independent data and sampled 200 points, those locations were established in 2004 and were taken too deep
For the fishery-based data, it’s hindered by COVID because their studies were done during 2020/2021 and they threw out some of the data
How can you help: one idea is to have anybody with a deeper nearshore permit send NOAA their catch (all or some of the 75 lb quota) to supply them with the data they need (length, age, sex), but then they’d still need to be fleshed and then the carcass would need to be shipped. The bottom line is they need more data
Paul asks why can’t they change their methodology for next year’s assessment and they said because the locations are already established, it’s really difficult to change, even though they’re antiquated and inaccurate
Nick also discusses Vermillion:
After discussing with Merit McRae and Gerry Richter, as of right now quotas won’t be changing for 2023 for commercial, but will for recreational
Nick says it’s likely they will open the CCA and the RCA south of Point Conception, except for a handful of zones that have deepwater corals, and that there is talk about no contact bottom gear in those areas too. Opening up the rest of the CCA is likely, and but fishing in the RCA may be limited to a special kind of gear that doesn’t compress and artificial bait only - This will likely open in the next year or two, maybe sooner
Marine Resources Education Program (MREP) report back - Chris Voss, Gary Burke
Chris, Gary, Trent, John Woodcock Jr., and Nick went to the MREP conference in San Diego, Nick highly encourages going and says it’s an amazing opportunity to learn more about fisheries management and how to engage in policy
It’s normally 2 or 3 day seminars on fisheries science and fisheries management, highly encourage folks to go, it’s all paid for too
Update on USDA project/Harbor Commission process
The City Council decided to go over the Harbor Commission’s head and make sure we get $50k for the next phase of our infrastructure project. Council had asked the harbor commission to be in charge of evaluating and voting on CFSB’s budget request. But the Harbor Commission voted to not grant it. This was partly due to the Waterfront Dept. staff’s report that the only way they could think to come up with the $50k would be to raise slip fees for recreational boaters, which is very unpopular and pits us against the recreational boaters. There were also accusations that it was inappropriate for CFSB to be getting money from the city for a commercial enterprise. The council wasn’t pleased with this outcome and reaffirmed their commitment to us - It’s great news but also the way this unfolded makes it clear that we need to continue educating the Harbor Commission and harbor constituents about the value of our project and the City Council’s commitment to support the fishing and seafood industries as a vital component of a diversified coastal economy. It's an opportunity for education on what we’re doing, not just a handful of fishermen trying to take money from the city, we have legitimate plans to support a broad swath of the community.
Toward that end, we are convening a roundtable discussion and inviting the folks who expressed greatest interest and need for space when Ava interviewed them. This includes other maritime users including recreational fishing, maritime support business services, kayak rental businesses, even the Marine Sanctuary. We hope this will grow the coalition of maritime users pushing for implementation of the Maritime Collective goals.
Bernard expresses concern about being pushed out if more stakeholders are to be involved as potential tenants - Chris says that won’t happen given the public nature of CFSB’s central role in bringing this about.
Participatory mapping of fishing grounds on the Central Coast - Chris and Ava
Central Coast fishing associations have initiated the creation of a proprietary map of fishing grounds - The associations themselves will own it and keep it private, to be used to engage in advocacy in the wind energy process. They contracted Carrie Pomeroy to do the interviews with fishermen to build the map. She visited SB to collect info from fishermen based here who might be most impacted by wind installations (grounds at Point Conception northward only). Jeff Hepp, Garrett Rose, Morgan Castagnola, and Nick Voss participated in this meeting as representatives of the fisheries impacted, with the hope that there's' value in the decision making process of where the offshore wind facilities or potential aquaculture facilities are placed.
Possible mapping of grounds in Channel project idea - Kim
Would fishermen be interested in building a similar proprietary map of fishing grounds for the SB Channel? CFSB would own the map - it would be private and protections would be put in place to avoid other groups accessing the base data.
The big issue is not wind in the channel, it's aquaculture and the NOAA atlas has taken their stab at doing this but their maps are pretty inaccurate.
It would be completely up to us how we want to create the data, it could be guys just looking at a map, it could be VMS.
The reason we are bringing this up is that the Sea Sketch lab at UCSB offered to do this with us pro-bono. They are not part of the Bren School. They are a GIS lab that specializes in this work globally, mainly in 3rd world countries.
Harry says it’s worthwhile.
Nick expresses concern over how often it would be updated because valuable areas shift, e.g. black cod and bluefin, so this type of map would have an expiration date.
Kim emphasizes that it’s our data, so we could decide how and when to update it, or even wait to collect the first round of data until we know we need it, so it's fresh.
We’d have to figure out how much CFSB staff time it would take and that would be the main cost. We will have folks from UCSB come and speak at a meeting to give more information about possible methodology and privacy protections.
Lobster Trap Cleanup on May 21st with SB Channelkeeper
We have to police ourselves to keep lost gear cleaned up. There’s a fisherman who has left a lot of traps in the mouth of the harbor and on the backside of Santa Cruz, but according to Harry, we can now pull his gear because we have Fish & Game’s approval. Sam Shrout will help collect the gear since he has the deck space. Adrian also volunteers to help. Gear will be dropped in Buellton at Bruce Steele’s.
For the clean up on May 21st, we will focus on More Mesa area. Best approached by boat to gather gear and pull it to the boat instead of dragging it up the cliffs. Chris is using his boat. Channelkeeper is organizing manpower to assist. More boats needed to get all the traps. Will reach out to Sammy and Jim Colomy, who know the drill. Could use TNC trap app grant to compensate them. Bernard offers his help, but his boat isn’t right for it. - We need volunteers so reach out if you want to help.
Offshore Wind Update - Chris Voss
Chris Potter has reached out to organize a meeting for stakeholder input on May 16th with all the agencies. Not enough fishermen were at the last meeting so hopefully more can show up this time:
This meeting will be held on Monday, May 16th at 3PM at the Community Room located off the valet parking lot at 113 Harbor Way, Santa Barbara and will last a couple hours at most. During the meeting we plan to cover the following: Any background material to bring folks up to speed on the process (if necessary), go over the Coastal Commission’s staff report for the Consistency Determination on the Morro Bay Wind Energy Area, Potentially discuss any mitigation strategies to support the fishing community, Discuss the AB 525 Offshore Wind Strategic Plan that we are mandated to develop by the legislature and then of course; Any items you and the meeting participants would like to discuss. The agencies involved will be the Coastal Commission, Energy Commission, State Lands Commission, BOEM, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife
There’s endless meetings on offshore wind these days and it’s moving very fast - Up and down the coast people are gearing up for a fight because of the environmental and socioeconomic impacts; The political momentum is unstoppable, a lot of money is being poured into it from every direction
One idea we are pushing is that they should be only putting out small numbers of turbines before putting out 300 hundred of them. Expand cautiously. It kind of has to happen this way because it will take years to roll out the overall production they expect to generate and as it evolves we are trying to make certain that they treat the early installations as an experiment to learn from, to do better and reduce the rate of impact on commercial fishermen.
The latest bad news is that BOEM decided to waive the need for a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), which is normally required for any big development project to identify all of the negative impacts that will need to be measured and addressed. The rationale was that it is “premature to analyze environmental impacts” before actual lease permits are under consideration. This move is clearly coming from the top because there is so much political pressure to roll out renewables super quickly. Steve Scheiblauer submitted comments on this draft decision to raise objections and reiterate all the impacts that are known to fisheries and marine life. Steve invited Kim and Chris to attend a call with Coastal Commission to get clarity on their position on this, and their support on pushing back on BOEM. The CC staff seemed to convey to us that their hands are tied due to the politics of this, and they shared that they trust BOEM intends to be a better actor in this situation after being criticized for ignoring stakeholder input on the east coast wind projects.
Chris Voss ended the meeting on May 9, 2022 at 6:06pm.