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Sardine fishery shutdown continues

By Kelly House, The Oregonian
Published: April 13, 2016, 4:47pm

West Coast sardine fishermen for a second straight season will have to keep their boats moored or find something else to catch.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council on Sunday closed the sardine fishery off Oregon, California and Washington following the second straight year of sardine population estimates that fall below the minimum abundance required to allow fishing.

The closure is likely to continue for years as the small, schooling fish species struggles to rebound from a host of factors that might have contributed to its collapse.

Despite fishery managers’ decision last summer to close the fishery midseason after realizing their stock estimates for the year had been overly optimistic, the sardine population continues to shrink.

There are fewer than 65,000 metric tons of adult sardines in the ocean this year, federal scientists estimated.

West Coast fishery rules require sardine fishing to cease once the adult stock drops below 150,000 metric tons.

It’s unclear what’s causing the fish to struggle. Theories range from climatic factors to overfishing to an unavoidable boom-and-bust population trend typical of sardines.

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