A U.S. District Court Judge has ruled that Catch Limits for Anchovies need to be re-tooled because they don’t properly reflect the fluctuations in the population of Anchovies. In the ruling the judge wrote that setting the catch limit, ‘without a mechanism in-place to respond to the sometimes-extreme changes in the number of anchovies in existence, was at-best arbitrary….and certainly not based on the available data. The concern is that their current catch-limit could easily lead to over-fishing the population, if there were a downward fluctuation.
The Anchovy Fishery is particularly important to Monterey’s historic fishing industry……but also because anchovies are critical forage fish for salmon, whales, dolphins, sea lions, brown pelicans and many other marine animals.
