Right Column

Mineral Resources Management Division - Rigs to Reefs Workshop

Chris Miller

Mr. Miller is Vice President of the California Lobster and Trawling Fisherman's Association, and Vice President of Commerical Fisherman of Santa Barbara.

~ From Transcript ~

Hi everyhody. This is a busy time of year for me. It's right in the middle of the prime lobster fishing time. 

So I have a big presentation.  But the first thing I want to get across is that for our lobster fishery, we have a artificial reef that produces substantial fishing opportunity for us in our area. That's  Rincon Island. We would really oppose that island ever being taken out.

It actually supports guys from Ventura and Santa Barbara fishing the second half of the lobster season, and there's a lot of production that comes out of that Rincon island.

Up in the Holister Ranch there are some pipelines that are used to run to the platforms that were right off of there. The platforms have been taken out, and those pipelines have a large abalone population on them.

The pipelines form what's called a deep crevice habitat. For the commissioners, I brought a video that our seafood council made. Actually, it's a video about what happens to those abalone after the otters moved in.

I didn't want to show the whole thing. But it will show you the abalone living on this pipeline, and then the areas where the pipelines are close enough together, the otters weren't able to get those abalone.

So those abalone are still recruiting. They still are spawning and producing recruitments to the nearby reefs. And so, for starters, just on a habitat basis, in our region we have positive aspects of the oil industries structures from the artificial reef standpoint.

But every one of these forums that I go to I always have to kind of start out by saying, well, we still got legal questions. They'll need to be asked. It has to do with the permit process. And also we don't see a real process to really make some substantial solutions in a comprehensive artificial reef program for our region.

We see these forums where everybody comes in and lays down their stock position, and we don't see any kind of what we call an interactive management approach. So that if I had any recommendations today is that we look at how we're going to organize involvement of the different stakeholders, and that that’s really given us some focus.

This isn't about, well, does rigs to reefs work? Are artificial reefs good? Are they bad? This is about how are you going to get a bunch of people together and make some progress with an artificial reef program of the state? At least that's the perspective I get from the guys that are out of our port we know of.

In most guys’ minds, they're concerned that there's not going to be some kind of double standard there where we have to take care of our permits, and we have to be accountable for our impacts on the habitat and that there's somehow a lot more flexibility for the oil companies.

But I'm just here to tell you that's not necessarily my viewpoint. But that's basically, if you talk to guys on the dock, they're going to say, "Hey, how come we have to follow our permits and the oil companies have a lot of room to move?"

One of the main things, though, that I'd like to point out is that this thing needs to be integrated with a fisher management plan. And that’s the Marine Life Management Act.

And the main thing that the Marine Life Management Act has that applies to this is we have restoration plans for depleted fishes. So in that framework, we're talking about abalone and rockfish. is the primary way I feel we can integrate this in our fishery management plans. Thank you.