Court ruling could give sardines a better chance to rebound

An environmental lawsuit may lead to big changes for small fish.

photo credit: Courtesy of UC Davis
Pacific sardines travel in huge schools.

An environmental group says it has prevailed in federal court over the management of Pacific sardines.

Geoff Shester is senior scientist with Oceana and lead's its California campaign.

"The recent court decision was really vindicating a lot of the concerns that Oceana has been raising with fisheries managers where they were setting catch limits that basically, their own analysis showed wouldn't rebuild the sardine population," Shester said.

Unlike the canned variety common at grocery stores, almost all of which originate in the Mediterranean, Shester said Pacific sardines generally wind up as bait or food for farmed fish.

According to Oceania, the judge found the agency's existing population rebuilding plan would not assure that targets would be reached before a legally required deadline.

Shester said that will force changes. "we'll actually get improvements to the management that both ensure a fast recovery and that we avoid these mistakes, where we have low productivity conditions in the ocean, combined with excessive fishing rates that cause a disastrous situation," Shester said.

While they don't generally compete, sardines and another small fish, anchovies, seem to take turns. When the Pacific's waters enter a cooler period, anchovy populations flourish, while sardines become scarce. When waters warm, say during an El Nino, anchovy numbers tend to plummet, while sardines populations grow.

Shester said federal catch limits exacerbated the most recent decline.

According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, commercial fishing of sardine was closed in 2015 and the species declared overfished in 2019.

The species had recovered in the mid 80s following a two decade moratorium but have been in decline since 2007.

KRCB News reached out to federal fisheries managers but didn't get a response yet...we'll bring you more on this story when we do.