California is cracking down on illegal fishing in marine protected areas (MPAs) with a new ticketing system, says the LA Times. Previously, fishing in an MPA was considered a misdemeanor and subject to a large fine, which made authorities hesitant to approach someone who may not have even realized they were fishing in an off-limits zone. Now, game wardens hand out tickets worth a few hundred dollars that are payable in local traffic court, says the Times.
“It’s way simpler,” says Clark McLennan, a game warden in San Diego County. “The fines are much more appropriate. We were giving out many more warnings, and now if you’re fishing in the MPAs, you’re [likely] going to get a ticket.” Even lifeguards can now issue a ticket, which helps take some of the pressure off limited law enforcement staff.
In California, MPAs represent 16 percent of coastal waters, or about 5,200 square miles. (See FERN’s story with California Sunday Magazine, “The Fishermen’s Dilemma,” to learn how these zones affect fishermen.) Globally, the effort to create no-fishing zones started with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in 2014, who called for their creation during the Our Ocean conference. Since then, more than a dozen countries have developed MPAs, “including Morocco, Thailand and Canada, as well as the European Union and the United Kingdom,” says the Times.
But the effectiveness of these areas is uneven, in large part due to unreliable monitoring and enforcement. “It’s often the case the acronym MPA stands for marine poaching area,” Mike Gravitz, director of policy and legislation for the Marine Conservation Institute.
California recently passed another law in the spirit of marine protection, the Whale Protection & Crab Gear Retrieval Act. “A first of its kind for the state, it is designed to reduce the number of whales caught in fishing gear by creating financial incentives for the state’s Dungeness and rock crab fishermen to collect any abandoned gear they find during the off season,” says NPR. Removing lost equipment was previously illegal off the state’s coast. Crab pots, unlike most gear, are traceable to the owner. Fishermen who fail to pull out their pots at the end of the season, will be barred from getting a vessel license for the next year. But fishermen who return someone else’s pots will take home a bounty.
“Sometimes [fishing equipment] can drown the whale immediately, or it can happen over weeks, because they get so tired,” says Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “They eventually die of exhaustion. If the gear is in their mouths, it impedes their ability to feed. It can amputate their tails or other parts of the body. And for younger whales, the gear may wrap around them, but the whale keeps growing and it cuts into their flesh.”
Last year, 61 whales were entangled off the California coast, and already this year there have been 60.